The Princess and the Frog (2009, G)

More Disney of the recent past.  This one is a mixed bag – it has some excellent highs, like the beautiful 2-D animation, and some indifferent lows, like Randy Newman’s so-so score.  It’s fine, but it deserved to be quite a bit better than it is.

Tiana, the working-class daughter of a seamstress and an aspiring cook, is a young waitress in New Orleans.  All determination and elbow grease, she works indefatigably while she saves up enough to open her own restaurant, one tip at a time.  When a foreign prince comes to town for Mardi Gras, Tiana’s usually spartan life fills with adventure, danger, and magic; Prince Naveen has been taken in by a shifty voodoo practitioner and turned into a frog.  The smooth-talking prince convinces Tiana to make like a princess and lay a magic smooch on him, but things don’t go according to the fairytales, and a freshly amphibious Tiana has to keep the two of them alive and afloat long enough to break the spell.

The Princess and the Frog has a lot to set it apart from most Disney Princess fare.  There’s no European or European-inspired setting, instead letting the action play out against a vivid Louisiana backdrop.  It’s also a 20^th-century story, with a jazz-infused score and ‘20s-era costumes that would look out of place in its sister films.  As I’ve already said, it eschews the ‘80s-and-beyond practice of using songs penned by Alan Menken in favor of a number of Randy Newman ditties.  And of course, the biggest news is Tiana herself, Disney’s first Black heroine.

These novel elements are pulled off with varying degrees of success.  New Orleans is a nice choice for a setting; it’s vibrant with life and color, and it offers a variety of locales from the Quarter to the bayou.  Placing it in the U.S. during the Jazz Age gives it a pretty different feel from most of Disney’s princess films, but overall, I think the movie makes it work.  Instead of being a place where fairytales play out every day, Tiana’s fairytale-obsessed childhood friend Charlotte is our entrance into that aspect of the story.  The typical Eurocentric princess tropes are just that, tropes brought into the film by a character who grew up on lavish dress-up clothes and happily-ever-after bedtime stories.  This provides the nod to the original tale while allowing some subversion through Tiana, who’s not sure she buys all this Handsome Prince and True Love’s Kiss business.  Tiana, by the way, is a very rootable heroine with a decent character journey and a gorgeous singing voice (Anika Noni Rose – Emmy from Caroline, or Change.)

That said, the film has its share of dings and dents.  While the basic narrative is solid, getting from point to point feels a little slapdash.  For instance, Tiana and Naveen’s mission to break the spell is interrupted by tons of side trips, distractions, and out-of-nowhere threats that don’t seem to flow organically.  Also, I know that hiring a composer other than Alan Menken isn’t an automatic knock – The Lion King and Frozen are obvious winners, and Mulan has some fine songs – but Randy Newman’s music doesn’t really work for me.  It’s not bad, just repetitive and a little generic.  Still, I know Disney can do better, and it’s disappointing that Tiana doesn’t have more to work with.

Warnings

Some scary stuff for kids, including creepy “voodoo” spell-casting.