The Princess and the Frog

First Review:In an age when most animated films are computer generated (including those produced by Disney), "The Princess and the Frog" comes along, and it's like witnessing a rebirth. First and foremost, it marks the return of traditional hand-drawn 2-D animation, a process Disney has not used since 2004's "Home on the Range." It's once again possible to see an animated film and really appreciate the artistry that went into it - the backgrounds, the color schemes, the articulation, the lighting, the special photographic effects, the form of the line. It doesn't matter that many of the old time animation techniques have been replaced with computers, including the cels and the Ink and Paint department; the style remains true to the classic Disney animated films, as does the manual use of pencil and paper.

The film also marks the return of the animated Disney musical, with a playful and jazzy collection of songs by Randy Newman that play true to the story's New Orleans setting. While nowhere near as memorable or charming as such Disney standards as "Under the Sea," "Be Our Guest," "A Whole New World," or "Colors of the Wind" (all scored by Alan Menken, who probably would have been a much better choice for this film), they hold their own in "The Princess and the Frog," expanding the settings and allowing the characters to be even more expressive and appealing.

Category: Animation
All Genres: Animation, Family, Fantasy, Musical, Romance
Release Year: 2009
Country: USA
Runtime: 97 minutes
Rating: 8.1 /10
Languages: English

Director:

Ron Clements
John Musker

Sound: Dolby Digital, SDDS, DTS

Writing by :

Rob Edwards
Ron Clements
Greg Erb
Don Hall
John Musker
Jason Oremland

Produced by:

Peter Del Vecho
Paul D. Lanum
John Lasseter
Craig Sost

Music By:

Randy Newman

Cast:

Anika Noni Rose - Tiana
Bruno Campos - Prince Naveen
Keith David - Dr. Facilier
Michael-Leon Wooley - Louis
Jennifer Cody - Charlotte
Jim Cummings - Ray
Peter Bartlett - Lawrence
Jenifer Lewis - Mama Odie
Oprah Winfrey - Eudora (voice)
Terrence Howard - James
John Goodman - 'Big Daddy' La Bouff
Elizabeth M. Dampier - Young Tiana
Breanna Brooks - Young Charlotte
Ritchie Montgomery - Reggie (voice)
Don Hall - Darnell (voice)
Paul Briggs - Two Fingers (voice)
Jerry Kernion - Mr. Henry Fenner (voice)
Corey Burton - Mr. Harvey Fenner (voice)
Michael Colyar - Buford
Emeril Lagasse - Marlon the Gator (voice)
Kevin Michael Richardson - Ian the Gator (voice)
Randy Newman - Cousin Randy (voice)
Terence Blanchard - Louis' Trumpet Playing
Danielle Moné Truitt - Georgia (voice)
Jeff Draheim - (voice)
Rob Edwards - (voice)
Kelly Hoover - (voice)
Jennifer Kilger - (voice)
Allison Norman - (voice)
Lynwood Robinson - (voice)
Lorry Ann Shea - (voice)
Bruce W. Smith - (voice)
Marlon West - (voice)
Joe Whyte - (voice)
Seth R. Williamson - (voice)
Shanda M. Williamson - (voice)
Shane R. Williamson - (voice)

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Plot: In 1912 New Orleans, a woman is reading a story to her daughter, Tiana, and her daughter's friend, Charlotte La Bouff, about the Frog Prince. Charlotte finds the story romantic, while Tiana proclaims she would never kiss a frog. Years pass by, and Tiana becomes a beautiful young woman who works two jobs so she can save money to start her own restaurant, fulfilling her late father's dream.

Elsewhere, Prince Naveen arrives in New Orleans from his home country, Maldonia. Naveen's parents have cut him off due to his extravagant lifestyle, so he must either get a job or marry someone independently wealthy, such as Charlotte. Eli 'Big Daddy' La Bouff, Charlotte's father, is hosting a masquerade ball in Naveen's honor. Charlotte hires Tiana to make beignets for the ball, giving her just the right amount of cash needed to finally buy an old sugar mill that she wants to convert into her restaurant.

Meanwhile, Naveen and his valet Lawrence run into the shady Dr. Facilier, a voodoo doctor. Inviting them into his emporium, Facilier convinces the pair he can make their dreams come true. However, neither man gets what he's expecting; Naveen becomes a frog, while Lawrence is given a voodoo charm that makes him look like Naveen. Facilier intends for Lawrence to marry Charlotte, after which he will kill Big Daddy La Bouff and claim his fortune.

At the ball, Charlotte flirts with “Naveen” as Tiana learns she may lose the mill to a higher bidder. Adding insult to injury, her costume is accidentally ruined. Charlotte gives Tiana a princess costume and a tiara so she can rejoin the ball. After Charlotte returns to the party, Tiana makes a wish on the Evening Star, only to find a frog sitting next to her. The frog is Naveen, who asks Tiana (believing that she is a real princess) to kiss him and break Facilier's curse. Tiana agrees, in exchange for the money needed to outbid the other buyer. However, instead of Naveen turning into a human, Tiana is turned into a frog herself.

The pair narrowly escape to a bayou, where they encounter Louis, a trumpet-playing alligator who longs to be human, and Ray, a Cajun firefly who longs for a sparkling light he calls Evangeline. They offer to lead them to the good voodoo priestess Mama Odie, who can undo the curse. Along the way, Tiana and Naveen begin to develop feelings for each other. Meanwhile, Facilier makes a deal with the voodoo spirits, offering them the souls of the people of New Orleans in exchange for finding Naveen.

Mama Odie tells the frogs that Naveen must kiss a princess before midnight in order for them to become human. Tiana and her friends return to New Orleans to find Charlotte, the princess of the Mardi Gras Parade. Naveen tells Ray he loves Tiana and is willing to give up his dreams for her, but before he can tell her directly, he is taken by the demons and brought back to Facilier.

After Ray tells Tiana that Naveen truly loves her, Tiana goes to the Mardi Gras parade only to find “Naveen”(which is really Lawrence) marrying Charlotte. Tiana escapes to a graveyard to be alone, while Ray and Louis are able to rescue the real Naveen and steal the charm. Ray finds Tiana and gives her the charm and attempts to hold off the demons so she can escape, but Dr. Facilier mortally wounds him. Facilier confronts Tiana and offers to make her restaurant dream come true in exchange for the charm. Realizing she would rather be with Naveen, Tiana refuses and uses her tongue to snatch the charm from Facilier and destroy it. The angered spirits claim Facilier himself as payment for his debts and drag him into their world forever.

Naveen is explaining the situation to a bewildered Charlotte when Tiana finds them both. Tiana reveals that she loves Naveen and would spend the rest of her days as a frog to be with him. Moved by this, Charlotte says she will kiss Naveen anyway so he and Tiana can be together. But the clock strikes midnight before she can kiss him. Louis then meets up with the frogs, holding a dying Ray in his hands. Despite what happened, Ray shows happiness for the two before he dies. A funeral is held for Ray, after which another star shines brightly next to "Evangeline.”

Contented to live together as frogs, Tiana and Naveen are wed by Mama Odie. As they kiss, they are turned into humans, because through their marriage, Tiana is now a princess. The two return to New Orleans where everyone celebrates the wedding and Tiana and Naveen finally buy the restaurant. “Tiana's Palace” holds a gala opening, underneath the two shining Evening Stars.

Goofs:

• Factual errors: In the movie, Tiana congratulates Big Daddy on being the King of Mardi Gras, and he says that it's the fifth year in a row. For New Orleans Carnival parades and balls, the identity of the King is almost always kept a secret, and one cannot be the king more than one time.

Trivia:

• The first hand-drawn Disney animated film since Home on the Range (2004).
• At one point in the trailer, just briefly, you can see the 'A113' (something that has appeared in all Pixar movies) on the streetcar that Princess is trying to get on.
• Jennifer Hudson, Alicia Keys and Tyra Banks were all considered for the lead role. Keyes and Banks personally lobbied the studio for the part.
• The first Disney movie to feature an African-American princess.
• This is the first 2-D animated Disney film for composer Randy Newman, who previously scored the Disney/Pixar films Toy Story (1995), A Bug's Life (1998), Toy Story 2 (1999), Monsters, Inc. (2001), and Cars (2006). Alan Menken and his new lyricist Glenn Slater were originally going to do the music for the film, but John Lasseter didn't want the public to feel that Disney was becoming repetitive, because Menken had been scoring another fairy tale film, Enchanted (2007). Newman had also previously done a jazz-inspired score for Turner's 2D animated film _Cats Don't Dance (1997)_.
• Tiana is left-handed for a reason: Anika Noni Rose, the voice of Tiana, asked for it because she is a left-handed. Mark Henn, supervising animator of the princess accepted.
• Prince Naveen is from a fictional country in the Mediterranean named Maldonia. The kingdom's name is a mix between Malta and Macedonia.
• The alligator character in the film is named Louis in honor of jazz great Louis Armstrong.
• In February 2007, it was reported that 'Jennifer Hudson' and Anika Noni Rose were top contenders for the voice of the princess, and that Alicia Keys directly contacted Disney's studio chief Dick Cook, telling him that she wanted the role very much.
• During the Walt Disney Company's annual shareholder meeting in March 2007, Randy Newman performed a new song written for the movie. He was accompanied by the Dirty Dozen Brass Band.
• Musical alligators, like Louis the Jazz trumpeter, had been a part of a previous Disney animated classic, The Rescuers (1977), in which Madame Medusa's two pet reptiles, Brutus and Nero, play a tune on an organ in order to blast the two mouse heroes from their hiding place. The character Louis in this film also has a strong connection to the "orangutan king" character in The Jungle Book (1967), who is also named Louis ("King Louie") and who is also a talking animal that sings a song about wanting to be human ("I Want to Be Like You," in "The Jungle Book"). Although the ape is not a trumpeter, he was played by New Orleans Jazz trumpeter Louis Prima.
• The band that Louis plays for is named the Firefly Five Plus Lou, a reference to the Dixieland jazz band Firehouse Five Plus Two, which consisted of Disney animators.
• The Princess and the Frog (2009) contains several references to the plays of Tennessee Williams, who despite having been born in Mississippi, growing up in Missouri, being nicknamed "Tennessee," and eventually dying in New York, was strongly associated with New Orleans, the setting for this movie (Williams lived for many years in New Orleans, wrote (and set) several of his plays there, and met his longtime boyfriend, Frank Merlo, there, and New Orleans hosts an annual literary festival named for Williams). References include: Charlotte calls her father "Big Daddy" (the name of the wealthy patriarch character in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof") and during the party, La Bouff calls for his dog, Stella, using the distinctive cry from "A Streetcar Named Desire." John Goodman, the voice of La Bouff, lives in New Orleans and has starred in several productions of Williams plays, including A Streetcar Named Desire (1995) (TV) and a 2005 Geffen Playhouse production of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (as the original "Big Daddy").
• When Tiana and Charlotte are little, in Charlotte's bookshelf the other Disney princesses can be seen as toy dolls.
• The Princess and The Frog takes place in the mid-1920s, the time when prohibition was still enforced until 1933. In Tiana's restaurant, there is alcohol being served, as well as on the riverboat.
• The firefly Ray is in love with the Evening Star he named "Evangeline" and thinks it's another firefly. Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie is a poem published in 1847 by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The poem follows an Acadian girl named Evangeline and her search for her lost love Gabriel. Ray is a Cajun, an ethnic group consisting of the descendants of Acadian exiles.
• The film was originally titled "The Frog Princess". Disney changed several key elements to the film after receiving numerous complaints of racial insensitivity. Besides retitling the picture to avoid the implication that the first African-American Disney princess was somehow ugly or animal, the lead character's name changed from Maddy to Tiana since "Maddy" sounded too much like "Mammy". A subplot about her working as a maid was also dropped to avoid negative stereotypes.
• Early in the musical number, "Down in New Orleans", there is an establishing shot of the city streets and on the right side of frame a woman can be seen beating a rug off of the balcony. The rug bears a strong resemblance to the Magic Carpet from Aladdin (1992)
• Animator John Lasseter described Dr Facilier as "the love child of Peter Pan (1953)'s Captain Hook and One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961)'s Cruella DeVil." Both are Disney villains and literary characters.
• The Prince of Maldonia is called Naveen. Naveen is an Indian name (meaning "new"), which suggests that Maldonia is a Eurasian country.
• The animation style was influenced primarily by Lady and the Tramp (1955) (for the city scenes) and Bambi (1942) (for the bayou scenes). Those films were, in the directors' opinion, "the peak of a certain kind of animation of the classic Disney animation style."
• The star Ray calls "Evangeline" is in fact the planet Venus. Venus is known as the Roman god of love.
• This is the first 2-D film in which all of the voice actors do both the speaking and singing parts since Beauty and the Beast (1991).
• New Orleans celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse - who is famous for his Cajun and Creole cuisine -- plays the voice of Marlon, one of the alligators who tries to eat Naveen and Tiana in the swamp. (Marlon is, of course, named after Marlon Brando, star of the New Orleans drama A Streetcar Named Desire (1951).)
• In the opening scene, a horse and cart drives by the La Bouff mansion. The horse is Cyril Proudfoot, companion of Mr. Toad in Disney's The Wind in the Willows (1949).

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