Movie: The Princess and the Frog

Rory, Shelagh and I went to see The Princess and the Frog last weekend. Overall, I liked it but it wasn't top of the list Disney for me. To clarify, let's establish a baseline (a la Beautiful Girls - God, I love that movie - when Timothy Hutton and Michael Rappaport and their buddy, Kev, were talking about women they thought were beautiful; but they had to agree on what was a 10 and what was a 1 before they could put their subjective opinions in perspective - awesome scene). Back to Disney and other kids cartoon movies, my favorites would be

1. Cars, probably Cars 2 (Summer 2011 - yippeee! - Looks like Owen Wilson is returning!)
2. Finding Nemo
3. Toy Story 1, Toy Story 2, and I'd expect Toy Story 3 (Summer 2010) as well
4. Ratatouille
5. Kung Fu Panda (awesomeness)
6. Incredibles
7. Up (I was pleasantly surprised by this one. Who the hell cares about a story about an old man and balloons? The dogs were hilarious as was Russell, the little kid). Rory actually laughed so hard he wasn't making sound at one point.
8. Aladdin
9. All the rest of the princess movies in no particular order (they are all the same to me)

Monsters v Aliens, Monsters Inc, Bugs Life, Ice Ages, Wall-E...these are all ok in my book. Not great, but not bad and I'll happily see them with the kids, no complaints. For me, it's all about the writing and witty adult humor mixed in with the kids themes.

I've never been much of a cartoon person. Even as a kid I always rather would watch Brady Bunch or Facts of Life or Gimme a Break and crap like that then cartoons. I can't stand Tom and Jerry or Bugs Bunny (with the exception of a few Woody Woodpecker episodes). I did like Smurfs for awhile, but they were pretty freaky/trippy little dudes. Who didn't like them?

That being said, I think Princess and the Frog easily slips in with #9 - All Princess Movies.

• The hand-drawing vs CG was nice to see.
• The music was really wonderful - I really liked the songs a lot. The main character was that singer in Dreamgirls that replaced Effie I think and she did a great job.
• The Voodoo doctor and all the evil shadows were pretty heavy, but the kids handled it well.
• I loved the theme of Tiana being a hard-working self-made girl. I also got to thinking that most of the Disney movies have characters that either don't have or lost their mothers (think about it...Nemo, Cinderella, Snow White, Ariel, Princess Jasmine, Bambi, Kida from Atlantis, Belle, does Pocahontas have a mom?, what the F????) - this appears to be the first story where the main character loses her father that I can think of off of the top of my head. Interesting. Do you think it's b/c way back it was very unlikely that someone would lose their mother so it wasn't as threatening??? Maybe now that it's more common to grow up with a single mother it's "ok" to show the father figure removed from the story?? Am I overthinking this?
• Okay, the race part...This movie has been noted for creating the first African American princess. I was happy to see this development - I don't think Disney has completely neglected heroines of ethnic background (Mulan, Jasmine, Pocohantas, Kida (that being Albino - haha); but it was certainly time to have an AA main character. So, here is a strong, determined, smart, and hard-working heroine. Fantastic - Tiana is an awesome character and probably one of the most real and admirable female characters - more like Mulan than Cinderella or Snow White. Is it wrong of me to wonder that the prince is what? Prince Naveen is from some made-up country on who-knows-what continent (he arrived in New Orleans by boat). He is light skinned, his parents are light skinned, he has a French accent...what is he? Was the point to show the AA female character and then have also a mixed race theme? Okay, that's cool. It takes place in New Orleans so you might consider Creole/Cajun/mixed race backgrounds are significantly represented. Or, is he supposed to be black and, if so, why so light skinned and race-questionable? I don't know...maybe it doesn't matter. It doesn't bother me, I was just wondering about it while I was watching the movie. Most of the controversy I was able to read about was in relation to the setting (New Orleans after Katrina), the use of a Voodoo bad guy, and the sidekick Alligator.

Anyway, Shelagh and I generally liked it. Rory said he didn't like it, but he was fixated the whole time. I was most excited for the Toy Story 3 trailer...Buzz has to be reset and whoever pushes his button gets him stuck on Spanish. Looked hilarious.