The Princess & The Frog

The Princess & The Frog is a Disney film that was released in 2009, and marked a return to the more traditional animation that hasn't been seen from Disney for quite a while. It also marked the creation of Disney's first African-American princess-which is a little astounding if you ask me.

The general plot follows Tiana (voiced by Anika Noni Rose), a young African-American girl living in New Orleans, who is desperately trying to save up money to buy her own restaurant, by working numerous shifts at different restaurants, inspired by the hard work of her father. Into Tiana's world comes Prince Naveen (voiced by Bruno Campos) with his valet Lawrence (voiced by Peter Bartlett), who is here to marry (against his will) Tiana's wealthy childhood friend Charlotte (voiced by Jennifer Cody). However, Naveen and Lawrence are distracted by the voodoo man Dr Facilier (voiced by Keith David) and Naveen is transformed into a frog, whilst Lawrence takes on the appearance of Naveen. Now a frog, Naveen hunts out a princess to try and turn him back into a prince-in Charlotte's house at a masquerade ball he finds the dressed up Tiana, and, believing she is a princess asks her to kiss him. Tiana complies and, surprise, finds herself turned into a frog as well.

I'm not going to get into the full plot, but as it's a Disney film it is probably clear that there will be a happy ending. I quite enjoyed this film, which had a wonderful score written by Randy Newman which builds on the jazz music from New Orleans, allowing for Noni Rose to show off her lovely voice.

As with most Disney films, there are supporting animal characters in the form of Louis (voiced by Michael-Leon Wooley), a trumpet-playing crocodile, who dreams of playing jazz music, and in the form of Ray (voiced by Jim Cummings), a firefly who is in love with the North Star. An unfortunate event involving Ray almost had me in tears, which I think goes to show the strength of the characterisation in Disney films. Tiana is a strong-willed character, who has no real desire to find a husband, she really just wants to make her restaurant dreams come true, on the other hand, Naveen is far from the traditional charming prince, with his desire to remain carefree and he is highly arrogant in addition to this. The majority of the laughs come from the spoilt Charlotte, who is desperate to gain a handsome prince.

Whilst the animation is glorious; especially the flash forwards to Tiana's restaurant conjured by Dr Falicier, and whilst Falicier is a very interesting villain, especially with idea of conjuring shadows, there is one thing that really niggles at me about the film. Whilst I know that Disney are not really known for being historically accurate; this is a film that only scratches a tiny bit at the idea of how life would really be for African-Americans. Maybe I'm too much of a history nut, but showing groups of white girls falling over themselves to get a black prince to love them in the 1920s was a little bit too much for me to believe.

That aside, I think that The Princess & The Frog is a lovely film, harking back to Disney's heyday in the late 1980s-1990s. It has also made me more excited about Tangled, which hopefully I'll be seeing soon.