In the late 1990s, Disney executive Andy Mooney noticed something: small girls at Disney events and theme parks often showed up dressed as princesses. But not, alas, Disney princesses, since official Disney costumes weren’t available. Inspired, in January 2000 he ordered his division to start developing Disney Princesses, a franchise that included very sparkly clothing, plastic tiaras, very sparkly plastic Princess jewelry, dolls, and other merchandise. The franchise proved wildly successful, and Disney soon expanded the market, featuring the Disney Princesses in various theme park attractions and on Disney Cruise Ships, creating Disney Princess Dining, Disney Princess Meet and Greets, Disney Princess Makeovers, and an assortment of other Disney Princess items.
The franchise had, however, one major problem: none of the original Disney Princesses were black. It was time, Disney thought, for Disney’s Animation department to create another fairy tale.
This decision just happened to coincide, more or less, with another major moment for the Disney corporation: the end of a two year fight to oust CEO Michael Eisner, led by Walt Disney’s nephew, Roy E. Disney. Among (many) other things, Roy E. Disney was concerned about decline in the animation department after Jeffrey Katzenberg’s 1994 departure, both perceived (in artistic quality) and real (in terms of box office receipts). It probably didn’t help that Katzenberg’s next venture, Dreamworks, had shocked Disney in 2000 with Shrek, which had not only wildly outperformed Disney’s 2000 features, Dinosaur and The Emperor’s New Groove, but walked off with the first Oscar for Best Animated Picture. But Roy E. Disney at least claimed to be less concerned about disgruntled yet wildly successful former employees, and more worried about internal Disney factors: story development, Michael Eisner’s issues with Pixar (and by extension, Apple CEO Steve Jobs), and the decision to abandon a decades old tradition of hand-drawn animation for computer animated features.
Thanks largely to Roy E. Disney’s Save Disney campaign (his second, if you’ve been reading along), Michael Eisner left the firm in 2005, replaced by Bob Iger (corporate policy: BUY EVERYTHING). It’s probably fair to say that animation was not then (or now) chief on the list of Bob Iger’s concerns, but in step one of his policy of BUY ALL THE THINGS, Iger listened to Roy E. Disney and other executives, and bought Pixar for $7.4 billion in 2006.
As part of the acquisition, Iger installed John Lasseter, Pixar’s Chief Creative Officer, at the time probably best known for directing Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, and Toy Story 2, as the Chief Creative Officer for Walt Disney Animation Studios. Lasseter was also later made the Chief Creative Officer of DisneyToon, and worked with the Disney Imagineers to develop new theme park attractions.
Bob Iger made one other critical decision: he reversed Disney’s earlier “no more hand-made animation” policy, set after the financial disaster that had been Treasure Planet. John Lasseter agreed. Computer animation had made his career, and he would never lose his fascination with it (as I type, he is working on Toy Story 4, tentatively scheduled for a 2018 release). But he had originally fallen in love with Chuck Jones cartoons and the classic Disney animated films, and was more than willing to have Disney animators give the art form another try.
Which brings us, finally, to The Princess and the Frog, arguably one of the most cynically, market driven Disney films in conception, while also managing to be—can I say it? Rather sweet.
Despite the financial failure of Treasure Planet, on the strength of their work with The Little Mermaid and Aladdin, Ron Clements and John Musker were brought back to write and direct this film. Early on, they decided that they wanted to do an American fairy tale, eventually deciding to settle the story in New Orleans. This setting, when announced in 2006, drew extensive criticism, as did the initial concept of naming the heroine “Maddie”—a name that sounded uncomfortably close to the stereotypical “Mammy” to many ears. Critics were also not thrilled to hear that, in the original concept, “Maddie” worked as a chambermaid. This was not exactly outside Disney tradition—both Snow White and Cinderella had done extensive housework—but had not exactly been featured in more recent Disney Princess tales. Belle, granted, was seen feeding chickens, and I suppose it’s possible that Jasmine supervised maids, and Ariel may very well have polished some of the items in her collection, but that’s about as close as either got to housework.
Clements and Musker bowed to some of the criticism, changing “Maddie” to “Tiana,” changing Tiana from a maid to a waitress, and hiring Oprah Winfrey as a consultant and voice actress. But, despite criticisms that setting the film in New Orleans was, at best, incredibly tactless after Hurricane Katrina, they stuck to their choice of city.
This in turn created a film with a fierce focus on two New Orleans’ specialties: music and food. Tiana, refreshingly for a Disney Princess, not only has no interest in marrying (much like Jasmine and Belle at the beginning of their films) but has a specific dream: she wants a restaurant. Not just any restaurant, but a large, high class, fancy restaurant with live music and food that people will come from miles around to eat. She and her father have even picked out a building they want to renovate.
Tiana’s even willing to wish upon a star for this, although she’s otherwise not very into fairy tales, but in a genuinely shocking moment, the film abruptly turns its back on about sixty years of Disney marketing and suddenly announces that, no matter who you are, when you wish upon a star, your dreams will only come true with a lot of hard work—and maybe not even then. In a further realistic touch, Tiana’s father dies before he gets a chance to realize his dream (the film hints that he died in World War I). And in a great touch—spoiler—when Tiana does get her dream, part of the practical side of it (buying the building for the restaurant) comes from all of that hard work and the money she has carefully saved up over the years.
Also, her skill with beignets.
That focus on food remains throughout the film—even while desperately trying to return to human form, Tiana pauses to tell characters to add a little tabasco sauce to the gumbo, or explain how to chop mushrooms, and minor character Louis the alligator spends quite a bit of time dreaming about food. I try not to advise people about how to watch films, but this is one Disney animated film that you should probably only watch with snacks on hand. Or full meals, if possible.
The Princess and the Frog also plays tribute to New Orleans’ musical heritage with a set of songs inspired by jazz, rhythm and blues, and, in one case, gospel. Someone at Disney also insisted on inserting the obligatory Romantic This Should Be a Top 40 Hit Single, “Never Knew I Needed,” which someone else had the sense to move to the closing credits: the song, by Ne Yo, was one of Disney’s few failures in the top 40 department. The songs in the actual film were considerably more successful: two of them “Almost There” and “Down in New Orleans,” received Academy Award nominations for Best Original Song, with “Down in New Orleans,” picking up an additional Grammy nomination.
“Almost There,” in particular, is a fun, snazzy song that I rather wish Disney would play more at their theme parks—but then again, the theme parks and cruise ships want to invite you to go to them, or to locations once you’re there, not think, hmm, I’m almost there. Fortunately it gets reprised a few times in the film, as Tiana comes close to success, then loses it, then comes close again. “Friends on the Other Side” is one of the more terrifying songs in the Disney collection, given just who and what those friends are; I’m not sure I can call it fun, but it may the most successful villain song in a Disney film since Scar bellowed out “Be Prepared” in The Lion King or Frollo worried about temptation in “Hellfire.”
Fun though the songs are, however, the real strength of the film lies in the characters. Oddly enough, virtually none of them are cuddly animal characters—oddly, given that the film was largely inspired by the hope of marketing merchandise to small children, and that the plot was virtually designed to let animators create characters who could be turned into cute and cuddly plush toys. Oh, sure, it has the two frogs, who as plush toys could be cuddly enough, I guess, but given that a large part of the film centers on just how disgusting frog kissing is, the film itself isn’t going for “huggable” here. And it has a trumpet wielding alligator and the firefly—but the firefly is drawn to be deliberately ugly, even when his light is shining, and the alligator doesn’t precisely scream toy.
But that very lack of cuddly animal characters allowed The Princess and the Frog to have something relatively rare for Disney films: complex characters. Not that all of them are, particularly the villain, who has the usual bad guy goal of wanting to rule the world, or at least New Orleans. The only thing that makes Dr. Facilier a little different—and only a little different—is that his plans seem unnecessarily complicated: he wants Big Daddy Le Bouef’s fortune, which, ok, and apparently thinks the only way to get this fortune is to have a resentful valet pretend to be Prince Naveen, marry Le Bouef’s daughter, Charlotte, kill the father, and inherit the fortune which Dr. Facilier will then share or steal. This also involves turning the real Prince Naveen into a frog. I really can’t help but think that since Dr. Facilier is, well, a voodoo witch doctor with the ability to summon powerful spirits and transform people into other forms, he must have an easier way of obtaining a fortune. Just go and change some bankers into frogs and walk out with cash from the vault. See? I’ve solved your problem, Dr. Facilier, and I’m sure that given time I could come up with several other simple ways for you to use your magic to get lots of money and power.
The valet in question, Lawrence, is resentful mostly because he had hopes of serving a wealthy prince, and instead ended up working for Prince Naveen. I have no idea why Lawrence doesn’t quit—Downton Abbey assures me that valets were in demand during that period—but anyway, he spends his time nagging Naveen because, in another nice twist on the usual Disney saga, Naveen is one worthless prince.
Ok, he’s not totally worthless—he can be charming, he plays music, he’s entertaining, he tells jokes—but other than that, he’s worthless: a charming womanizer who has not only failed to do anything useful in his life, but is after a rich wife for her money since his parents have, after several unspecified incidents, cut him off. I must say that Naveen’s first few moments on screen rather make me sympathetic to their viewpoint. Naveen is so lazy that he can’t even focus on chasing a rich wife.
Fortunately for all concerned, Naveen is transformed into a frog. Even more fortunately, he runs into Tiana. Well, fortunate for him, at least, if not for Tiana, since at this point, The Princess and the Frog inverts the traditional fairy tale by turning the “princess” into a frog after she kisses the little frog prince. This has the regrettable side effect of having the first African-American Disney princess spend a good half of her film as a small, if cute, frog, but the benefit of allowing animators to send the two little frogs off to an adventure in the Louisiana bayou and to some lovely animated sequences with fireflies in the second part of the film. Plus, even as a frog, Tiana is so adorable that Naveen falls head over large frog feet for her – and finally starts to grow up.
Once again, I find myself ever so slightly skeptical that love can really transform anyone that quickly. Then again, they’ve both experienced the profound experience of getting transformed into a frog, which probably helped speed things along. Plus, Naveen’s banter with Tiana is sweet, and he does have something to offer Tiana: a chance at what else is really important in life: love. When the once worthless Naveen shoulders a shovel later, it’s believable.
And happy, even if—in striking contrast to the fate of every other Disney prince, including Aladdin—Naveen ends the film not as royalty, but as middle class, the mere husband of a restaurant owner, patronized by his royal parents. It fits right in with the rest of the film’s not at all subtle message that working, not magic, brings happiness—which is not quite in keeping with Disney’s general advertising, but perhaps we should not focus too closely on this.
The film’s other highlight is a minor character who managed to become something more: Charlotte. She is, granted, spoiled, silly, superficial, and dangerously obsessed with the idea of marrying a prince. But that obsession with marrying a prince dovetails nicely not just with the plot of the film, but also with the historical reality of various American heiresses of the period marrying various poverty stricken aristocrats. And Charlotte is not just a plot device, or a historical callback: she has moments of genuine, spontaneous kindness. When she sees the wreck of Tiana’s beignet table and dress, for instance, she instantly puts aside her own concerns about the prince and unhesitatingly takes care of Tiana. It’s partly done for plot—the little frog prince needs to believe that Tiana could be a princess, after all—but it’s also more than might have been expected from Charlotte at that point.
And later, we get a glimpse of something else beneath: Charlotte really wants to believe in fairy tales and true love. We never see her mother, after all, and as indulgent as her father is, the film still leaves the impression that something is missing in Charlotte’s life. Incredibly enough, she seems to have no other friends other than Tiana—this incredibly since Charlotte seems to have nothing but free time, and the hard working Tiana, holding down three jobs, does have other friends. And although Charlotte’s other major assistance—paying Tiana enough money for beignets to establish a restaurant—comes straight from Charlotte’s own self-focus and obsession—well, Charlotte didn’t have to keep visiting her old friend to tell her the latest news (especially since it’s clear from other characters that Tiana is more focused on work than friends), and she could have bought those beignets from someone other than Tiana.
And, of course, one is white, and one is black, something (still) rare in animated Disney films. Leaving aside The Fox and the Hound and various other animal friendships, I can name only four other Disney animated films featuring interracial friendships: Pocahontas, Lilo and Stitch, Big Hero 6, and, surprisingly enough, Dumbo, in a blink and you will miss it moment with the human circus workers. The film’s dialogue tends to dance over this difference—neither Tiana nor Charlotte say anything about it—and the two girls are introduced as peers. Visually, however, the film makes the differences clear. Their first scene, for instance, is immediately followed by a sequence where the camera follows Tiana and her mother home from Charlotte’s mansion, to a very different part of New Orleans, where they to struggle just to get together a down payment to buy a building that, let’s face it, is not exactly in the best of shape, even if they have enough to share some gumbo with their neighbors now and then.
The film’s major acknowledgement of racism, though, comes elsewhere, when Tiana—having finally earned the money to start up her restaurant, thanks partly to Charlotte’s impetuous and constant spending, but mostly because, as the film makes clear, Tiana makes outstanding beignets—is told by two white bankers that they are going to sell the building to someone else, in part because the said someone else can pay cash, in part because the someone else is a “he,” and in part because of her “background.” Race isn’t mentioned, not directly, but it’s pretty clear what the bankers mean, and very satisfying to later watch those bankers quaver in terror in front of a trumpet-wielding alligator—and agree to sell the restaurant to Tiana anyway.
It’s especially satisfying because this is an ending Tiana has fully earned, though hard work, her own ethics (she easily could have abandoned Naveen at any point—he certainly gives her some initial reasons to, but instead she overcomes her own distaste for kissing frogs to try to help him out), her character and bravery.
And in another nice touch, Tiana doesn’t just earn a happy ending for herself, but also for Louis, Naveen, and even his parents as well, who show up, presumably reconciled with their previously worthless son, giving Charlotte hope that ok, yes, maybe she’ll have a chance at her prince after all.
Despite a satisfying story and some lovely animated bits, The Princess and the Frog brought in only $207 million at the box office—respectable, well over the film’s budget of $105 million, and better than most of the other animated Disney films of that decade, but still well under the glory days of Beauty and the Beast ($425 million), Aladdin ($504 million) and The Lion King ($987.5 million), not to mention the computer animated Pixar films.
Disney analysts pointed to several factors: the film had the extreme misfortune of opening just five days before Avatar (although against that theory, Avatar and The Princess and the Frog were marketed to very different audiences); audiences may have objected to the use of voodoo in the film (mentioned by some critics); and the use of the word “Princess” in the title may have scared off small boys.
Whatever the reason, the respectable, but not huge, box office take had one long term and two immediate results.
The long term result: the uncomfortable situation that Tiana merchandise is often harder to find than merchandise focused on other Disney Princesses at both Disney stores and the theme parks. It’s there, certainly – and as an indignant 7 year old pointed out, Tiana appears on some Disney Princess merchandise, including at least one trading pin and a T-shirt, that does not show Mulan OR Elsa or Anna. A Disney cast member noted that Elsa and Anna are technically not “Disney Princesses” (they have their own Frozen franchise), but agreed that Mulan is definitely a Disney Princess who just happens to be too busy defending China to pose for a Disney Trading Pin picture. (You go, Mulan. You go!) Tiana dolls appear next to the other Disney Princess dolls at the larger shops, the meet and greet lines for Tiana are usually long, and I’ve seen several small Disney Princesses of various races happily sporting Tiana’s green dress. Yet most of the merchandise is focused on other Disney Princesses, and the smaller shops and many of the Disney Trading Pin stations have no Tiana merchandise at all. On recent visits to Epcot and Hollywood Studios, Belle, Ariel, Aurora, Cinderella and Snow White clothing (T-shirts, sweatshirts, and so on) was abundant; Merida and Jasmine a little less so. Tiana, nowhere.
To be fair, part of this is the increased focus on Marvel, Star Wars and Frozen products at Disney stores, which has decreased the overall floor space dedicated to Disney Princesses. And part of it might be that although Tiana ends her film indisputably as a Princess, she also does not, unlike most of the other Disney Princesses, end up in a palace, as grand as her restaurant is. But regardless of the reasons, Tiana remains less visible than the other Disney Princesses.
On a short term basis, Disney executives decided that future Disney Princess movies would not have the word “Princess” in their titles. And once again, Disney decided to back away from hand drawn animation. Audiences, they decided, only wanted computer animated films.
Which brings us to Rapunzel and Tangled, coming up next.
Mari Ness lives in central Florida.
I will never understand the movie-executive mentality that if one specific film happens to do poorly, that constitutes an indictment of the entire category it belongs to and requires that category to be suppressed. One hand-animated film had underwhelming returns, so all hand animation must be abandoned. One film with “princess” in the title underperformed, so let’s embargo that word forever. One female-led superhero film was awful, so let’s never make one again. Why are executives so incredibly incapable of distinguishing between a specific instance and an entire category? Surely they, of all people, have dealt with enough films to know that there are good, bad, and mediocre instances of any given category. So why do they always, always blame the category and make these misguided blanket decisions?
I’m counted among those uncomfortable with the voodoo. I really have nothing against Disney Magic, from either side, because it’s just generic. But voodoo is real, and even though it fit in the setting, the use of it made me extremely uncomfortable and I won’t be showing this film to my kids until they’re much much older.
I did love how the firefly became a star, a great homage to The Lion King.
Also loved the idea of hand animation, and thought the movie was, overall, lovely.
Eh.
I wanted to adore this movie. I’m a huge Randy Newman fan, I thought setting the movie in New Orleans was a pretty apt response to Katrina (unlike some) and I love hand drawn animation. Also a dedicated southerner and lover of beignets.
But…
The film is just trying too hard. There are too many songs, too many big “look at what we can do” sequences, too many attempts to thread the needle between being a Disney movie and being the definitive answer to criticisms of a Disney movie.
A lot of the songs are charming, and have a flavor that is unique in the Disney catalog but none of them are great. The visual sequences are opulent but with the exception of “Friends on the Other Side” none of them feel fresh – “Dig A Little Deeper” especially feels like a rehash of “Just Can’t Wait to be King” visually. At every stage of the game when you think the movie is going to go right into classic Disney fairy tale whitewashing and sexism is dodges – but never quite with aplomb.
You could take any scene or sequence out of this movie, show it to an audience and they’d grin and say “I wanna see THAT movie.” But they just don’t quite add up, and at the end of the show I saw (where me and two friends were the only people in the audience) I was mostly just worn out having trying to eat at the overstuffed feast.
I did LIKE it, but I wanted to (and Disney needed me to) love it.
I still wish they’d made a couple more hand drawn flicks. But at least they found an authentic computer animated voice that wasn’t aping Pixar or Dreamworks, so that’s something.
My main memory of this movie is the scene where the steamboat riders realize the trumpet player is an alligator and he flies into the river, which I watched about ten times because it was hysterical.
This movie is wonderful – easily one of my top 5 Disney movies, let alone princess movies. And I almost missed it because the marketing was atrocious. The marketing made this movie look terrible – like a warmed-over retread of every Princess movie Disney had ever made but with an African-American princess this time around. I only went to see it because we were looking for a movie to take our then 3 year old son to as a first movie and the local second-run theater had this as a $3 matinee on a Saturday. Good enough – if he freaks out we’re only out $3 a pop and a buck and a half for him. I wasn’t expecting to enjoy the movie.
And instead I was overwhelmed with how wonderful the movie was. It was different – the twin messages of “you can wish upon a star but it isn’t going to do you much good if you don’t work to make your own wish come true” and “sure you need to work hard, but don’t work so hard you cut yourself off from everyone else” just astounded me. Tiana was a wonderful princess – she surpassed both Belle and Mulan as my favorite princess because, like the two of them, she wanted to chart her own path through life but, unlike either of them, she actually did it her own way. No weird kidnapping and getting screamed at by a bestial man-child. No worries about her family honor – just her own goals and her own hard work. An amazingly different message from anything Disney had ever sold before.
And her friend Charlotte – in an earlier Disney movie, Charlotte would have been a back-stabbing rival or a pawn of the bad guy or maybe at best a rich-girl stereotype. Here she’s a real character with real motivations – something that doesn’t make its way into Disney movies outside of the main characters as often as it should.
And then there’s Naveen. One of the things that I absolutely loved about this movie is that Naveen is an actual character. He gets a full character arc in the movie too – one that parallels Tiana’s. And by the end of the movie you actually buy that these two characters really are “right” for each other – they balance each other out. Tiana brings order to Naveen’s chaos and Naveen brings some fun and relaxation to Tiana’s otherwise goal-driven life. Few Disney movies ever convince me that the prince and princess are really a couple that have a real relationship by the end of the movie – most of the time one or even both of them are basically cyphers. But this movie made both of them into real characters who you can tell are missing something in their lives – a true feat for a Disney movie to me.
It’s a crying shame that this movie is as underrated as it is. I really do blame the initial marketing for the movie for it’s initial poor performance – nobody could have expected this movie to be half as good as it is from the marketing campaign they had around it.
@1/Christopher: I’m not one to generalize, but it seems to me that movie executives, especially recent generations hail from administration and marketing backgrounds, rather than production. And quite honestly, I don’t feel these people (many of them with privileged upbringings) have any real grasp of storytelling, social trends or how diverse opinions can be.
Besides, it’s easier for them to blame the category instead of taking the time to research the more complex reasons behind these problems, let alone come up with creative solutions.
ChristopherLBennett – To be somewhat fair, hand animated films are more costly. That said, all but a couple of the hand-animated films have more than earned back their initial costs, including some that were originally box office flops, and that’s before including the way the hand-animated films have helped to sell the theme parks and vice versa. The counter statement to my comment above about Tiana merchandise is that 80 years later, Snow White merchandise is still selling and tourists are willing to stand for an hour, some of this in the Florida heat, to ride a little Snow White roller coaster. I’d also argue that the two hand animated films that have failed, so far, to make back their budget (The Black Cauldron and Treasure Planet) failed to do so for reasons that have nothing to do with how they were animated, and that since Sleeping Beauty eventually earned back its costs, it’s possible that over the long term Treasure Planet still might, despite my own reservations about the film, given its status as a cult favorite. In checking for something else entirely, for instance, I just saw that a couple of local theatres are showing The Princess and the Frog again for afternoon kiddie matinees; no reason why Treasure Planet can’t do something similar.
And, of course, as Walt Disney himself pointed out, Disney started with a mouse. A hand-animated mouse.
My sense is, however, that Bob Iger is currently more concerned with ESPN than with the benefits of keeping the Disney hand animated tradition alive.
Jer – I’d have to agree that the marketing for The Princess and the Frog did not do the film any favors.
Disney backed away from 2-D animation after “Princess”?
Forgetting about Home on the Range, aren’t we? They did make another attempt. It just failed horribly and justifiably so.
Dr. Facilier is the only film-first Disney villain (i.e. excluding some TV-show-first ones) on whom I ever had a true crush. (I adored the Hyenas, but didn’t crush on them). I was 23, and felt meh about much of the film’s slapstick action and often-uninspiring songs. But along with the lovely, unusual settings and the delightful notion of turning into a frog by kissing one, that purple-eyed, envy-ridden con artist gave PatF a special place in my heart.
It really is sad that it spelled the end of Disney’s hand-animation. I just do not like the computer kind. This was the third-to-last Disney film I’ve watched (before Tangled and Brave), and the last one I felt any enthusiasm about.
The marketing for this really was terrible, but I may try to get the kids to watch it. Possibly without telling the Pip the title, since he is suffering the developmentally-common but still miserable 4.5-year-old-boy disdain for girly things.
I liked a lot of this movie, but I admit I wanted…well, fewer animals. I didn’t love the frogginess of the frogs, I found the firefly more tiresome than amusing, and I wanted to get back out of the swamp and back to that gorgeous city. (I still try to forget the whole weird ‘Let’s use wacky stereotypes of Cajun people!’ section. Utterly pointless and kinda offensive.)
But oh, the city! And the people in it! And while the voodoo section is, as they say, Problematic, it was a damn fine song. Heck, I loved most of the bouncy songs in this movie. And it was nice to see a business-focused heroine get a Manic Pixie Dream Prince love interest, as a change of pace.
So while it’s not my favorite Disney movie ever, by a long shot, I’m still fond of this one. Saw it in the theater, and was happy to have done so.
@1 I think the point your missing is that if the category , i.e. hand drawn animation is to blame, then micromanaging decisions by these same executives can’t be blamed for the failure. After all the corporate motto is success is due 100% to me, failure is the fault of my subordinates.
This is one of my kids’ favorites and a sheer pleasure to watch and hear. There are no butts in seats when the music starts (except for the forgettable song that plays over the end credits). Everybody sniffles over Ray and Evangeline, every time.
Also, while Tiana’s merch is definitely scanty, the marketing department made the brilliant decision to publish Tiana’s cookbook. Now if they could only catch a clue and publish some STEM-related handbooks for Tinkerbell…
Regarding Facilier: His tendency to make big, unwieldy plans that bite him in the butt is heavily implied, IMO.
@@@@@ AeronaGreenjoy: Now I’m curious — what Disney TV villain(s) did you have a crush on?
I have somehow never actually seen this film, except for having come across “Friends From The Other Side” (which is indeed outstanding) in a villain-song video-clip compilation. Clearly I need to remedy this, not least because Dr. Facilier is voiced by the extraordinary Keith David, probably much better known among Disney fen as the voice of Goliath in Gargoyles. (Which may give a clue or two as to AeronaGreenjoy’s tastes in TV-first-villains; I bet a nickel that evil-twinclone Thailog — also voiced by Keith David — is on her crush list.)
I always liked this one, and I’m glad to see so many other people do too. I love Tiana and her practicality. It’s not my favourite, sure, but I never entirely understood why the general impression seemed to be it was bad.
My flatmates and I watched this when it came out and thoroughly enjoyed it. It has a real sense of fun all the way through, and the music was catchy. Dr Facilier is a proper villain again, Naveen being a worthless cheapskate is a breath of fresh air, and the food … I also really liked the mix of animation styles, and the 20s aesthetic.
I’m pretty sure the marketing was the problem for this film – with Disney it usually is. I’m surprised it did that badly actually, it had reasonable word of mouth amongst the people I know.
@8 Home on the Range was 2004, so predates this. The only traditionally animated Disney feature since this is another Whinny the Pooh, though they have released a few Ghibli films. And frankly the huge success of the Ghibli films is an indication that hand drawn animation is still very much a thing.
This article seems to imply that Princess and the Frog was the last Walt Disney Animation Studios hand-drawn films; however Winnie the Pooh (2011) was (a) traditionally animated, and (b) made after Princess and the Frog. (And for what it’s worth, I think the Lopez’s did a better job with the songs in Pooh than in Frozen)
*grin* Randall from Recess and Gill from Kim Possible come to mind, from my teen years. I like them lonely, bitter, and preferably aquatic. *points at username* Never watched Gargoyles, but Keith David certainly has a fine voice.
I long headcanoned Facilier as the lovechild of Jafar and Ursula-as-“Vanessa,” though it’s been pointed out to me that this whitewashes a rare character of color.
PufNStuff – Nope, I didn’t forget about Home on the Range. It’s a Disney original, so not part of this Read-Watch, but I mentioned it at the end of the post about Treasure Planet.
Home on the Range came out in 2004, five years before The Princess and the Frog, which came out in 2009. Its poor box office performance – it failed to earn back its production costs at the box office – was one reason why Disney almost entirely stopped making hand-made animated films, although Disney had already started to move in that direction before that film was released, based partly on the poor to very poor box office performance of most of the hand-animated films after 2000, with the exception of Lilo and Stitch, and the major success of the computer animated films produced by Dreamworks and Pixar during the same period. The next releases – Chicken Little, Meet the Robinsons, and Bolt were all computer animated; The Princess and the Frog was the only hand-animated film to go into production after Home on the Range.
As of right now, Disney and Bob Iger have not announced any plans to return to hand animated films. The announced upcoming films – Moana, Gigantic and Frozen 2 – are all computer animated.
@AeronaGreenjoy
I headcanon Evangeline to be the Blue Fairy (Pinocchio) and Ray to be Neverland (Peter Pan), wherein both can assume avatars from time to time. Of course, I have a whole theory on how every Disney Animation Studios film is related, as well as some of the live-action films and some of the television series.
Ok, I wasn’t a fan of this movie for a few reasons. First, because of the change in Disney message that wishing is no longer enough, dreams may or may not come true if you work hard and save your money. Was this change due to the choice of making this an American fairy tale? While not a princess, there was another Disney character who wanted to be success in the restaurant business. Still, it was set in France (and before this film) so he had help from a sentient rat who did all the work. Despite the “historical callback,” are viewers expected to believe Charlotte will not get her wish (even though her methods looked downright creepy at the end)?
The second sour note was that the lead spent half of the movie stuck as a frog. In other fantasy films, women tend to be human at least half of the time when cursed into non-human form. Regrettable is not the word I’d choose for this.
Third, the character and story arc of Naveen were odd. You are absolutely right that his move from royalty to a middle class existence has all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, so why shouldn’t we focus closely on this? Based on your review, I’m curious to learn more about the new era that followed – not just in terms of animation and titles. If princesses who don’t live in palaces has become the trend, do they typically have careers? I’m not sure how much realism writers can add without turning a fantasy into something downright depressing, but I’m willing to spend 90 minutes to see if they’ve improved since this attempt. Which films after “The Princess and the Frog” showcase Disney princesses who earn their happy endings – not as a reward after suffering for years at the hands of fate or cruel people, but because they worked hard and saved to achieve them?
I liked some of the animated sequences (fireflies!), and the music, and the character of Tiana. But the movie as a whole never took off for me. No brilliant, memorable song? Story too diffuse? Evil plot too complicated to follow?
Still, I agree with Jer @5 that the two who are romantically linked actually need something of each other’s, and with Mari that both Tiana and Charlotte are more complex characters than one would expect. And with Fadeaccompli @11 that it’s gratifying to see a business-minded princess get her Manic Pixie Dream Prince.
Still, it’s the Muppet Frog Prince that I’ve watched over and over (on my VHS tape, now transferred onto a DVD, since for some reason they can’t release it on DVD), while I watched The Princess and the Frog in the theatre, enjoyed it well enough, and haven’t been moved to watch it again since.
When I read Amy Mebberson’s Disney princess cartoons, though–both her online Pocket Princesses and her current Disney Princess comic books–I’d say Tiana and Mulan are the two most forceful characters, and Tiana is at the same time very likeable, relatable and funny. Mebberson does a good job of the Tiana/Charlotte friendship, too.
Another text predating the movie where a girl becomes a frog on kissing the frog is Michael Smith’s *very* funny song, “The Princess and the Frog”. Not quite as funny as it used to be, of course, since people are now familiar with that particular twist in the story. But still well worth a listen–you can find it on iTunes.
My main problem, at the end of the day rests on how forgettable so much of this movie is. The characters, while they work and are fun in the moment, are no Flounder or Iago or any other side characters who stand out for all of time. The plot? Like stated, was a bit too needlessly complex and a lot got lost in the shuffle. The villain? Although successful, beautifully opulent, and a fantastic villain song was purely evil for the sake of evil.
And Tiana. Oh, Tiana. What a beautifully developed, realistic, hard-working, down to earth, and respectable young lady. It’s a shame that’s how she started AND ended the movie. The point of characters are for them to grow and to learn and to adapt to the story. Tiana? She has none of that. She is what the end result of a character should be only from beginning to end. It’s truly a shame that they could not have given her flaws to work on. But, hey, at least she got over her distaste for frogs.
PsiPhiGrrl – Technically, Ratatouille is classified as a Pixar, not a Disney film – it went into development years before Disney purchased Pixar, although by the time it was released, Disney had purchased Pixar, and Disney ended up distributing the film. It was considerably more successful at the box office than The Princess and the Frog, probably why the Epcot Food and Wine Festival generally uses Remy, not Tiana, as a mascot.
To your larger point, however, of the princesses who have so far followed Tiana – Rapunzel, Merida (also, technically a Pixar film), Anna and Elsa – only Elsa is employed at the end of her film, as the Queen of Arendelle. Tangled hints that Rapunzel has the ability to become a professional artist, but the film doesn’t show her choosing this as a career. Merida could presumably find employment as an archer, and ends her film working on weaving a tapestry at the end of her film, but there’s no real suggestion that she’ll be doing either on a full time basis. Anna just seems to be having fun.
Frozen 2 may address this point, at least with the “not officially Disney Princesses yet” Anna and Elsa. But you’re correct: so far, Tiana is the only Disney Princess to end her film with a job, although Mulan ends her film turning down a job offer, and Pocahontas ends up not marrying John Smith because she’s needed in her community. Tiana and Pocahontas are the only American princesses, and Mulan is the one Disney Princess who, technically, isn’t a princess at all – she and Li Shang aren’t royal.
@@@@@ AeronaGreenjoy: I love Kim Possible, but I haven’t seen that episode, and I never watched Recess. My first guess was actually Xanatos (from Gargoyles, voiced by Jonathan Frakes). As for your user name, I’m afraid it means nothing to me. Care to explain?
Aeron Greyjoy, the sea-god’s priest in A Song of Ice and Fire, is my soul mate in ocean-craving gloom. He not aquatic but desperately wants to be, a loner if not explicitly lonely, and diskiles the world at large (and is beautiful). I don’t think he’s generally considered a villain, compared to some of the story’s horrible people, but he has relatively few fans in-story or among readers.
@25/MariCats: Thanks for clarifying about Ratatouille. I attended an Epcot Food and Wine Festival before the film came out, and now that you’ve warned me about the mascot, that might have been my last one. A rat – no matter how animated or cute – is last thing I want to think about when getting ready to eat. Now I feel even worse about Tiana’s lack of popularity – she was beaten by a rat?!? Sheesh, how much more did Ratatouille make?
Anyway, I also appreciate the rundown on the princesses. It sounds like you and Andrew O’Donnell hit on the same thing: Tiana started with jobs and ended with her dream job – running a business. Maybe the next black Disney Princess will go to college, meet her prince, and end up working as modern princesses and queens do – performing charitable, public service, and ceremonial duties. That could lead to greater popularity, even though life in a palace doesn’t always mean a life of leisure.
I’ll wait for the review before checking out Rapunzel. If it’s not terrible, I may be convinced to find out what the deal is with Frozen.
Wow, I feel like I saw a totally different movie than the reviewer and the rest of the commenters here. I wonder if this is a case where my waiting until adulthood to see this movie worked against it, because I though it was a bit meh. Which is sad because this is exactly the kind of Disney movie I love – musical fairy tale romances. But it fell flat for me.
I thought the animation was of lesser quality, actually – aside from the main characters (Tiana and Naveen’s prince form) most of the characters just seemed poorly drawn (like the valet) or just flat out unattractively drawn (Charlotte, the firefly, the frog hunters, etc). It just didn’t seem to pop for me like movies such as Aladdin or Beauty and the Beast.
I didn’t care much for the music. I honestly can’t hum a bar from ANY of the songs in this movie, with the exception of ‘Friends from the Other Side’, which I only know from Heather Traska’s amazing one woman Disney accabella villain medley. But I remember thinking that a bunch of the songs were annoying and cheesy and cringeworthy. (Almost There aside – that was pretty good but not particularly memorable to me). And I know in a lot of Disney movies the songs kind of halt the action, but in this movie it seemed especially egregious to me. There just seemed to be too many musical numbers in the Bayou for me.
Also, the Bayou characters all seemed rather stereotypical and annoying, especially the scene with the frog hunters which I found annoying.
Also – and I know this is a WEIRD thing for me to complain about considering how willingly I accept it in other Disney movies but I didn’t buy Tiana and Naveen’s romance AT ALL. He struck me as a lazy, womanizing oaf. And we’re supposed to believe that because he meets the right girl he changes? I know that it DOES happen – people have wake up calls and mature and grow up and want to become better people – but for some reason I just couldn’t buy it with him. Also, I guess this is too much real life experience, but the habits of promiscuity and laziness take a hard time to break. Virtues like temperance, hard work and chastity are things that are built up over a lifetime; what’s going to happen to their relationship when they hit their first rough time? Again, I don’t know why I’m being so hard on this particular movie (one could probably say the same about Beauty and the Beast regarding Beast’s anger management issues) but I side eyed the Ma Belle Envangeline dance/’romance’ scene where suddenly they’re all in love even though he hadn’t really shown himself to be any different yet. I was just like nooooooo don’t fall for the charming sleaze!!!! He’s a master manipulator!
At least in Tangled (I love that movie, haha. I am totally aware of how hypocritical that is, given how similar in some ways the love story is. But I really, really love that movie and am 100% on board with the I See the Light scene.) there’s a sense that she doesn’t marry him right away and he has to prove himself to her and show that he was able to leave his criminal life behind. But I don’t know, the way it happened just seemed to add fuel to the fire regarding how if you’re a good enough/awesome enough girl you can change a man, and if he doesn’t change, it’s because you weren’t awesome enough. Now I know in the end Naveen redeems himself and you are meant to trust that – he wants to help her dreams come true, even if that means marrying somebody he doesn’t love, although that really kind of sucks for Charlotte. And we see at the end he’s willing to work. But for some reason I guess I just didn’t buy the transition happening as fast I have bought it in other similar types of movies.
I also struggled a little with the ‘working girl’ message. I LOVED Tiana. I loved her dream and her passion for her dream and it kind of bothered me how the whole movie, people just want to crap on that dream. I mean, don’t get me wrong – I actually really do love the message that you also need to balance having relationships with other people to have a truly fulfilled life, and that men like her father were still happy even if they didn’t reach their dreams, because they had a loving family life and was part of a vibrant community. I certainly agree that’s great and I liked that message. But the thing is, the movie doesn’t really reward her for that – instead, at the end of the movie, she says her dream isn’t ‘complete’ without Naveen, but what she ends up deciding to do is stay a frog – so she’s actually giving up that dream entirely which actually pissed me off, haha. But then of course she is ‘rewarded’ for that by then getting to be human again and THEN she gets to have both, but it still bugs me that she’s just willing to give up all of it for some dude she met a few days ago and we’re supposed to think this is a great thing.
Okay, good things about the movie:
1)Like I said, I loved Tiana, and I love that she’s a professional woman
2)I did like Mama Odie (even if the musical number semeed somewhat out of place) and she probably had a point that Tiana had other needs she was ignoring
3)Despite finding Ray to be a rather grating comedic sidekick, I was pretty shocked/sad they actually went through with killing him and felt a little misty about the whole thing…but glad he got to prove Timon right and become a star too :)
4)I actually thought the idea of Louis was pretty funny (aside from the scenes with the burrs) even if it made zero sense whatsover. But the absurdity worked for me in this case.
5)I think Charlotte’s character is interesting in that she had genuine moments of kindness towards Tiana and wasn’t the stereotypical rich alpha bitch – and also a deconstruction of the whole ‘waiting for my prince to come’ (although honestly, I think most of the Disney princesses are more active than they get credit for, perhaps Snow White aside). I think it might actually have been a bit more satisfying to see her find love with some waiter or bartender or something at Tiana’s restaurant instead of grooming a 6 year old boy (gross). When you think about it, it’s really kind of sad…she really is that stuck on the notion and will possibly never get out of it, and will waste her life pining for something that will never come…
It was cute – I actually want to watch it again and maybe just turn the hypercritical part of my brain off and just enjoy it as a fairy tale and it’s okay if people change and fall in love in a day, because that’s what happens in fairy tales; it’s just meant to be symbolic, not real life.
Oh, another thing I loved about the movie: The Tabasco references :) (Including the distinctive diamond label).
Yeah, I liked the animation of the backgrounds more than that of the characters.
Heh. “Dig a Little Deeper,” specifically the first verse and chorus, was the theme song of my life when I worked at the visitor center of a major tourist destination.
I found it disappointing that she was the only princess (out of all the princess’s) that spent most of her time in a featured movie as a frog. She was human for all of 20 minutes. It as if they were hiding her ethnicity through making her an animal literally for the majority of the movie. She should have been celebrated like the other princess’s who are all equally unique in there own way. The movie was good but it could have been better. Finding merchandise for her is terrible… And mulan. There could be more than a cook book and a few costumes. They could go insane and make cooking products, chef gear, and really put some effort into this character.
The Princess and the Frog is one of our family’s favorite princess films. Every action has a consequence, whether good or bad. The princess learns the value of enjoying life while the prince learns the value of work and both learn the value in each other. The movie also, as you pointed out, shows the reality of people’s cruelty – when the bankers exhibit racial prejudices. This opens up dialogue between me and my children about integrity and its importance, as well as letting them talk about times they felt excluded or rejected for no good reason.
Even as my daughter turns seventeen, *this* is the movie she chooses to watch on her birthday. It shouldn’t matter, but since you mentioned similar demographics in your post, we’re usually labeled Caucasian. The love we have for this film and the splendid hand-drawn art isn’t biased on racial similarities – we love it for the values, culture, and entertaining work that it is.
Hey, whoa whoa whoa! That screenshot clearly shows a picture with Tiana’s written on it. I just watched the clip on YouTube (because, of course, reading about Disney makes one want to watch Disney), wherein it was written Tiana’s Place. Same little Tiana hands, same carpet in the background, so provably the same scene…was this modified at some point? I mean, I suppose it must have been, but I can’t find any documentation of that change.
Clip in question:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2NHYIrAYas
Disneyland always had my heart as a child, but Disney movies never really did much for me. I became bored with the whole formula of how Disney animation sort of went and never watched many after that. However, my daughter adored the princess movies and was always asking me why they didn’t have a black princess….then came Tiana. I have to admit that I adored her…she was kind, easy to love, a bit less airheaded than some of her other peer princesses, and it was refreshing to finally see a black princess in a setting that wasn’t piggybacking off Lion King.
Bottom line, I loved this movie and so did my little princess. This has been the one movie that I felt a connection to Disneyland. New Orleans Square at Disneyland is felt in this movie and I do wish there was more Princess and The Frog merchandise visible there and my daughter has wondered the same.
Overall, A+ Roy Disney. Your uncle would be proud!!!