The Princess and the Frog

It may, like its identity-confused characters, flirt with being something other than what it really is, but at heart The Princess and the Frog adheres closely to the Disney formula.

There is the traditional fairytale updated and inverted – here, when industrious but impoverished Tiana (Anika Noni Rose) kisses the frog prince Naveen (Bruno Campos), she is herself transformed into a lady frog, and must join forces with the work-shy libertine to lift the voodoo curse from both of them, to chase her dream of opening a New Orleans restaurant, and perhaps also to find true love.

In keeping with the masked ball that forms its centerpiece, the film spends most of its plot masquerading as a more interesting and subversive anti-Disney piece in which dreams do not come true, wishing upon a star is a vain exercise, and being a warts-and-all frog might actually be better than becoming a wealthy princess – but then, disappointingly, an unnecessary coda restores every conventional Disney value that the rest of the film has sought to dismantle.

Or as Io puts it, “could have been better if they stayed married as frogs.”

There is the usual set of sidekicks to provide comic relief and contrapuntal subplots. Io says that trumpet-playing alligator Louis “was very nice and he liked a lot of people. He was very kind. I think he would be a really good jazz music person because he can do really good songs.” Of big-hearted Cajun firefly Ray, Io says, “The main thing Ray likes is just a star, and he thinks it’s a girl – and also he does farts, and that’s how his tail lights.”  Io was, however, less fond of secondary characters Big Daddy and his spoilt Southern belle of a daughter Charlotte – although she loved ‘voodoo queen of the bayou’ Mama Odie because “she’s really funny”.

Of course, a Disney film would not be a Disney film without singing, dancing and lots of wonderfully animated colour, and it is here that The Princess and the Frog really delivers. “The singing was like jazz – kind of rocking and lovely – and the colour was like bright colours,” comments Io enthusiastically, before adding “but there was one colour in it that wasn’t a colour – black.” Here she is alluding to her favorite aspect of the film, the disembodied, autonomous shadows who serve as villain Dr Felicier’s demonic henchmen. “It’s really cool how they can grab something even though they’re a shadow, and how they move differently.”

Io certainly left happy, but adults may well find themselves irked by the decidedly mixed message of a film that preaches the unimportance to happiness of money, but still shoehorns in a happy ending predicated on financial exchange.

Anton Bitel and Io Elisabeth Bitel (aged six)

Anticipation:

Io loves Disney (and frogs), and quite likes going to screenings with Daddy.

Enjoyment:

Smiles, laughter, joy.

In Retrospect:

The un-Disney-like film it might have been is better than the Disney film it is.