It’s been a confusing winter for films. As I write this Avatar is still number one in the UK box office, and why shouldn’t it be? The world that James Cameron has created, if not the dialogue or plot, is ground-breaking. When I left the cinema the real world seemed dull. Yet as I look at the box office charts the film at number two is an entirely different affair, in many ways a blast from the past, a veritable stegosaurus next to Avatar.
Yet The Princess and the Frog is a case of a few steps back and huge leap forward for a company that seemed to have been lost in the modern world. While Disney combinations with Pixar have been well thought, well scripted and well made this cannot be said for the 2D animation. You’ve probably forgotten Treasure Planet, but if you’d been forced to sit through it on DVD with a younger cousin then you too would have it seared forever on your memory. Yet in late 2006 John Lasseter, Chief Creative Officer at Disney, announced that the studio would be leaving CGI to Pixar and working exclusively with hand-drawn animations. The first product of the revitalised studio is The Princess and the Frog.
Theis film’s quality was far from assured; Disney proved plenty of times that it’s possible to make a bad hand-drawn animation. But it seems that returning to this more basic style reminded Disney of what it’s meant to be; endearing. Spending painstaking hours on a few seconds of footage makes every moment valuable and The Princess and the Frog has an attention to detail that is unparalleled almost anywhere outside of Studio Ghibli. Indeed Lasseter is in a large way responsible for the huge fan base that films like Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke enjoy in the west and the influence of Miyazaki is evident in the glorious backgrounds of New Orleans in the twenties. Choosing such a music-rich setting was putting pressure on a soundtrack to deliver but Randy Newman’s jazz soundtrack proved successful in echoing, if not quite matching in quality, that of The Junglebook.
The plot is a clever reworking of the Grimm Brother’s Frog Prince where rather than returning the frog prince (Bruno Campos) to human form the unsuspecting Tiana (Anika Noni Rose) falls prey to the same Voodoo magic and becomes a frog herself. Some may cry that this runs a bit close to Shrek, but you are forced to forgive because what follows is an original and enchanting story. We dive into the swamps of the Mississippi pursued by a villain, Dr. Facilier (Keith David), as terrifying as any of the studios creations since the Bogeyman in Tim Burton’s stop motion The Nightmare Before Christmas. Throw in a trumpet-playing alligator (Michael-Leon Wooley) and a Cajun firefly (Jim Cummings) and you are on your way to a proper Disney film. Yes it may be predictable at its heart but what films that are essentially aimed at children aren’t?
The Princess and the Frog may not break new ground but it makes good use of a tried and trusted format. Much has been made of Tiana being the first black Disney princess, a fact that is worthy of note as a shocking indictment of another of Disney’s past failings. Hopefully the film will become truly significant for the era that it heralds, a return to the golden ages of the 50’s and 90’s when children’s films were not churned out for the plastic toys of Disney films you found at the bottom of your Happy Meal. It will take up half as much of your money, half as much of your time but it will charm you more than any combination of lanky smurfs ever could.
