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The latest Disney animated flick to hit Blu-ray is also the company’s super proud return to hand-drawn animation and the wonderful world of the musical.
The Princess and the Frog offers a zesty blend of Cajun musical flavors, voice talent, humor, creepy voodoo and animation that you’ll wonder where the company has been for the last few years.
Down on the Bayou
Set in 1920s New Orleans, a hard-working waitress names Tiana (voices by Anika Noni Rose) dreams of owning her own restaurant while carefree Prince Naveen (Bruno Campos) has squandered his riches away having fun. A nasty Voodoo magician named Doctor Facilier (Keith David) turns Naveen into a frog to try and take over the city.
Tiana soon turns tiny, slimy and green after smoothing Naveen and the adventure ensues as they try to regain human form. Along the way they befriend a firefly named Ray (Jim Cummings), a gator named Louis (Michael-Leon Wooley) who wants to play trumpet in a real band and a crazy old lady who lives in a boat in a tree named Odie (Jenifer Lewis).
They go from the city to swamp and back again, trying to undo the Voodoo and make both of their dreams come true.
That Voodoo that Disney Do So Well
The story is quite energetic, full of songs that range in tempo from swing to a cajun waltze and also delves into the darker, creepier side of Voodoo magic. The creepier side may seem unusually scary for a Disney movie but my three-year-old didn’t find need to cower.
They managed to pack in a bevy of voice talent including Keith David, Oprah Winfrey (who offers the perfect quality and hardly sounds like her TV persona), Randy Newman and Terrence Howard. Even Emeril Lagasse gets in on the acti’n and John Goodman forges his Saturday Night Live version of Cajun-speak as “Big Daddy” La Bouff. (The only notable Nawlins name I noticed missing was Harry Connick Jr.).
It’s also packed with an eccentric mix of Randy Newmann tunes that are not nearly as gruff and irregular sounding as many of his previous creations. Instead, the songs are all appropriately smooth, playing right into his New Orleans roots sounding less like his typical songs and, strangely enough, much better than other Disney flick he’s worked on.
Various characters are animated with hints of movies past which helps to give the movie enough of a classic feel to please long-time Disney fans and developed enough to excite (or not bore) younger viewers. You’ll see nods in not only the dynamic relationships between the characters but the art style of many of the animals (save the frogs).
There are plenty of wonderful voice acting performances, and a lot of wonderful animation you can hardly believe was hand drawn by anyone, let alone a team of artists. it’s certainly a twist on a classic tale, which is what I believe Disney does best (instead of messing with original stories that rarely have had enough time to properly ferment to gain true depth) and it certainly delivered here. There are only a couple scenes that feel like they got an early chop but, knowing Disney’s tendency to stay under 1 1/2 hours for animated movies (and the theory that you end a movie when parents start waking out of the theater to get out of the parking lot first), it’s not really a detriment to the movie.
That tendency does hurt the extra features, however, which no one getting in more than a fat sentence or two in a row before being cut to the next interview nugget. They offer a few nice insights but really are Disney propaganda for the movies, telling less about how they did it than what they did. Sure, there are a few cutscenes but they were not even animated (just sketches with non-talent voice overs). I certainly find those interesting but pretty much any early sketches and drafts of the script could be used for these so-called deleted scenes. They’re not as much deleted as seemingly fabricated for a featurette. Of course, Disney like to re-re-release movies so you can expect more in-depth footage in later and likely more expensive collector sets.
Of course, you do get a separate DVD disc and a digital download disc which is pleasantly becoming a norm for Disney Blu-ray releases. Fair warning: You can only redeem one version of the digital download, either for Windows Media or for iTunes, not both.
Kiss Me, You Fool
The Princess and the Frog is a surprisingly dark and fun movie that nods to Disney of old while bringing old fashioned hand-drawn animation back with style.
Sure, it’s ultimately a swampy, er, sorry, sappy love story but it done well enough to entertain the entire family throughout the film.
Note: As with most Disney properties, The Princess and the Frog also spawned a few namesake video games for Wii, PC and DS (November 2009).
Read [Alternate Disc-Tractions @ Gamertell] Site [The Princess and the Frog]
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