Walt Disney Animation Studios spent the middle of the 2000s chasing computers. Then, in July 2006, it went back to ink and paper.
Trailer, via Walt Disney Animation Studios.
A Waitress, a Frog, and 1926 New Orleans
The Princess and the Frog is the studio’s first traditionally animated feature since Home on the Range in 2004. Ron Clements and John Musker, who directed The Little Mermaid and Aladdin, returned to direct it. The film runs 98 minutes and sets its story in New Orleans in 1926.
Anika Noni Rose voices Tiana, a young woman who works two waitress jobs and dreams of opening a restaurant. She has no time for a social life. Prince Naveen of Maldonia, voiced by Bruno Campos, arrives in town intending to marry her wealthy best friend, Charlotte La Bouff, because his parents have cut him off.
Charlotte’s father, Big Daddy, voiced by John Goodman, throws a masquerade ball in Naveen’s honor. Charlotte asks Tiana to make beignets and pays her enough to buy an old mill for her restaurant. Then Dr. Facilier, voiced by Keith David, turns Naveen into a frog.
Facilier, a Talisman, and a Costume
Facilier is a voodoo witch doctor who plans to rule New Orleans. He turns Naveen’s valet, Lawrence, into a double of the prince using a talisman holding Naveen’s blood. The plan: the disguised Lawrence marries Charlotte, then kills her father with a voodoo doll, and Facilier takes the La Bouff fortune.
At the ball, Tiana learns she has been outbid for the mill and spills food on her outfit. Charlotte lends her a princess costume. Naveen finds her wishing on a star and mistakes her for a real princess. He asks for a kiss to break the spell and offers a reward.
She agrees to save her restaurant. She turns into a frog too.
Every love story begins with a kiss…
That tagline is the film’s own, and it is a better joke than most of what follows it. The pair flee into the bayou, where they meet Louis, a jazz-loving alligator voiced by Michael-Leon Wooley, and Ray, a Cajun firefly voiced by Jim Cummings. Ray helps them find Mama Odie, voiced by Jenifer Lewis, another voodoo practitioner.
What the Bayou Actually Delivers
Ray has a girlfriend named Evangeline, an Evening Star in the sky. It is the film’s plainest and best idea, and Cummings sells it without strain. Tiana and Naveen develop feelings for each other on the journey.
The voice cast is deep: Jennifer Cody as Charlotte, Peter Bartlett as Lawrence, Oprah Winfrey as Tiana’s mother Eudora, Terrence Howard as her father James, Ritchie Montgomery as Reggie. The film draws on E. D. Baker’s 2002 novel The Frog Princess and the Brothers Grimm tale “The Frog Prince.”
Clements and Musker wrote the script with Rob Edwards, Jason Oremland and Greg Erb. The animation is the reason to come. Hand-drawn work gives the bayou a weight that the studio’s computer output of the period rarely managed, and Facilier’s shadow work is the most confident sequence in the picture.
The problems are structural. Tiana’s ambition gets swallowed by the frog plot for long stretches, and the middle sags into travel. The film wants to be a romance, a fantasy and a family comedy at once, and it is best at none of them.
Where This Lands
Here is what matters. Disney proved in 2009 that traditional animation still worked. The source notes only that the film marked the studio’s brief return to traditional animation, its first since Home on the Range. What Disney did afterward is not part of this record.
| Year | Film | Format |
|---|---|---|
| 2004 | Home on the Range | Traditional |
| 2009 | The Princess and the Frog | Traditional |
The Princess and the Frog is a good film with a great surface. The cast is strong, the setting is specific, and the craft holds up. The script does not. It is worth seeing for what it looks like, and worth remembering for what it signaled.
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