Disney finds its simple charm in The Princess and The Frog

10 April 2012

Anyone who, as a child, cried their way through Dumbo and adored Bambi and Snow White will welcome Disney’s first hand-drawn animation feature for years. Gone are the wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am excitements of computer-generated fare.

What we see here is a simple tale with more charm than pace and more careful detail than spectacle.
Our heroine is Tiana (voiced by Anika Noni Rose), a young black woman from Jazz Age New Orleans who works at a café and wants to own one of her own. When she is somehow persuaded to kiss a frog, she meets her Prince Charming (Bruno Campos).

Not that she’s after romance. She’s too hard-working for that and she doesn’t like frogs. She simply wants to get on, inspired by her parents, an aged Queen of the Bayou (Jenifer Lewis) and a lovestruck firefly (Jim Cummings).

The villain comes in the shape of Dr Facilier (Keith David), a scoundrel who works magical spells. Meanwhile John Goodman voices Big Daddy, a white Southern gent of standing who would do anything for Charlotte (Jennifer Cody), his spoilt daughter.

No, it’s not as good as the aforementioned classics. Though the story is inspired by the Brothers Grimm, it drags in parts. The film also skirts neatly round issues of colour as if they simply weren’t there 80 years ago.

But it is at least a treat for the eyes and never assumes that kids demand the spectacular. It’s a fairytale, pure and simple, with (forgettable) Randy Newman songs to push it along and a good old American moral about achieving success through sheer persistence.

Granted, old Walt could never could do human faces with as much character as those of animals — witness our firefly and the jazz-playing alligator here. Granted too that the sentiment pushes over into sentimentality. But this has a lot to commend it, and it isn’t just nostalgia for the Disney past. It’s a visual treat.

The Princess And The Frog
Cert: U

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