The Movie Diorama A welcome return to the hand-drawn animation style that the studio is renowned for, this film marks the first musical since their Renaissance era. With that, you could say there is a sense of tangible nostalgia as it imitates the exact same structure as the classics before, thus consequently also being its downfall. A hard working waitress aspires to be a restauranteur where she encounters a talking frog who has been cursed by voodoo magic. Believed to be a prince, she kisses the amphibian and becomes a frog herself. A twisted adaptation of the famous fairy tale 'The Frog Prince', Disney have gone back to their roots and crafted a solidly entertaining musical. The animation is visually stunning as usual and makes a refreshing change from the lacklustre CG pictures the studio produced during the mid naughties. New Orleans is bustling with street musicians and a hearty community where you feel absorbed by the rustic watercolours of the signature architecture. Then, switching to a swampy bayou, allows the animators to differentiate between the human perspective of the urban town to the animal viewpoint of the rural marshlands. The protagonist Tiana holds her own with a hint of sassy independence that cements her as one of Disney's more memorable princesses. A myriad of supporting characters including a trumpet-playing alligator, firefly, hoodoo priestess, seamstress, frog hunters, a snake that is used as a guide stick, sugar mill owner and his daughter...I'm sure I'm forgetting more...oh, a valet, creepy stalking shadows and a dog. Highlighting the above is the major issue, there are far too many characters that do not have enough screen time to be developed or atleast memorable. I appreciated the antagonist who utilises voodoo magic to become a puppeteer as he manipulates several characters with curses. The story was well paced with little to no downtime. The musical numbers, whilst performed well, just weren't memorable. I think you've got my point, a wonderful yet unmemorable animation.

Sherrill777 The Bad:The prince is fairly revolting, in my opinion. He starts out feeling like a lazy, womanizing, cheat who is looking for a ticket to an easy life. He does acquire a few redeeming qualities as the film progresses, but I ended up feeling like our lovely heroine falls in love with a loser. This movie loses a whole star just for him. My second issue with this movie is the voodoo. Some parents might not have an issue with this – and I don't have a problem with most magic depicted in kid's movies, so I'm not sure why this bothers me so much. Maybe because some people actually practice this as a real art rather than a fantasy type of magic? Maybe because it felt like a nightmare-inducing pact with evil? In any case, it came across as far too creepy & dark for my tastes. The Good: The visuals are genuinely lovely. It's a very pretty movie. And it's fantastic to have an African American heroine princess. Yay diversity! I felt that this movie was respectful of a minority group. Our heroine is full of excellent character traits – she's resourceful, hard-working, a good friend, optimistic, and more. The music is a bit jazzy, a bit southern gospel, and not bad at all (although not some of Disney's best).The Mom view:Not one of my favorite Disney films, which was so disappointing since I was excited to see Disney return to traditional fairy-tales – and with a non-white princess, no less! But, between the less than stellar prince, the creepy voodoo, and the forgettable story-line, this isn't going to be one I purchase for my kids. I'll have my kids watch this at some point (probably late elementary age), but only as a rental. Overall, this gets a grade of 'not horrible, but not great'.

Anssi Vartiainen Disney returns to hand-drawn princess fairy tale animation after a stint of Pixar-esque computer animated films. This time the inspiration being the classic tale of The Frog Prince by Brothers Grimm. But, being Disney, they throw their own spin on it. The story takes place in 1920s New Orleans and features Disney's first African-American princess in Tiana.I really like the setting a lot. New Orleans is a fantastic setup for this particular story, with its African-American culture, voodoo, bayou environment and all the music it inspires. Tiana and Dr. Facilier, the villain, are both fantastic characters and fully fleshed-out by the film. Dr. Facilier especially is very memorable and has one of the better villain songs in the entire canon. Charlotte, Tiana's childhood rich kid friend, is also absolutely hilarious.Unfortunately, the story isn't quite that good. It feels more like Disney going through motions than it feels a proper fairy tale. We have the setup, the twist, the journey, the final battle, but you can practically see the story boards being switched behind the scenes. You don't buy the illusion. Plus, the songs are not that hot. The villain song is very good, and Almost There is not half bad either, but the rest are garbage. Especially Dig a Little Deeper, which is so painfully Oscar-crappy that you can't help but cringe.All in all The Princess and the Frog is a mixed package. Its heart is in the right place and I love that we had this one final traditionally animated princess film, but it could have been a lot better, if we're being completely honest. Objectively a fine film, but not up to Disney's usual standards.

Igenlode Wordsmith This was one of the Disney films I meant to see during the BFI's all-year Disney-a-week marathon, but managed to miss out on (my enthusiasm had rather flagged by the end of the year). I watched it today under less-than-ideal conditions, on a salvaged second-hand DVD that jammed and skipped, and without actually being able to concentrate on the screen for considerable periods of time, and I liked it a lot: more than "Tangled", more than "Frozen". Loved the Twenties aesthetic (little references like Naveen's ukulele), Tiana's realistic working-class parents, the New Orleans setting, the jazz, the voodoo (the Shadow Man has definite overtones of Baron Samedi). I liked the way that Charlotte, though clearly spoilt rotten, turns out to be a good friend and not an antagonist (and they even manage to make the friendship between the Sugar King's daughter and Tiana the black waitress come across as plausible). The Shadow Man makes an excellent villain. And, although this sounds cruel, I liked the fact that they went so far as to really kill off Ray, instead of pulling off the last-minute magical resurrection that seemed to be on the cards -- though any last words at all were a bit implausible under the circumstances!I have a bit of trouble swallowing the idea of talking animals in New Orleans in the 1920s -- mainly the idea that the alligator can actually talk to ordinary people as well as to enchanted ones -- although that's a weird sticking-point given that I had no trouble with the idea that frogs can talk to alligators and fireflies... My main beef with the film would be that Naveen didn't really work for me as a character and I couldn't see what someone like Tiana would see in him; Flynn Rider as a similar 'reformed rogue' was much more interesting from that point of view. Having watched the DVD extras I now gather that he was supposed to be a complement to Tiana's character in that he can appreciate the things of the moment while she is so focused on the future that she misses out on beauty and reality that she's in the middle of -- and that at least one of the jammed/skipped sections was one that apparently made this point :-( However, when I saw the film he came across as rather flat. (And why the French-sounding accent, when he's the one character in New Orleans with no reason to sound French?)I wasn't especially fond of the songs as tunes -- nothing like as memorable as the numbers from "Beauty and the Beast" or "The Corpse Bride" -- but they work well as spectacle with the accompanying animations. "Friends on the Other Side" reminds me a bit of "Remains of the Day" in that respect, which is perhaps unsurprising! The film scores highly for me in that it repeatedly took completely unpredictable twists: I couldn't see the plot points coming, and yet they generally made perfect sense in retrospect. This is one picture where 'spoilers' are definitely best avoided, and somehow I'd managed to miss hearing any of them in advance :-)High on the visuals (sorry, but I'm really not that sold on 3D animation), high on the plot, very high on the background and setting. Naveen drags it down a bit, I'm afraid, as I couldn't really get invested in the romance, but overall 8/10. It would bear watching again under better circumstances; I'd have been tempted to hang onto the DVD if it hadn't been damaged!