The Princess and the Frog

Not until the final month do we get this decade's first truly satisfying feature length animated musical from Disney (although there's only been a handful of attempts). This is a rebirth of Disney filmmaking in the traditional sense. To watch this movie is to watch something magical that hasn't happened in nearly a dozen years.

There are a variety of opinions concerning which Disney films of the Disney Renaissance era are better than others, but I'm going to take it upon myself to say that the last great traditional animated film was The Lion King in 1994. Good films still came out and Alan Menken continued to put together some wonderful soundtracks for the remainder of the decade, but the new millennium has not shown much promise.

What really sells The Princess and the Frog is that it tells a story worth telling (take note Dreamworks) and tells it well. As the second American protagonist (after Pocahantas), Tiana stands apart from many of the other Disney princesses as being the first to seek the American Dream. She aspires to own her own restaurant and works two jobs to save up enough money for the down payment. Unlike Ariel, Belle and Jasmine, she does not dream of an escape from her current lifestyle. She is satisfied until she hits a roadblock with her plans which then cues our inciting incident.

Along the way she learns to place family and relationships above her personal dreams. A very modern message to say the least. There is a particularly powerful moment when the villain tempts her with a virtual tour of the restaurant she desires to have and a flashback with her father.

Two years ago, Enchanted reminded us of what we were missing out on. For those of us whose childhood took place during the Renaissance era, it was a refreshing and extremely nostalgic experience to see Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz at work again. The filmmakers for that movie knew it too. The way in which the sequence for the catchy number "That's How You Know" plays out was... well, enchanting. My only disappointment with "The Princess and the Frog" is that it lacks a really moving score from Randy Newman and while the musical numbers are fun and energetic, what's missing is the one song that encompasses the emotions of the film the way "Beauty and the Beast" did for Beauty and the Beast or "A Whole New World" did for Aladdin. There is a song called "Almost There" that comes close, but for the life of me I couldn't seem to recall the tune after the film.

Alan Menken will fortunately be back with 2010's Repunzel. However, that movie will involve CGI with the "intention to look and feel like traditional hand-drawn animation" (a curious description indeed). Time will tell if Disney can get any momentum going off the wake of The Princess and the Frog, a film that deserves to take its place amongst the studio's numerous animated greats.