Movie Thoughts: The Princess and the Frog (2009)

• Released: 11 December 2009
• Directed by: Ron Clements, John Musker
• Running time: 1 h 37 min
• Rating 2.5/5

Synopsis

A woman who wants to open her own restaurant finds herself accidentally turned into a frog. Joined by an arrogant human prince who happens to be in the same predicament, they must learn to work together in order to turn human again.

My Thoughts

I've only seen this movie once before, making it one of my least-watched Disney movies. And with reason. It's just not my favorite.

It's once more the person-of-color-turns-into-something-nonhuman-for-the-majority-of-the-movie shtick. I was honestly so much more invested in this film when it just was about Tiana working so hard to be able to fulfill her dream. You know, as a human being. But then the plot pretty much takes a halt as she suddenly turns into a frog, is stuck with this obnoxious prince character and has to figure out how to turn back for the vast majority of the rest. 

I also don't find any of the characters outside of Tiana that likable. Okay, maybe Lottie was kinda fun with her over-the-top energy, but all the others? Couldn't care less. The fact that Naveen is our secondary protagonist was really annoying because he doesn't grow on me at all even after going through his character development. Also, the fact that Tiana was willing to give up her life's dream for the sake of this dude? Ew. Sorry, he's just not worth it in my opinion since I can't stand his character. There's also some other sidekicks, such as a firefly, a jazz-playing alligator and an old lady, but again, I don't care for any of them. The fact that the death of one of them is supposed to be a sad occurrence just doesn't work. I wasn't sad when Ray died, I just wanted to move on to the next plot beat so we could get to Tiana turning human again faster.

The music is okay but, again, I'm not a real fan of musicals and the soundtrack just overall wasn't really all that memorable. I won't be humming any of these songs anytime soon.

If there was anything I thought was kinda neat (outside of the outstanding visuals, of course), it'd be that Dr. Facilier was a pretty good return to form for Disney villains. I don't think he holds a candle to some of the greats from the Renaissance (e.g. Scar, Jafar, Ursula, etc.), but he is a pretty cool and smooth-talking villain who is all-evil, isn't a twist villain and doesn't get redeemed. His death was also pretty memorable. 

So while this movie overall looks great and has a pretty strong villain, I just don't really find the majority of the plot interesting. Things were so good back when Tiana was human and simply working towards her dream, but after that we're stuck with an obnoxious secondary protagonist and an obnoxious group of sidekick comic relief characters. It's definitely not the worst of Disney's movies, but it could've been a whole lot stronger.