Gone with the Wind – SERVING UP SAIA.

I had been waiting for years. The return of a beautifully, hand drawn Disney 2D film! Plus, for the first time, Disney had emerged from the antebellum to make a black girl the princess. I couldn’t have been more excited for The Princess and the Frog.

Then I saw it.

Addressing my second assumption, silly me, I thought this movie was going to be about a black princess. To my chagrin, Tiana (our supposed heroine) is really a sidekick to Charlotte (herself not a real princess, but princess by proxy due to her father’s title of the King of Mardi Gras, embarrassingly voiced by John Goodman. My dear John, how can you go from Roseanne to The Coen Bros. to this?). Tiana has but one goal – to run a restaurant. I guess one could look at this as “All the women! Independent! Throw your hands up at me!” but it really reads as, “Oooooo, I’m gonna get in theres and cook me up a mess a’ something!”

But Whitey tells her that a “girl of [her] uh, social background” (read black) has no business running a restaurant. Seriously, Disney? This is where we are? Making back door racial slurs? In 2009?

Not only is Tiana not a princess (only dressing up as one in her rich white friend’s outfit), she spends most of the movie as a friggin’ frog. That’s right. A frog. Disney’s first black “princess” and she spends the movie in the friggin’ bayou.

“Oh! What funny hair!”
“Girl, if you touch my weave, you gonna lose your fingers!”

She turns into a frog because she kisses Prince Naveen (a LIGHT skinned Creole, voiced by an even whiter actor)…

…to try and break the spell of Jafar wannabe, Dr. Facilier (voiced by Keith David. In case you don’t know who he is, he’s the guy in Requiem for a Dream who whips his dick out for Jennifer Connelly to suck for her dime bag).

“I know it’s pretty baby, but I didn’t take it out for air.”

Of course, not being a real princess, Tiana cannot fulfill the main conceit of the fairytale. That’s left to the fake white princess, Charlotte. Thankfully (averting an even more racist outcome), she also cannot reverse the spell, not because she isn’t a princess but because she fails to kiss him before midnight.

“Jasmine didn’t have to slum in the swamp!”
“Shut up and row.”

Tiana and Naveen decide to being frogs ain’t so bad because at least they are together. They have a frog wedding in the bayou, administered by Mama Odie, the blind witch doctor, nee Glinda the Good Witch of the Swamp Things. They kiss and whatta you know, they become human again! Because now she is a princess. What happened to that whole midnight thing? Guess it wasn’t convenient anymore.

Tiana gets her restaurant and they live happily ever after (of course) with Naveen apparently giving up the throne to be with her, Duke of Windsor style. But this doesn’t make sense either because if he is abdicating his throne, then he is no longer a prince. And if he is no longer a prince, then she is not a princess. Which means she would still be a frog. At least they got the deus ex machina of traditional fairy tales right.

“Well, at least I’m not starring in The Help.”

What is such a shame about the way Disney handled race in this film is that it was VERY easily avoidable. Instead of placing it in 1920s New Awlins, complete with voodoo and mammies, they should have expanded upon a fantasy sequence (the only truly beautiful one in the film) where Tiana daydreamed of her restaurant, dressed to the Josephine Baker nines, smack dab in the middle of the Harlem Renaissance. The writers should have watched more Lady Sings the Blues and less Gone With the Wind. Or Song of the South.

“Even I’s knows dis here movie is racist.”

Now about my first assumption. That Disney 2D was back. It is no secret that 2D animation has been rightfully usurped by Pixar’s genius filmmaking over the last 15 years. Let’s face it. Disney hasn’t had a bona fide 2D hit since 1999s Tarzan. But I assumed that having been 5 years since their last hand drawn theatrical release Home on the Range and 14 years since their last princess driven film (11 if you count Mulan), not to mention watching Pixar’s oeuvre dominate them, one would hope they had learned how to return to their roots. Sadly, what they have learned is how to be extremely lazy.

The opening shot of the film, a quiet British looking town with horse drawn buggy and a peaceful sky, is torn straight from the opening shot of Lady and the Tramp. The second shot, a rooftop with the moon in the distance, is from Peter Pan. The film is littered with characters from other, better Disney films. Mama Odie’s snake is Kha from The Jungle Book. There is a scene where Frog Tiana and Frog Naveen dance on the lily pads that I kept hoping would magically turn into its source material, “Kiss the Girl.” Some of the birds in the bayou are from Fantasia and the North Star, who the firefly sidekick Ray mistakes for his lover, is ripped straight from the skyline in Pinocchio. Is it merely coincidence that another bug wishes on that star? I think not.

Then there is the sloppy plot. Disney has never been known for brilliant dialogue or overly original storytelling, but The Princess and the Frog tests the limits of even an avid lifelong Disney fan like yours truly. Not only is the “main character” peripheral, the “love story” is thoroughly unbelievable with a villain not nearly evil enough with confusing objectives to boot.

“What do I have to do to win a goddamn Oscar!?”

And to add dire insult to traumatic injury, who the fuck decided Randy Newman should write the score? This is New Orleans jazz! And Randy hasn’t written that type of music in a loooooong time. They couldn’t get a black person to write it!? Was BB King too busy running his restaurant? Was Etta James too busy counting her Grammy’s? Even Beyonce would have been a better choice! For Christ’s sake, if you are going to go with a white person at least pick one who hasn’t lost their soul. I’m sure Justin Timberlake, Robin Thicke, or Norah Jones would have been honored. Instead they go with Randy Newman. What’s next? Woody Allen as the Chancellor of Germany?

It pains me to call The Princess and the Frog the worst film of 2009. And it pains me even more to call The Princess and the Frog the most racist film of 2009. After all, this was the year of The Blind Side and Madea Goes to Jail. But I cannot avoid the truth. If Walt knew how far his company had spiraled since Steamboat Willie, he would be rolling over in his cryogenic chamber.