Princess and the Frog: The Disney Experience
Posted By Kathleen David on December 7, 2009
Yesterday was a busy day for the David Family. Peter went up to Sacred Heart for Ariel’s Winter Concert and met up with Gwen there. Caroline and I went into New York City to see the holiday sites and meet up with Peter to see The Princess and the Frog at the Ziegfeld with a trip to the a Disney exhibit as part of the package. We had dinner with Gwen at a very nice deli and went to see the movie. I am glad we went to see it when we did. It is nice to see a film where the entire audience wanted to be there. There were no cell phones in use during the movie in my range of vision. There were three generations of families sitting together watching the film. The reaction was very positive and the audience applauded at the end of the various musical numbers.
At the end of the film, we hot-footed it to the Roseland Ballroom which was transformed into a Disney Wonderland. Caroline met all the princesses including Tiana and got to talk to them. Her face was glowing with happiness as were a lot of other little girls there as well. She did arts and crafts, played in a playground based on the Bayou as depicted in the film. We drew with one of the Disney Animators and got our picture taken as a family reacting to one of the characters in the film. We had a splendid Disney Evening.
Behind the cut are my thoughts on the film. I am trying to stay away from spoilers and I ask that others leave it in rather broad strokes until the film opens nationally.
I am grateful that we took Caroline to see this film for her birthday weekend.
It was nice to see classic animation again. I like the Pixar and computer animation but there is a warmth to classic animation that computers just can’t recreate. The looks of the film were lovely and the contrasts of styles that they used worked well.
The story is sort of a different take on the classic kissing frog and get a prince trope. Here you kiss the frog who is a prince and you become a frog as well. There are lots of great characters in this film and they are not all voiced by known names but classic animation voices. The Shadow Man was voiced by Kevin David, the actor who voiced Goliath in the TV series Gargoyles. Raymond was done by the current voice for Tigger. They did have some known names. Oprah was the voice of Tiana’s mother. John Goodman was a rich southern gentleman. But they went for the voice rather than the name which I like.
The plot had some nice twists. The dialogue was great and had jokes for the adults as well as the kids. The songs were fun and memorable especially Doctor Facilier aka the Shadow Man. It was a good ride and kept both the adults attention as well as the kids. And they made the character I found most annoying in the trailers into one of the most endearing characters in the film.
I would highly recommend this film and it is one that you do need to see on the big screen for the scope of the film especially if you have kids. There are some scary moments and one character that doesn’t make it all the way through the film but it is done very well.
Disney Animation is back at the top of its game and it was good to see it.
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