Disney’s Princess is Back!

In the tradition of Disney princesses, Tiana of The Princess and The Frog is both conventional and unconventional at the same time. The movie is loosely based on the Brothers Grimm’s fairytale The Frog Prince and E.D. Baker’s novel The Frog Princess. Disney’s version is set in 1920’s New Orleans, where jazz was rampant and it was the wealthiest city in the south.

The film begins by introducing us to our heroine, a young Tiana who belongs to a working class family but finds herself visiting the wealthier side of town. Her mother is a talented dressmaker whose clients include the daughter of one of the richest men in the city. In the first scene we are taken inside a beautiful fairytale looking room with a four poster bed, dolls everywhere, and it looks very much like the room of a young princess. When we finally meet our characters though, Tiana is simply inside the room of Lottie, the young wealthy client of her mother Eudora. Eudora, who is voiced by Oprah Winfrey, is telling the two girls the story of a princess who kissed a frog thereby turning him back into a prince. Spoiled Lottie automatically enthralled by the story and dreams of kissing her own prince one day as she prances around her princess dress courtesy of Eudora. Tiana on the other hand is disgusted by the idea of kissing a frog and proclaims that she will never do it. She is dressed in much simpler clothes, though she does have a little crown on her head. Lottie proceeds to put a frog hat on her cat and tries to force Tiana to kiss it, which traumatizes the poor animal and was hilarious to watch.

Tiana as the daughter of a working class family has no allusions of princes and fairytales. Her dream is to become a chef and open a restaurant and through hard work and perseverance. Nineteen years later, she remains diligent and determined as she works multiple jobs and multiple shifts just to save money to buy an old sugar mill her father and her imagined to one day open their restaurant in. In contrast we meet the spoiled Prince Naveen who comes to New Orleans to marry Lottie for her money after being cut off by his parents for his spendthrift and playboy lifestyle. He is broke and is looking for the easy way out by finding a rich bride.

Our villain is the scheming Dr. Facilier, a voodoo witch doctor who is bent on controlling New Orleans for his own evil purposes. He apparently has made a deal with those on the mysterious “other side” that gives him his power. Facilier tricks Naveen and his valet Lawrence into coming into his shop where the prince is transformed into a frog. He seduces Lawrence into playing Naveen (via the prince’s blood inside a talisman) so that he can marry Lottie and then they can split the cash after killing Big Daddy La Bouff (Lottie’s dad).

On the night of a grand masquerade ball at the La Bouffs’, Naveen escapes and runs into Tiana dressed in a beautiful ball gown inside Lottie’s room. She is depressed after just learning that someone has outbid her for the sugar mill. He convinces her that he will give her money in exchange for a kiss and she finally forces herself to do it, only to be turned into a frog herself. Naveen had thought she was a princess in her clothes while Tiana protests that it was a costume and that she was a waitress. After a chase scene with the La Bouffs’ dog Stella, our two protagonists find themselves stranded in the bayou with alligators eying them for dinner. Speaking of alligators, they meet Louis who Naveen initially befriends because of their common love of jazz. Louis tells them about Mama Odie, an old blind voodoo priestess who might be able to reverse the spell and turn Tiana and Naveen back into humans. The prince convinces the alligator to help them by suggesting that he could turn into a human as well then he could play the trumpet in front of people and not scare them away. They also meet Ray, an old Cajun firefly who points them to the right direction to Mama Odie. It turns out though the only way to truly break the spell is for Naveen to kiss a princess. This works out that he must kiss Lottie before midnight as her dad is the king of Mardi gras and thus makes her a legitimate princess for the night.

*Spoiler Alert* All’s well that ends well; Naveen and Tiana fall in love, Facilier is defeated, and even Louis and Ray get their happy endings. The core message of the movie is realizing the difference between what you want and what you need. It shines a light on what is actually important in life, which is love of family and friends.

What I liked about the film first and foremost is that Disney went back to its roots of hand drawn animation. While the animated films that have come out of Disney/Pixar collaboration have been amazing CGI work, I grew up watching Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin (and many more) so I absolutely loved this old school feel. I also appreciated that the prince was just as much as the protagonist as Tiana and he went through character changes as well from spoiled and irresponsible to generous and selfless. Tiana went through her own shift as she discovered that a life without someone to share it with wasn’t complete. I thought the message of the movie was that you should still dream and wish upon a star, but you had to work for it too. Then there was also the “you may not get what you expected though it turns out even better than you could have imagined” theme as well.

Before the movie came out there was a lot of mixed expectations, but I found it entertaining and enjoyable to watch. Will there be critics getting upset that the wealthy family is portrayed as Caucasian while working class Tiana is African American? Perhaps. I think you can argue it either way where Disney was portraying it as realistically as they could, or that it could reinforce negative racial stereotypes. Though this viewer just had a great time seeing characters triumph over challenges, elaborate musical montages, and talking animals.