DisFan Movie Review: "The Princess & the Frog"

Every so often, there is a movie that is actually worth the bloated price of admission. It is a rare Film indeed that will cause me to pay that same bloated ticket price numerous times, because the film is just that good. Disney's "Princess and the Frog" is that film. Disney's return to traditional animation, is also the studio's return to the animated musical, and a statement to the rest of the world. A statement that Disney Studio's is once again the King of animation, traditional, computer generated or otherwise. From the first frame you are immersed in Disney's magical world of New Orleans. A world so rich and textured that quite simply, it could not have been rendered by computer animation so convincingly. Only the imperfect combination of color and mechanics that flow directly from the hand and heart of a living breathing human being, could have created this gorgeous and inspiring spectacle. There is nothing like the realization that what you are seeing is the magical result of Ink, Paint, and Paper, rendered completely by hand. No pixels or digital artifacting. Just the visceral experience of a pure human artform that, in this film, declares that it is FAR from dead.

While I could go on for several paragraphs about the absolute beauty of the animation, and how Disney has set the artistic bar so high that they may be the only studio capable of doing better, but the story of Princess and the Frog is as gorgeous and heart grabbing as the animation. This is truly an American Fairy tale. Set in New Orleans, the story follows Tiana, a hard working young woman who learned from her parents that She should always dream big, but that the dreaming can only get you so far. If you really want your dreams to come true, you have to work for it, and do what ever it takes to make those dreams real. Of course, in any great Fairy tale, there is always a little Magic. Tiana's dream is almost destroyed when she is transformed into a frog by a chance encounter with Prince Naveen, who has also been changed into a green, hopper. She and Naveen set out to find Madam Odie and a chance to become human again, and if she "Digs a little Deeper" she may have everything she ever wanted...and more.

I want to try and avoid using any comparisons to past Disney classics, but it is impossible to describe what a truly amazing achievement Princess and the Frog is, without doing so. This film is quite definitely the best film Disney has released in the past decade. And I do mean ANY film that Disney has put out in the past ten years. Animated, Live Action or otherwise. I almost want to make an outrageous claim like, "It's better than Mermaid, Beast, Aladdin, and Lion King." but thats a bold statement that not even I feel %100 comfortable saying. What I can say with total confidence is that The Princess and the Frog is an animated masterpiece the likes of which only comes along once or twice in a lifetime. More to the point, It is a film for children and adults alike, that will transport you to a magical place where dreams come true, and is well worth the ticket price to experience on the big screen multiple times. -Admiral Duke