Directed by Ron Clements and John Musker. Voices of Anika Noni Rose, Terrence Howard, John Goodman, Keith David, Jim Cummings, Jenifer Lewis, Oprah Winfrey G cert, gen release, 97 min
WHEN THE motorcar came along, I daresay there were a great many editorials in the papers bemoaning the loss of the slower, more smelly, but eminently more enchanting horse-drawn carriage. Similar articles greeted digital animation’s triumph over its hand-drawn predecessor.
Fear not: Walt Disney has (quite literally) gone back to the drawing board and delivered a traditional hand-drawn animation about princesses and wizards and magic frogs and talking alligators. Much has been made of the decision to create an African-American protagonist (voiced pleasingly by Anika Noni Rose from Dreamgirls), but what strikes you most about The Princess and the Frogis how much has remained charmingly unchanged.
Set, during the jazz age, in a bustling, somewhat unconvincingly integrated New Orleans, the film concerns a poor black waitress who dreams of opening her own restaurant. Sound a little too modern and empowered? Don’t worry. She also develops designs on a visiting prince who can’t inherit the title without marrying a princess. After familiar magical shenanigans, both are transformed into frogs and must work together to restore normality.
The odd innovation aside, the film-makers scrupulously stuck to the classic template. Post- Shrekcontemporary allusions are nowhere about. The evil witch doctor is scary enough to give infants a jolt, but not so frightening as to induce nightmares. The animation is gloriously lush and makes no attempt to incorporate digital flash.
Okay, some may raise an eyebrow at the anachronistic associations between posh white snoots and poor black strivers. Loosen up. This is, after all, a world in which frogs makes friends with alligators.
