a quick review of Princess and the Frog

[acroyear]

On FB someone thought it was missing something, and specifically mentioned a certain lack of "zing" to the songs.  While I think there's something to that, I wrote the  following:

ah, i know what it lacked: David Ogden Stiers. A hand-drawn without him is (almost) like a Pixar film without John Ratzenberger. :)

on the whole I liked it and it has a bit of "will watch it again" to it, but...

i think the biggest problem was that since it was the first hand-drawn they'd done in so many years, they had to put into it EVERY archetypal hand-drawn scene into it, so as such the musical numbers got overwhelming. This I think was Hercules's problem as well - too many super-surreal musical numbers, as if that was what made Aladdin work. By contrast, Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Lion King only had *one* such number each (Under the Sea, Be Our Guest, Just Can't Wait To Be King), and Mulan got away without any at all, really...

The other thing missing: while there were musical numbers, they didn't really express their love in music as a song, either one-sided or both, nor was it expressed for them by a supporter/narrator (Kiss the Girl, Beauty and the Beast title song, A Whole New World). There were a couple of slow songs, but not really a proper ballad.

So there's the odd mix - too much of one part of the Disney musical, and yet missing one of the more important parts...

Comments

[dawntreader]

i agree. it was cute and it was worth watching. but it was lacking "something."

the funny thing was i was picking nuances of other characters like "that looks like Sir Hiss." "that looks like Balloo." so hand-drawn or not, they kept the style of previous animators.

the thing i didn't like was that the style of songs didn't match the style of movie. style of movie? hand-drawn animation that looked "real life." style of song? that arty Hercules-esque that i didn't like at ALL. so it was two separate styles mooshed together. i just didn't care for that.

however, the characters were endearing, i loved the firefly and the alligator. i loved the Princess and the Frog, too. and her best friend girl was annoying but hilarious. Goodman did a good job, too.

the #1 thing i appreciated though was that every song was sung by the voice actor. that hasn't happened since Beauty and the Beast. i hope it's a trend that continues.

[dawntreader]

and i loved the oracle voodoo lady. :D

[thelongshot.livejournal.com]

I don't know if a ballad would have worked all that well, considering that I couldn't think of an appropriate character to sing that type of song. Fact is, she was so hyperfocused on her dreams that she didn't notice what was next to her until right before the end.

In the end, it was probably a welcome change for those familiar with the "princess" trope, which is part of the reason why the film was successful. Then again, it still was the "princess" trope, even if they did change things up. In my eyes, it wasn't really anything new, but it was well executed for the most part.

[arseaboutface.livejournal.com]

Hah, no. The problem with Hercules was that it bore no resemblance to any story of Hercules at all. No amount of toning down the surreal musical numbers would have fixed that; it was just awful.