Wednesday, December 23, 2009

What I Think Of: The Princess and the Frog (2009)

In this week's podcast, we will review September Issue, The Princess, and the Frog, and Avatar.
For this particular post, we'll focus on this 2009 Disney movie, the first 2D movie since Home on the Range.
It was great watching a Disney princess film just because I haven't seen one since Mulan, which was ages ago. The overall story is a classic one--a girl in distress, and she needs to find her way out of the situation she's in and falls in love with a prince, while still looking beautiful. But what I like about this movie is that it took a classic story, and made it it's own. I know that sounds a bit cliche but here's a few examples of what it's still unique.
1. The princess, the lead character, is black, and she's not an African princess but an American girl who grew up in New Orleans, which brings me to my next reason.
2. The location is New Orleans, LA and the time period is early 20th Century. This is not a far away land, or some distant time, long long ago. Granted it's not contemporary, but the place and time is still identifiable to us (or at least our grandparents perhaps?).
3. Changing the story for an updated audience. It seems like these days, kids have "higher" thresholds for content that may be perceived as more mature. In the movie, the villian was definitely darker than most villians of Disney past, and also *SPOILER ALERT* the movie does touch on death, where a lot of times it seems to be glossed over. *SPOILER END* The story itself on how it evolves also isn't very "typical."
The one thing that was slightly a disappointment was the music, there were only 2 pieces that I thought were enjoyable and the others fell flat. But I still enjoyed the movie so I'd give it a "Bring Your Lunch From Home" because you do not want to miss it.
Hope you enjoy the review / the movie.

-Penny



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