My youngest cousin celebrated her second birthday on Sunday and my Aunt decided to do what my mother did to me when I was younger - subject her only girl to hundreds of Disney images till one day that girl gets sick of all things pink and under the sea. 

 

I went through a phase in high school where I hated the color pink because throughout most of middle and elementary school I was forced to live in a room painted the color of Pepto-Bismol and draped in all things Beauty and The Beast.

 

I loved it at first but as I got older it was nauseating. It’s been years since my aunts and mom have been able to thrust a Disney character on someone so they’re going all out for my newest cousin. 

 

Disney Studios in Burbank has this fantastic deal where you get to view The Princess and The Frog on the ABC lot and then meet and greet with all of the Disney princesses in a gigantic play room complete with Xbox and carnival games, cupcakes and an in-house artist detailing how he sketched a character from the film.

 

The fam decided to take my cousin Kristi and a group of other girls for her birthday. It was tons of fun, despite Kristi’s constant shouts of “hi Kiki” throughout the movie, and I totally forgot how much the sight of Belle use to make me want to puke. Sunday night, I was a little girl again and it was lovely. I tried to channel the little girl who once knew all the words to The Little Mermaid when I saw The Princess and The Frog on Sunday.

 

I’ve been looking forward to seeing this movie from the moment I heard Disney finally decided to create a black princess. Though I must say I’ve been a bit annoyed by all of the criticism the film has garnered, especially before people even see it. It’s not that I don’t understand the criticism (I get why some of y’all would be upset that the first black princess is a frog for most of the movie, and I’m all for black love) but sometimes I wish adults would calm down and shut the hell up. What kind of message are we really sending by harping on the fact that Tiana’s love interest isn’t black? It sorta goes against the love and friendship doesn’t have any color mantra we should be teaching these kids. Plus, I don’t remember crabby big people telling me that Disney movies gave false notions of love when I was five, and I’m glad they didn’t. They let me be a young girl when I was a young girl and taught me pivitol life lessons through real life situations, not cartoons or television, as I got older.

 

*hops off soapbox*

 

The kid in me loved The Princess and the Frog. It’s vibrant; the colors pop off the screen and the characters and backdrops look absolutely stunning. It all made me want to grab a coloring book , my mini OG Crayola 100 plus crayon case, and try to recreate the images I saw onscreen like I use to do when I was younger (best believe I was a coloring BEAST!). The film stays away from the edgier, modern animation and so the movie actually looks like the classic Disney hits from the 90s.

 

About ten minutes in the movie I stopped trying to watch the film as a five year old would - that’s harder than it sounds - and I still loved it. From what I could hear, so did the rest of the adults. The movie is very funny and there are some clever lines that will go over a child’s head. Older folk will enjoy this movie for different reasons than children which makes it uniquely good.

 

Tiana (I love that she is an ”ana” baby!) is the type of character that Disney should have made for little girls a long time ago. I’m sure critics will try to argue that she’s a form of the classic Hollywood magical negro character (see: Morgan Freeman in about 99% of his roles) but I enjoyed the fact that Tiana is hardworking, sensible, and kind. She’s a foil of the rich, spoiled white friend she grows up with who calls her father “big daddy”. Tiana is not looking for a man to save her. She dreams about owning her own restaurant and having a life beyond the rows of shotgun houses that dot her neighborhood. Great lessons, if you really want a cartoon to raise your kid.

 

I thought the decision to have the film set in New Orleans was brilliant because it allowed the creators to pull from several of the dialects, music, and food unique to the region.  They mentioned gumbo so many times I was ready to eat a pot full by the time the movie ended.

 

The stand out character for me was Ray, the firefly who I thought would annoy me the most with his missing teeth and one-liners. But Ray is delightful and probably one of the most memorable Disney sidekicks since Sebastian in The Little Mermaid. He makes you laugh, cry, and miss him when he’s not onscreen.

 

As much as I enjoyed the film, it isn’t without its flaws. I thought the plot sped up too fast and their isn’t a ballad that jumps out like in other Disney films. This could be because the creators wanted to stay true to the blues and jazz sounds of New Orleans, but the absence of a breakout song is missing.  

 

The Princess and The Frog will probably suffer from endless comparisons to past Disney films, but that doesn’t mean it can’t stand out on its own. It does, and not just because it’s making history.  As beloved as some of the past Disney films have been, the next Princess can (and should) speak Spanish, hail from Guatemala, dream of teaching biochemistry to a group of orphans at an orphanage she builds on her own, and it still probably won’t come close to the magic of former years.  Great films like The Lion King will always be hard to recreate. Granted, The Princess and The Frog isn’t as good as the films that made up my childhood, but it is good and will probably break records and land on some child’s all-time favorite list.

 

After the movie, it was nice to see Tiana had the longest line of girls, dressed in their best princess gowns, waiting to take a picture with her even as she was surrounded by Cinderella, Snow White, and Belle – some of the most popular Disney animated characters ever. Children will love Tiana, and I hope adults will remember what it’s like to be a kid again and embrace her too.

Tags: Animation, Children, Disney, Disney movies, The Princess and The Frog