Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Animated Feature 2009

The Contenders:

Coraline
Fantastic Mr. Fox
The Princess and the Frog
The Secret of Kells
Up (winner)

Pucker Up!

Film: The Princess and the Frog
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on rockin’ flatscreen.

There was a time when Disney was the gold standard for animated movies. In a way, with Pixar as a part of their stable, they still are, but the titles that come out specifically under the Disney label are more hit or miss. There are great modern Disney films, of course, but there are some terrible ones, too. So with The Princess and the Frog, I really didn’t know what I was getting. I remember the release of this and the news that Disney was finally getting an African-American princess. There’s a lot of pressure in a situation like this; even an innocent misstep is going to be treated very harshly.

This is the story of the Frog Prince, of course, but since it’s a movie, that fairy tale is going to be taken in a different direction. After a short refresher on the basic story and an introduction to our main character as a child, we jump to the film’s present day of the mid-1920s in New Orleans. Tiana (Anika Noni Rose) is a hard-working young woman juggling two full-time waitressing jobs to save up for her dream of opening a restaurant. This is a dream she shared with her father (Terrence Howard), a man we see in the opening scenes of the film but who has died in the meantime, most likely a casualty of World War I.