*** Official THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG Review Thread

Well, it was nice to see the return of a traditional cel style animated feature. Unfortunately, I don't see this film as being the renaissance of handdrawn animated features. It wasn't a bad film. In fact, it had some good business but, overall, it seemed rather uninspired. The musical numbers were ok, but none of them felt like "A" material. A lot of them them felt like the composer showed up with his B game: as if he had some bean counter hanging over his shoulder telling him to watch the budget. For example, there is a scene in the film that is similar in structure to the "Kiss the Girl" scene in "The Little Mermaid"; however, the music backing Tiana's and Naveen's dance just didn't grab a person, unlike "Kiss the Girl" which was memorable. As a result, the scene never really pulls a person in. Musically, the whole film feels like that. The music supports the show, but never really reaches the level where a person feels like they have just heard and watched something special.

The animation was nicely done;however, I still left the theater feeling that people were being told to keep the budget in mind, instead of being told to make a great movie. In fact, judging by the credits, it looked like they actually had contract animation houses working on this film, rather than doing it all in-house.

All in all, I found it was entertaining enough, but rather generic in terms of story and music. It was a good effort, but never reaches the level of films such as The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, and The Lion King. I'm giving this one a B-.