First off, you can listen to me talk about this movie with Grace Pierce and my good friend Scott Interrante for their podcast Big White Elephants or as a part of You Got A Friend In Me: A Randy Newman Podcast! Always great to talk to Scott about Randy and great talking to Grace for the first time.

This is my favorite Disney Princess movie. I think for obvious reasons, Randy Newman’s music, a more progressive message, and traditional 2D animation as opposed the headache inducing 3D animation to which we have been forced to adapt.

The Princess And The Frog follows Tiana, a waitress who recent lost her father in the First World War, who shares her father’s dream of opening a restaurant in New York Orleans. As Mardi Gras approaches, a young prince arrives in town for the festivities and Tiana attempts to buy a space to start the restaurant but is outbid.

While people prepare for a masquerade party, Prince Naveen meets Dr. Facilier, a witch-doctor who transmogrifies Naveen into a frog in order to claim a fortune by marrying a wealth daughter of a sugar mill owner by having Naveen’s man servant disguise himself as Naveen using Dr. Facilier’s magic. If you’re getting a headache, that’s fine, it’s done a lot more elegantly in the movie.

At a masquerade party Tiana finds out she’s been outbid and in an act of desperation agrees to kiss Naveen who has been turned into The Frog. Once she does so Tiana herself gets turned into a mucus covered frog and the two of them flee the part into the bayou. In the bayou they meet a fun cast of characters that help them along their way back to New Orleans in order to turn back into humans, something that I find less and less appealing each day.

Eventually, they make their way back to The Big Easy and are turned back into their true forms and realize they’ve fallen in love on the way. There is a devastating moment where the film’s heart, a firefly named Ray, gets squished to death and it makes me cry every time.

If you don’t know this about me, I love Randy Newman and his many works, not a few of which have aged like milk in the hot sun, but I grant him the grace of knowing the points he was trying to make and the time in which the songs were written. The music in this picture is staggering, from the ‘I want song’ of “Almost there” to the soulful “Evangeline” Randy really outdoes himself in his compositions. The score that plays through out. interconnects the sequences beautifully. Randy’s pastoral, romantic, and distinctly southern use of strings instruments emboldens the listener to think, ‘hey maybe life ain’t so bad.’

All the voice actors are incredible in this picture, but I want to shout out Jim Cummings who plays the firefly Ray. Jim is a veteran voice performer and has been a staple of Disney for many years. He truly is at the top of his game in this film, doing a cajun accent, making jokes about his butt, and sings a hauntingly beautiful song about being in love with a star.

The themes of the film are strong and important, particularly for a children’s film. The Film constantly asks what is the difference between wanting something and needing something. Just because you want it, doesn’t mean it’s good for you. which is a lessen I think many of us could use refresher on. That hard work is important but you also have to enjoy life and that enjoying life is important but you also have to work hard. You need both, you should want both, and balance is key. That family is one of the great gifts of life and if you can love some, you probably should.

Also, that you shouldn’t make deals with the devil.

One of my favorite works of literature is Faust (which Randy Newman also wrote a version of) so I was immediately drawn to the Dr. Facilier’s part of the story. While voodoo and satan ain’t exactly the same, I don’t know enough about voodoo to fully get into it, but it’s made clear that Mama Odie who is a paragon and a ‘good witch’ in the film also uses voodoo as a source of power, nor do I know enough about voodoo to speak on it’s cultural significance and blah, blah, blah a white Northerner prefacing an opinion. However, the lesson that one should be honest about one’s dealings and shouldn’t ask for evil supernatural help as it always enacts a price too big to be worth it I find compelling. Probably because I’m in the entertainment industry.

Overall, this film is fun, funny, and has great music and lessons. I’d recommend it to anyone who is in the mood for a children’s movie musical or has children who need a movie to watch.

The runtime is a perfect 97 minutes.