Disney- Southern Style

I saw Disney’s latest creation, The Princess and the Frog, and must admit it was pretty damn fun. For this movie Disney gets back to its magical singing and dancing roots except this time, wait for it, the princess is black.

Tiana grows up all her life believing in hard work to achieve her goal of someday owning her own restaurant, a dream shared by her dearly departed daddy. When she is older, she finally has money to buy the building, but is outbid. Meanwhile, the handsome Prince Naveen is new in town, set out to marry a wealthy princess to get back his fortune. Along the way he gets turned into a frog by the evil Shadow Man, a voodoo witch doctor pimp who has friends from the other side. Of course, he meets Tiana, thinks she’s a princess, they kiss, she turns into a frog, and what follows is a Jazz filled adventure through the bayou to get to megical little blind lady so they can turn back into humans, fall in love, and live happily ever after. They also sing lots of songs and meet a trumpet playing alligator.

The movie is a lot of fun and thankfully doesn’t have too much singing to get irritating. The musical numbers have the essential Disney touch, with characters delving into fantasy land, singing and dancing around and having all sorts of fun. In between the songs is a fun adventure tale and lessons learned about hard work and looking deep into yourself to figure out what’s truly important in life. Disney movies are often filled with such messages for young children, but this story in particular really touched upon lessons and ideas without seeming like it was stuffing them down our throats. So the effect goes down nice and easy, like a delicious swamp gumbo.

The characters, mostly talking swamp creatures, are entertaining if not borderline stereotypical, like the toothless yokel lightening bug or the inbred hill billy frog hunters. I particularly enjoyed the depiction of the shadow man, with his vest and tight pants, especially when he gets sucked into what I assumed to be the bowels of voodoo hell. The main character Tiana is one to be easily sympathized with and I must admit I was very happy to see her finally open that restaurant. Her Prince is your typical smooth talking play boy who learns life isn’t all fun and games and throwing down daddy’s money to snag tail. But the real scene stealer is the hilarious and over the top white girl, Princess Charlotte, a spoiled Southern belle who is more down to Earth than one would imagine.

Much better than the stupid sequels Disney has been churning out and just as entertaining as their computer animated movies, The Princess and the Frog is Southern-fried good time that kids will surely beg to see. 7/10 swamp frogs.

A Christmas Carol

The millionth reworking of Charles Dickens “A Christmas Carol”, appropriately titled A Christmas Carol, opened number one at the box office this weekend and yours truly went out and saw it. But not in 3-D, I don’t need to experience an old, skeletal man in a night gown hurtling towards my face. Humbug. My annoyance with Jim Carrey aside, this movie wasn’t half bad. It’s no A Muppet Christmas Carol, but it’ll do.

You know the story. Ebenezer Scrooge is a total ass hat and tortures innocent house pets in his spare time. One Christmas Eve the universe has had enough of his shit so they send three ghosts, none of them Patrick Swayze, to make him realize that if he doesn’t change his ways, he’ll be tits up within a year and no one will care. Well, no one except all of the people who financially benefit from his death of course. In the end, he learns his lesson, buys the Cratchets a big fat turkey, makes nice with his family, and out lives Tiny Tim. I assume.

The movie is basically the classic tale retold in CGI. The images are amazing, especially the sweeping views of London or the transitional journeys between memories when Scrooge is rollin’ with ghosts. But I couldn’t get over how all of the characters sometimes resembled people from the Sims, with the humanly robotic movements. And even though I didn’t see it in 3-D, you can tell when things were supposed to pop out or surround you. Most of it was pointless but 3-D is very in this year, you see.

Voice work is pretty good if not a little over the top when it came to the ghosts. Jim Carrey played about every voice, but none of them sounded like him so it was lost on me. I did love hearing Colin Firth’s sturdy voice as Scrooge’s nephew. And I’m going to hell for saying this, but Tiny Tim bugged the holly berries out of me. Yeah, it was way sad when he died, but if I had a kid who went around spouting “God bless us everyone” every minute I’d cane him with his own crutch. But he was a cute little street urchin, I’ll give him that.

And despite this being a Disney joint, the movie was very dark and sometimes it startled me. We open with a close up of a freshly dead Marley, then are treated to images of ghosts with broken jaws, evil dirty children, a man attempting to murder mice, and scariest of all, Ebenezer in a nightie. Darkness is balanced with humor when appropriate, but it got a little too wacky at some points. Kids in the audience however ate it up. But my favorite thing about the movie was how ginormous of a douche bag they make scrooge out to be, even for a PG movie. He tells the poor to go to hell y’all!

So basically, this is the same old story with a CGI makeover. Nothing new, but it was entertaining enough that I didn’t demand my money back. I liked it and dub it 6/10 Christmas puddings.