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Description
Lets continue our Disney marathon with their return to 2D animation, and the story of two humans who become frogs.

In early 20th century New Orleans, a girl named Tiana and her friend Charlotte La Bouff listen to Tiana's mother read the story of The Frog Prince. Charlotte, a believer in true love, finds the story romantic; Tiana declares she will never kiss a frog. 16 years later, Tiana grew into an aspiring young chef who works as a waitress for two local diners, so she can save enough money to start her own restaurant, a dream she shared with her father James, who is implied to have died in World War I. Prince Naveen of Maldonia arrives in New Orleans to better his financial situation. After being cut off by his parents for being a philanderer and spendthrift, Naveen intends to marry a rich Southern belle, and Charlotte is the perfect candidate. Eli "Big Daddy" La Bouff, a rich sugar baron and Charlotte's father, hosts a masquerade ball in Naveen's honor. Charlotte hires Tiana to make beignets for the ball, giving her enough money to buy an old sugar mill to convert into her restaurant. Meanwhile, Naveen and his valet, Lawrence, meet a voodoo witch doctor, Dr. Facilier. Inviting them into his emporium, Facilier convinces them that he can make their dreams come true. Still, neither gets what he expects: Naveen is transformed into a frog while Lawrence receives a voodoo talisman that gives him Naveen's appearance. Facilier intends for the transformed Lawrence to marry Charlotte, after which he will kill La Bouff and split his fortune with Lawrence, secretly giving himself the larger sum. At the ball, Tiana discovers she may lose the mill to a higher bidder. She then meets Naveen, who, believing her to be a princess because of her costume, asks her to kiss him and break Facilier's spell. In exchange for the money needed, Tiana reluctantly accepts. Still, since she is not an actual princess, she is turned into a frog herself when she kisses Naveen, which also gives her the ability to talk to other animals. A chase ensues, and Tiana and Naveen escape to a bayou. In the bayou, Tiana and Naveen meet a trumpet-playing alligator, Louis, who dreams of playing in a band with humans, but whose ferocious appearance prevents him from doing so. They also meet a Cajun firefly, Ray. Ray believes that the Evening Star is another firefly named "Evangeline," and is deeply in love with her; no one has the heart to tell him otherwise. Louis and Ray offer to lead Tiana and Naveen to a voodoo queen, Mama Odie, who they believe can undo the curse. During the journey, Tiana and Naveen develop feelings for each other. Meanwhile, Facilier makes a deal with the voodoo spirits (his "friends on the other side"), offering them the souls of the people of New Orleans. Now it's up to Tiana and Naveen to do anything they can to turn human again, and stop Facilier.

Pros:
1. Tiana is a great, relatable, and well developed protagonist.
2. Naveen, Louis, Ray, Charlotte, Lawrence, Mama Odie, Eudora, Big Daddy, and to an extent James are all great support.
3. Dr. Facilier is an awesome and intimidating villain.
4. The movie has a great sense of humor.
5. A great amount of charming and heartwarming moments.
6. Very well handled suspense and intensity.
7. Amazing chemistry between the characters.
8. Randy Newman delivers an excellent and fitting score, as well as some great songs like "Down in New Orleans", "Almost There", "Friends on the Other Side", "When We're Human", "Ma Belle Evangeline", "Dig a Little Deeper", and "Never Knew I Needed".
9. Stellar and colorful animation that provides great character designs, well crafted and highly detailed backgrounds, and pretty neat effects.
10. Amazing voice acting.
11. Like the classic Disney films, it has a very well balanced light/dark tone.
12. The story is very well written, and does have some good twists.

Cons:
1. Despite being well written, it is easily predictable. It can also get pretty complicated at times.
2. The scene with the frog hunters was pretty much pointless.

Overall:
This is a great return to form for Disney Animation. From one of their lowest points with movies like Atlantis and Treasure Planet bombing, and Home on the Range and Chicken Little just being flat out bad, to their much needed boost with Meet the Robinsons and Bolt, and finally to this, is a perfect representation of recovery. This is an absolute must watch.

Rating:
9/10 (Amazing)

Production Notes and Trivia:
1. Disney had once announced that 2004's Home on the Range would be their last traditionally animated film. After the company's acquisition of Pixar in 2006, Ed Catmull and John Lasseter, the new president and chief creative officer of Disney Animation Studios, reversed this decision and reinstated hand-drawn animation at the studio. Many animators who had either been laid off or had left the studio when the traditional animation units were dissolved in 2003 were located and re-hired for the project. Lasseter also brought back directors Ron Clements and John Musker, whose earlier works include The Great Mouse Detective, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Hercules, and Treasure Planet. The duo had left the company in 2005, but Lasseter requested their return to Disney to direct and write the film and had let them choose the style of animation (traditional or CGI) they wanted to use.
2. The story for the film began development by merging two projects in development at Disney and Pixar at the time, both based around "The Frog Prince" fairy tale. One of the projects was based on E. D. Baker's The Frog Princess, in which the story's heroine (Princess Emma) kisses a prince turned frog (Prince Eadric), only to become a frog herself. The Princess and the Frog returns to the musical film format used in many of the previously successful Disney animated films, with a style Musker and Clements declared, like with Aladdin and The Little Mermaid, had inspiration from Golden Age Disney features such as Cinderella.
3. Musker and Clements thought that given all fairy tales were set in Europe, they could do an American fairy tale. They stated that they chose New Orleans as a tribute to the history of the city, for its "magical" qualities, and because it was Lasseter's favorite city. The directors spent ten days in Louisiana before starting to write the film.
4. The Princess and the Frog was originally announced as The Frog Princess in July 2006, and early concepts and songs were presented to the public at The Walt Disney Company's annual shareholders' meeting in March 2007. These announcements drew criticism from African-American media outlets, due to elements of the Frog Princess story, characters, and settings considered distasteful. African-American critics disapproved of the original name for the heroine, "Maddy", due to its similarity to the derogatory term "mammy". Also protested were Maddy's original career as a chambermaid, the choice to have the black heroine's love interest be a non-black prince, and the use of a black male voodoo witchdoctor as the film's villain. The Frog Princess title was also thought by critics to be a slur on French people. Also questioned was the film's setting of New Orleans, which had been heavily damaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, resulting in the expulsion of a large number of mostly black residents. Critics claimed the choice of New Orleans as the setting for a Disney film with a black heroine was an affront to the Katrina victims' plight. In response to these early criticisms, the film's title was changed in May 2007 from The Frog Princess to The Princess and the Frog. The name "Maddy" was changed to "Tiana", and the character's occupation was altered from chambermaid to waitress. Talk show host Oprah Winfrey was hired as a technical consultant for the film, leading to her taking a voice-acting role in the film as Tiana's mother, Eudora.
5. In February 2007, it was reported that Dreamgirls actresses Jennifer Hudson and Anika Noni Rose were top contenders for the voice of Tiana, and that Alicia Keys directly contacted Walt Disney Studios chairman Dick Cook about voicing the role. It was later reported that Tyra Banks was considered for the role as well. By April 2007, it was confirmed that Rose would be voicing Tiana. Tiana was inspired in part by famed restaurateur Leah Chase, who Clements and Musker met on their research trip to New Orleans.
6. Clements and Musker had agreed early on that the style they were aiming for was primarily that of Lady and the Tramp, a film which they and John Lasseter feel represents "the pinnacle of Disney's style". "After that, everything started becoming more stylized, like Sleeping Beauty, 101 Dalmatians—which are fantastic films as well, but there's a particular style (to Lady and the Tramp) that's so classically Disney." Lady and the Tramp also heavily informed the style of the New Orleans scenes, while Disney's Bambi served as the template for the bayou scenes. Bambi was described as a stylistic reference for the painted backgrounds, as according to art director Ian Gooding "Bambi painted what it feels like to be in the forest instead of the forest" so The Princess and the Frog would in turn try capturing the essence of roaming through New Orleans.
7. The former trend in Disney's hand-drawn features where the characters and cinematography were influenced by a CGI-look had been abandoned. Andreas Deja, a veteran Disney animator who supervised the character of Mama Odie, says "I always thought that maybe we should distinguish ourselves to go back to what 2D is good at, which is focusing on what the line can do rather than volume, which is a CG kind of thing. So we are doing less extravagant Treasure Planet kind of treatments. You have to create a world but [we're doing it more simply]. What we're trying to do with Princess and the Frog is hook up with things that the old guys did earlier. It's not going to be graphic…". Deja also mentions that Lasseter was aiming for the Disney sculptural and dimensional look of the 1950s: "All those things that were non-graphic, which means go easy on the straight lines and have one volume flow into the other—an organic feel to the drawing." Lasseter also felt that traditional animation created more character believability. For example, with Louis the alligator, created by Eric Goldberg, Lasseter said: "It's the believability of this large character being able to move around quite like that." Choreographer Betsy Baytos was brought by the directors to lead a team of eccentric dancers that gave reference to make each character a different style of movement. The character design tried to create beautiful drawings through subtle shapes, particularly for most characters being human. For the frog versions of Tiana and Naveen, while the animators started with realistic designs, they eventually went for cutesy characters "removing all that is unappealing in frogs", similar to Pinocchio's Jiminy Cricket.
8. Toon Boom Animation's Toon Boom Harmony software was used as the main software package for the production of the film, as the Computer Animation Production System (CAPS) system that Disney developed with Pixar in the 1980s for use on their previous traditionally animated films had become outdated. The Harmony software was augmented with a number of plug-ins to provide CAPS-like effects such as shading on cheeks and smoke effects. The reinstated traditional unit's first production, a 2007 Goofy cartoon short entitled How to Hook Up Your Home Theater, was partly animated without paper by using Harmony and Wacom Cintiq pressure-sensitive tablets. The character animators found some difficulty with this approach, and decided to use traditional paper and pencil drawings, which were then scanned into the computer systems, for The Princess and the Frog.
9. The one exception to the new Toon Boom Harmony pipeline was the "Almost There" dream sequence, which utilized an Art Deco graphic style based on the art of Harlem Renaissance painter Aaron Douglas. Supervised by Eric Goldberg and designed by Sue Nichols, the "Almost There" sequence's character animation was done on paper without going through the clean-up animation department, and scanned directly into Photoshop. The artwork was then enhanced to affect the appearance of painted strokes and fills, and combined with backgrounds, using Adobe After Effects.
10. The visual effects and backgrounds for the film were created digitally using Cintiq tablet displays. Marlon West, one of Disney's veteran animation visual effects supervisors, says about the production; "Those guys had this bright idea to bring back hand-drawn animation, but everything had to be started again from the ground up. One of the first things we did was focus on producing shorts, to help us re-introduce the 2D pipeline. I worked as vfx supervisor on the Goofy short, How to Hook Up Your Home Theater. It was a real plus for the effects department, so we went paperless for The Princess and the Frog." The backgrounds were painted digitally using Adobe Photoshop, and many of the architectural elements were based upon 3D models built in Autodesk Maya. Much of the clean-up animation, digital ink-and-paint, and compositing were outsourced to third-party companies in Orlando, Florida (Premise Entertainment), Toronto, Ontario, Canada (Yowza! Animation), and Brooklin, São Paulo, Brazil (HGN Produções).
11. Originally, Alan Menken was considered to be in charge of the soundtrack. However, Lasseter thought that since Menken scored the Disney film Enchanted, the music might be too repetitive, especially the fact that some previous Renaissance Disney animated films technically had other songwriters (particularly The Lion King, Mulan, and Tarzan). Lasseter realized that Randy Newman, whom he had previously worked with, was the perfect choice for the film and replaced Menken with him, due to the fact that Newman is a jazz composer and grew up in New Orleans, making him compatible with the project´s musical setting that is based on.
12. The film was released on Blu Ray and DVD in 2010, and later on 4K Blu Ray in 2019 for the film's 10th anniversary.
13. Tiana makes a guest appearance on the Disney Junior series Sofia the First.
14. Tiana, Prince Naveen, Eudora and Dr. Facilier appear on the seventh season of Once Upon a Time.
15. A video game based on the film was made for the Nintendo DS.

Description
Lets continue our Disney marathon with their return to 2D animation, and the story of two humans who become frogs.

In early 20th century New Orleans, a girl named Tiana and her friend Charlotte La Bouff listen to Tiana's mother read the story of The Frog Prince. Charlotte, a believer in true love, finds the story romantic; Tiana declares she will never kiss a frog. 16 years later, Tiana grew into an aspiring young chef who works as a waitress for two local diners, so she can save enough money to start her own restaurant, a dream she shared with her father James, who is implied to have died in World War I. Prince Naveen of Maldonia arrives in New Orleans to better his financial situation. After being cut off by his parents for being a philanderer and spendthrift, Naveen intends to marry a rich Southern belle, and Charlotte is the perfect candidate. Eli "Big Daddy" La Bouff, a rich sugar baron and Charlotte's father, hosts a masquerade ball in Naveen's honor. Charlotte hires Tiana to make beignets for the ball, giving her enough money to buy an old sugar mill to convert into her restaurant. Meanwhile, Naveen and his valet, Lawrence, meet a voodoo witch doctor, Dr. Facilier. Inviting them into his emporium, Facilier convinces them that he can make their dreams come true. Still, neither gets what he expects: Naveen is transformed into a frog while Lawrence receives a voodoo talisman that gives him Naveen's appearance. Facilier intends for the transformed Lawrence to marry Charlotte, after which he will kill La Bouff and split his fortune with Lawrence, secretly giving himself the larger sum. At the ball, Tiana discovers she may lose the mill to a higher bidder. She then meets Naveen, who, believing her to be a princess because of her costume, asks her to kiss him and break Facilier's spell. In exchange for the money needed, Tiana reluctantly accepts. Still, since she is not an actual princess, she is turned into a frog herself when she kisses Naveen, which also gives her the ability to talk to other animals. A chase ensues, and Tiana and Naveen escape to a bayou. In the bayou, Tiana and Naveen meet a trumpet-playing alligator, Louis, who dreams of playing in a band with humans, but whose ferocious appearance prevents him from doing so. They also meet a Cajun firefly, Ray. Ray believes that the Evening Star is another firefly named "Evangeline," and is deeply in love with her; no one has the heart to tell him otherwise. Louis and Ray offer to lead Tiana and Naveen to a voodoo queen, Mama Odie, who they believe can undo the curse. During the journey, Tiana and Naveen develop feelings for each other. Meanwhile, Facilier makes a deal with the voodoo spirits (his "friends on the other side"), offering them the souls of the people of New Orleans. Now it's up to Tiana and Naveen to do anything they can to turn human again, and stop Facilier.

Pros:
1. Tiana is a great, relatable, and well developed protagonist.
2. Naveen, Louis, Ray, Charlotte, Lawrence, Mama Odie, Eudora, Big Daddy, and to an extent James are all great support.
3. Dr. Facilier is an awesome and intimidating villain.
4. The movie has a great sense of humor.
5. A great amount of charming and heartwarming moments.
6. Very well handled suspense and intensity.
7. Amazing chemistry between the characters.
8. Randy Newman delivers an excellent and fitting score, as well as some great songs like "Down in New Orleans", "Almost There", "Friends on the Other Side", "When We're Human", "Ma Belle Evangeline", "Dig a Little Deeper", and "Never Knew I Needed".
9. Stellar and colorful animation that provides great character designs, well crafted and highly detailed backgrounds, and pretty neat effects.
10. Amazing voice acting.
11. Like the classic Disney films, it has a very well balanced light/dark tone.
12. The story is very well written, and does have some good twists.

Cons:
1. Despite being well written, it is easily predictable. It can also get pretty complicated at times.
2. The scene with the frog hunters was pretty much pointless.

Overall:
This is a great return to form for Disney Animation. From one of their lowest points with movies like Atlantis and Treasure Planet bombing, and Home on the Range and Chicken Little just being flat out bad, to their much needed boost with Meet the Robinsons and Bolt, and finally to this, is a perfect representation of recovery. This is an absolute must watch.

Rating:
9/10 (Amazing)

Production Notes and Trivia:
1. Disney had once announced that 2004's Home on the Range would be their last traditionally animated film. After the company's acquisition of Pixar in 2006, Ed Catmull and John Lasseter, the new president and chief creative officer of Disney Animation Studios, reversed this decision and reinstated hand-drawn animation at the studio. Many animators who had either been laid off or had left the studio when the traditional animation units were dissolved in 2003 were located and re-hired for the project. Lasseter also brought back directors Ron Clements and John Musker, whose earlier works include The Great Mouse Detective, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Hercules, and Treasure Planet. The duo had left the company in 2005, but Lasseter requested their return to Disney to direct and write the film and had let them choose the style of animation (traditional or CGI) they wanted to use.
2. The story for the film began development by merging two projects in development at Disney and Pixar at the time, both based around "The Frog Prince" fairy tale. One of the projects was based on E. D. Baker's The Frog Princess, in which the story's heroine (Princess Emma) kisses a prince turned frog (Prince Eadric), only to become a frog herself. The Princess and the Frog returns to the musical film format used in many of the previously successful Disney animated films, with a style Musker and Clements declared, like with Aladdin and The Little Mermaid, had inspiration from Golden Age Disney features such as Cinderella.
3. Musker and Clements thought that given all fairy tales were set in Europe, they could do an American fairy tale. They stated that they chose New Orleans as a tribute to the history of the city, for its "magical" qualities, and because it was Lasseter's favorite city. The directors spent ten days in Louisiana before starting to write the film.
4. The Princess and the Frog was originally announced as The Frog Princess in July 2006, and early concepts and songs were presented to the public at The Walt Disney Company's annual shareholders' meeting in March 2007. These announcements drew criticism from African-American media outlets, due to elements of the Frog Princess story, characters, and settings considered distasteful. African-American critics disapproved of the original name for the heroine, "Maddy", due to its similarity to the derogatory term "mammy". Also protested were Maddy's original career as a chambermaid, the choice to have the black heroine's love interest be a non-black prince, and the use of a black male voodoo witchdoctor as the film's villain. The Frog Princess title was also thought by critics to be a slur on French people. Also questioned was the film's setting of New Orleans, which had been heavily damaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, resulting in the expulsion of a large number of mostly black residents. Critics claimed the choice of New Orleans as the setting for a Disney film with a black heroine was an affront to the Katrina victims' plight. In response to these early criticisms, the film's title was changed in May 2007 from The Frog Princess to The Princess and the Frog. The name "Maddy" was changed to "Tiana", and the character's occupation was altered from chambermaid to waitress. Talk show host Oprah Winfrey was hired as a technical consultant for the film, leading to her taking a voice-acting role in the film as Tiana's mother, Eudora.
5. In February 2007, it was reported that Dreamgirls actresses Jennifer Hudson and Anika Noni Rose were top contenders for the voice of Tiana, and that Alicia Keys directly contacted Walt Disney Studios chairman Dick Cook about voicing the role. It was later reported that Tyra Banks was considered for the role as well. By April 2007, it was confirmed that Rose would be voicing Tiana. Tiana was inspired in part by famed restaurateur Leah Chase, who Clements and Musker met on their research trip to New Orleans.
6. Clements and Musker had agreed early on that the style they were aiming for was primarily that of Lady and the Tramp, a film which they and John Lasseter feel represents "the pinnacle of Disney's style". "After that, everything started becoming more stylized, like Sleeping Beauty, 101 Dalmatians—which are fantastic films as well, but there's a particular style (to Lady and the Tramp) that's so classically Disney." Lady and the Tramp also heavily informed the style of the New Orleans scenes, while Disney's Bambi served as the template for the bayou scenes. Bambi was described as a stylistic reference for the painted backgrounds, as according to art director Ian Gooding "Bambi painted what it feels like to be in the forest instead of the forest" so The Princess and the Frog would in turn try capturing the essence of roaming through New Orleans.
7. The former trend in Disney's hand-drawn features where the characters and cinematography were influenced by a CGI-look had been abandoned. Andreas Deja, a veteran Disney animator who supervised the character of Mama Odie, says "I always thought that maybe we should distinguish ourselves to go back to what 2D is good at, which is focusing on what the line can do rather than volume, which is a CG kind of thing. So we are doing less extravagant Treasure Planet kind of treatments. You have to create a world but [we're doing it more simply]. What we're trying to do with Princess and the Frog is hook up with things that the old guys did earlier. It's not going to be graphic…". Deja also mentions that Lasseter was aiming for the Disney sculptural and dimensional look of the 1950s: "All those things that were non-graphic, which means go easy on the straight lines and have one volume flow into the other—an organic feel to the drawing." Lasseter also felt that traditional animation created more character believability. For example, with Louis the alligator, created by Eric Goldberg, Lasseter said: "It's the believability of this large character being able to move around quite like that." Choreographer Betsy Baytos was brought by the directors to lead a team of eccentric dancers that gave reference to make each character a different style of movement. The character design tried to create beautiful drawings through subtle shapes, particularly for most characters being human. For the frog versions of Tiana and Naveen, while the animators started with realistic designs, they eventually went for cutesy characters "removing all that is unappealing in frogs", similar to Pinocchio's Jiminy Cricket.
8. Toon Boom Animation's Toon Boom Harmony software was used as the main software package for the production of the film, as the Computer Animation Production System (CAPS) system that Disney developed with Pixar in the 1980s for use on their previous traditionally animated films had become outdated. The Harmony software was augmented with a number of plug-ins to provide CAPS-like effects such as shading on cheeks and smoke effects. The reinstated traditional unit's first production, a 2007 Goofy cartoon short entitled How to Hook Up Your Home Theater, was partly animated without paper by using Harmony and Wacom Cintiq pressure-sensitive tablets. The character animators found some difficulty with this approach, and decided to use traditional paper and pencil drawings, which were then scanned into the computer systems, for The Princess and the Frog.
9. The one exception to the new Toon Boom Harmony pipeline was the "Almost There" dream sequence, which utilized an Art Deco graphic style based on the art of Harlem Renaissance painter Aaron Douglas. Supervised by Eric Goldberg and designed by Sue Nichols, the "Almost There" sequence's character animation was done on paper without going through the clean-up animation department, and scanned directly into Photoshop. The artwork was then enhanced to affect the appearance of painted strokes and fills, and combined with backgrounds, using Adobe After Effects.
10. The visual effects and backgrounds for the film were created digitally using Cintiq tablet displays. Marlon West, one of Disney's veteran animation visual effects supervisors, says about the production; "Those guys had this bright idea to bring back hand-drawn animation, but everything had to be started again from the ground up. One of the first things we did was focus on producing shorts, to help us re-introduce the 2D pipeline. I worked as vfx supervisor on the Goofy short, How to Hook Up Your Home Theater. It was a real plus for the effects department, so we went paperless for The Princess and the Frog." The backgrounds were painted digitally using Adobe Photoshop, and many of the architectural elements were based upon 3D models built in Autodesk Maya. Much of the clean-up animation, digital ink-and-paint, and compositing were outsourced to third-party companies in Orlando, Florida (Premise Entertainment), Toronto, Ontario, Canada (Yowza! Animation), and Brooklin, São Paulo, Brazil (HGN Produções).
11. Originally, Alan Menken was considered to be in charge of the soundtrack. However, Lasseter thought that since Menken scored the Disney film Enchanted, the music might be too repetitive, especially the fact that some previous Renaissance Disney animated films technically had other songwriters (particularly The Lion King, Mulan, and Tarzan). Lasseter realized that Randy Newman, whom he had previously worked with, was the perfect choice for the film and replaced Menken with him, due to the fact that Newman is a jazz composer and grew up in New Orleans, making him compatible with the project´s musical setting that is based on.
12. The film was released on Blu Ray and DVD in 2010, and later on 4K Blu Ray in 2019 for the film's 10th anniversary.
13. Tiana makes a guest appearance on the Disney Junior series Sofia the First.
14. Tiana, Prince Naveen, Eudora and Dr. Facilier appear on the seventh season of Once Upon a Time.
15. A video game based on the film was made for the Nintendo DS.