You won’t need a pair of red-and-blue glasses for this one kids, but you might just need a tissue!
Disney’s ‘’The Princess and The Frog’’ marks the dramatic - and much welcome - return to hand drawn animation for Walt’s shingle. And it isn’t just gorgeous to look at; the movie - - is a sweet, touching, and warm effort from the crowd that have brought up such beloved PC-free efforts like ‘’Bambi’’, ‘’Dumbo’’ and ‘’The Lion King’’.
The pic – not surprisingly – features an all-star line-up, including Oprah Winfrey (!) and Terrence Howard. Behind-the-camera is another star, one John Lasseter, helmer of the legendary “Toy Story” and “A Bug’s Life” – and now, eminently, the CEO of the studio.
It was Lasseter who decided hand-drawn animation should be reintroduction into the Disney charter.
‘’I never understood why the studios wanted to stop doing hand-drawn animation. They felt that audiences around the world only wanted to watch computer-animated movies. And I didn’t understand that. I don’t think ever in the history of cinema did the medium of a film make a film entertaining or not. What I always felt is that what audiences like to watch is really good movies. My partner at Pixar, Andrew Stanton, said, and I agree with him, that ‘It felt like 2-D animation became the scapegoat for bad storytelling’.
When he was appointed the chief executive officer at Walt Disney Animation Studios, the first thing Lasseter did was make moves to bring back 2-D movies.
“If there’s a studio that could and should bring back quality 2-D animated movies it’s the one that started it all in the first place.”
Lasseter said he immediately asked animation vets John Musker and Ron Clements (who directed 2D classics “Aladdin” and The Little Mermaid”, to name but a couple) to return for another Mac-less effort.
Musker and Clements were as pleased as punch to do another hand-drawn animated tale and were sent away to brainstorm.
‘’Usually, you would go away and come back with three ideas or so, but John and Ron came back with nine ideas!’’, says Lasseter, an executive producer on the picture. “And one of those ideas was The Princess and the Frog, which was a wonderful twist on the Frog Prince, where when the girl kisses the frog, she turns into a frog, too, because she's not a true princess. When they pitched it, it was sooo good.
“And we also decided we wanted it to be a musical set in New Orleans - and we’d get Randy Newman – who I’d worked with plenty of times before - back to do it. Now for those that don’t know, Randy grew up in New Orleans – his family is in New Orleans, and he’d go back every Summer – so he knows New Orleans. And he knows New Orleans music – it’s in his DNA – so I think he was a phenomenal choice.”
The film’s writer/directors thought it’d be a super idea, if even because of the setting, to have an African-American character lead the film.
‘’Musker and Clements were very, very excited about having an African American lead – and I was too. And we wanted to do it right; we didn’t want to do anything that might hurt anybody. We did our homework – on everything. I mean, we did a tremendous amount of research for this film, as we do with all our other films. It was very important for us to make the characters as real and believable for today’s audiences. We spoke to people from the African-American community and we went down to New Orleans to soak in the sights, take lots of pictures, and talk to people.”
Lasseter says over 50,000 photographs were snapped and used as a reference and inspiration when they were making the movie.
‘’I always tell my filmmakers that you need to do tons of research because you don’t know where the inspiration is going to come from. So, we did our homework and tried to tell a story with a character that would make everyone proud and happy.
“It’s all about entertaining the audience with great characters and great stories – you want to make them cry, and you want to make them laugh, you want to give them a movie that they want to watch over and over again. That’s my goal as a filmmaker”, says Lasseter, adding that he believes audiences are really going to enjoy “The Princess and the Frog”. “It has been over a decade since Disney’s last princess fairy tale, Beauty and the Beast, in 1994. We haven’t had something like that in a while and we are really excited over The Princess and the Frog. And there’s just something so special about a sincere fairy tale, a musical, and hand-drawn animation. That’s something I don’t think the audience will ever outgrow.”
- ASHLEY HILLARD
"The Princess and the Frog" opens Jan 1, 2010
