BEFORE: Yes, February is the month of love and romance - but it also contains Mardi Gras. Pure coincidence...or is it? Linking from "Shrek Forever After" is simple since Eddie Murphy was also in "Dreamgirls" with Anika Noni Rose, who provide the voice of the titular princess tonight.
TCM's Oscar schedule, Day 2: I'm picking up "1776" this morning because I need a better copy - this will also test whether my DVR is willing to record off of TCM again. If it isn't, I'm sure they'll run it again on July 4. I've seen the film before, so it doesn't affect my count. Then the tour moves on to Canada for 5 films, including "Johnny Belinda" and "The 49th Parallel", and then down to Mexico, for "The Wild Bunch" (seen it) and "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (ditto). So nothing to add to the list until tomorrow.
THE PLOT: A fairy tale set in Jazz Age-era New Orleans and centered on a young woman named Tiana and her fateful kiss with a frog prince who desperately wants to be human again.
AFTER: We all know the fairy tale, right? A prince has been turned into a frog, and needs to be kissed by a princess to turn human again. But WHY was he turned into a frog in the first place? I think I forgot to ask questions like that when I was a kid. But this film decides to answer the question, and I think it's important that it does.
A frog is lowly, humble - so maybe the prince needed to learn a lesson in humility. (Sounds like a pitch meeting - go on...) Then we add another layer to the story - someone needs the prince out of the way, so turning him into a frog gets rid of him, just seal him up in a jar. Since this is set in New Orleans, whatever witch appeared in the original tale has been turned into a voodoo houngan. Which means we can do all kinds of spooky voodoo stuff, and get the attention of the little boys as well as the princess-infatuated girls!
About that - I was afraid going in there would be all that dreamy Disney princess guck like Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty displayed. But nay nay, this is a new Disney heroine - not just the first Disney princess of color, but the first one with a real work ethic. (Except maybe Snow White, didn't she clean the dwarves' house? Or did she make her forest animal friends do it?) So the new formula is: wish upon a star, but then work really hard, and your dreams will come true. Yeah, that seems a little more realistic.
So there are teachable moments here - the prince learns a little humility, and Tiana learns that maybe there's more to life than focusing on her career. Can these crazy mixed-up kids meet somewhere in the middle?
Tiana is also smart enough to know that making a deal with dark forces to get what you want rarely turns out well. It's a lesson that Shrek (and, for that matter, Spider-Man a few years back) should have heeded. It turns out that voodoo, like Rumpelstiltskin's contracts, have a lot of tricky rules, and a few loopholes.
The one character I couldn't get was Charlotte, Tiana's friend, who's a spoiled Southern belle who thinks that wanting things and deserving things are pretty much the same - yet she's generous when the plot needed her to be. Well, which is it? Is she an entitled brat, or not? She doesn't work as a foil character for Tiana unless she's everything that Tiana is not. But then, I suppose they wouldn't be friends? Instead of being a complex character, she's just a confusing one.
NITPICK POINT: So every man, woman, amphibian and insect in the greater New Orleans area speaks Cajun and plays zydeco music? Seems a little simplistic and also over-the-top.
NITPICK POINT #2: So Tiana tries to buy a building for her restaurant, but gets outbid. So what? She still has the money, right? And there are other buildings in town? So why is this such a stumbling block? For someone who wants to stay true to her dream, she sure gives up on it easily.
NITPICK POINT #3: Every fairy-tale reader knows that it's not really midnight until the 12th bell rings, not the FIRST. Sheesh.
Also starring the voices of Keith David (last seen in "Head of State"), Bruno Campos, Michael-Leon Wooley, Jennifer Cody and Jim Cummings (last heard in "The Jungle Book 2"), with cameos from Oprah Winfrey, Terrence Howard (last seen in "August Rush"), and John Goodman (also last heard in "The Jungle Book 2")
RATING: 6 out of 10 beignets
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