The best thing about The Princess and the Frog may turn out to be what also keeps it from truly being great. It’s a return to hand-drawn animation. A return to an “older” theory. A return to the Disney musical. In many senses, a return to the very roots of Disney feature-length efforts. These are all things the special features will play up at you rather specifically. But, somewhere in the valiant effort, we may have gone too far.
As much as it is a masterpiece of historic significance, and a frolicsome delight for the child within you, Sleeping Beauty is not particularly entertaining for the child with you. It’s likely that today this is as much a problem of pacing as it is the shortfall of humor children can latch onto, but The Princess and the Frog takes the general adult orientation up a few notches. Not content simply to go over their heads, or try their attention abilities, it rather rules them out completely in some respects.
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There’s a sense in which it seems fairly nonsensical to review Earth, the pseudo-docu-whatever released by Disney via BBC and The Discovery Channel, but in the end it delivers so well that some manner of kudos are in order… even if a review isn’t.
Before the movie starts, you’re going to hear about Disney’s True Life Adventure series, which were naturementaries that received high praise back in the pre-1960 world of entertainment. Now, we might just be trying to sell you on your plans for next Earth Day, but I was glad for the promo. I remember a different era of Disney. Wondering what you were going to save your last few E tickets for, and a better viewpoint behind the production schedule.
Earth is rather reminiscent of a different kind of Disney. There’s a certain kind of story to the thing, but mainly it’s just a loosely-worked frame that is our excuse to look at some incredible imagery… and cute, baby animals. And, that’s okay. And, there are lessons to be learned, whether they are the ones we are meant to learn or not. For instance, if an elephant was smart enough to just step on a lion’s head when he could see the damn thing, a lot less elephants would get eaten by lions.
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