The Princess and the Frog Review

As you all know, I've been anxiously waiting to see Disney's The Princess and the Frog. This movie features Disney's first African-American princess, so little girls of color everywhere will believe that they too can be a princess just like our lighter skin cohorts. Well I finally saw it and I loved it. Of course there always has to be controversy. There were several issues brought up about the movie that have the African American community in a tizzy. I am not a movie critic by any means but I do have opinions about some of the controversy that I'd like to share.




1. Princess Tiana Barbie doll's hair is too straight. Ok seriously. Women of color have been straightening our hair for years to make our kinky locs easier to manage. In fact the majority of us wear our hair in the same fashion as Tiana so why are we complaining. I understand that wearing our hair 'all natural' is the new 'in thing' to do but we all know that if Tiana rocked a super duper Afro then there would be an uproar because Tiana's hair would look too ethnic. There's no winning with this issue.




2. Prince Naveen is not a black man. I can see the both sides of this issue. I guess for African Americans, we want the whole enchilada (no pun intended). A black princess being wisked away to marry her rich and handsome black prince. It's kind of a slap in the face to black men out there who have yet to see themselves represented in any Disney fairy tales. After all, if we can have a black President then why can't we have a black Disney Prince? Just thought I'd throw that in. I thought it was kind of cute!





But on the other hand, interracial relationships are prevalent nowadays so there will be many biracial kiddos out there who will feel good knowing that their mixed heritage won't keep them from becoming a princess (or a prince :-). Maybe it's Disney's way of helping us become more tolerant, or maybe they just needed to, spice the movie up a bit since the majority of the cast is black, or maybe it's a shout out to the Latino community. Who knows? Prince Naveen is so nice to look at, you hardly notice the color of his skin.

3. Too many stereotypes. Discussions over whether Tiana's lips are too full, or hips too curvy, the fact that Tianas mom (voiced by Oprah Winfrey) was a house keeper to a rich white family, the firefly with the missing teeth, the super thick southern drawl, etc, etc. All of these go back to my original premise of you can't please everybody. Nothing was done distastefully in my opinion.




4. Too much voodoo/evil. Well this is not really anything different for Disney. Most of their cartoons contain a basic theme of good vs evil so why all the fuss now? I could have done without the evil shadows that were sent out to find the prince but that's just because demons tend to give me the heebie jeebies. Good and evil are a part of life. Maybe we need to start young in realizing how to deal with it so that we make sure we always choose good! I guess you can argue that it was a bit of overkill since Evan was covering his eyes whenever the shadow demons popped up on the screen. Ian (and Terrance) were both asleep by this point so they couldn't care either way.

Overall, I thought it was a charming story about overcoming adversity with the moral of the story being that you have to work hard for what you want in order to make your dreams come true.




As a woman of color...I'm just glad that we've been added to the number.

~Shanita~