Until the release date of Toy Story 3, it was at 100% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes according to the professional reviewers (T-Meter Critics). Enter a few contrarian jerks. On the release date of Toy Story 3, long after many of the reviews had already been posted, a couple of stray reviews were posted, stating that Toy Story 3 was rotten. This has ruined Toy Story’s perfect streak on the website, with both Toy Story and Toy Story 2 remaining at 100% fresh ratings, robbing it of the chance to be the only trilogy ever with a perfect 100% rating. Another negative review showed up on Sunday, making Toy Story 3′s rating a sadly imperfect 98%.

If the reviews were genuine, if they had real criticisms about the movie, I wouldn’t be so incensed by this. I admit, the Pixar fangirl inside of me would be annoyed, but if they were real reviews, that would certainly mitigate the fury that I feel right now at these three men, who can only really be characterized as assholes. Yeah, I said it.

One reviewer, Armond White, has a history of giving contrary reviews. If everyone loves it, inevitably, he hated it. He criticizes Toy Story 3 for having too much product placement, though he gives no explicit examples of how Toy Story 3 has any more product placement than either of the other Toy Story films. The blurb on Rotten Tomatoes reads: “Toy Story 3 is so besotted with brand names and product-placement that it stops being about the innocent pleasures of imagination — the usefulness of toys — and strictly celebrates consumerism.” In the full review, his main point seems to be that the movie is about toys, and that’s just not a good movie! Wow, how useful. He has gotten a lot of attention for his negative review, something I suspect was not on accident, and has managed to say absolutely nothing about why he has cursed the movie with the “rotten” rating. What is the point of a review if the reviewer cannot actually tell his readers why he did or didn’t like it? That’s left for us non-professional reviewers, who are allowed, by dint of not doing it professionally, to have an opinion of “I liked it” or “I didn’t like it.” We don’t have to ascertain whether the movie is good, merely whether we enjoyed it or not, and those are two vastly different things. He has cheated us all out of a real review by preferring to have a different opinion than everyone else on this and other popular films. (It’s not the first time he’s panned a fan and critic favorite.)

The second reviewer who posted his negative review on Friday is Cole Smithey. His blurb is this: “Once you get past paying the inflated price for an animated “3-D” movie where nothing floats in front of your eyes as with quality 3-D films, the story that unfolds is more sad than joyful.” I am amazed at how he has managed to say absolutely nothing critical about the movie itself other than the fact that it was sad. Really? A movie is sad? This makes it bad, apparently. His opinion of the 3D is equally ridiculous, since it seems like he wants the gimmicky 3D with things “flying” at his head. (That’s the first time I’ve seen anyone other than a kid want that experience.) Smithey’s website claims he’s the smartest film critic in the world. For a man that smart, one would think he’d be able to come up with more than a couple of short paragraphs about why he hated this otherwise universally loved film. “‘Toy Story 3′ is about neglect, betrayal, and the planned obsolescence of plastic toys that end up as so much toxic landfill.” And this is a bad message for the film, apparently, to have. Maybe if he spent his time focusing less on the fact that Andy had enough sentimental attachment to keep his childhood toys until he was 17 (I still have  my Holly bear, and I’m 25 in two days. What does that say about me, eh?) – Smithey implies that Andy can’t possibly be getting any dates as a result of his emotional attachment to toys that he’s had since he was a small kid) – he would have seen that the movie is less about the sad reality that eventually we all have to put away toys and do grown-up things for the majority of our lives. His review is forced at best, and he says nothing about what makes the film other than it includes themes like abandonment and the danger of planned obsolescence. Gee, definitely not things that people have to deal with in real life! And he totally ignores the ending, claiming that the film is sociopathic and promotes the wrong message to kids. Definitely don’t donate your toys to daycares or other smaller kids, folks! Definitely don’t do what you can to ensure that your old toys don’t end up in landfill, but instead go to other kids who will enjoy them as much as you did! Definitely don’t form emotional attachments to your toys that give you fond memories of your childhood, or you’ll never get any dates! Yep, I totally see it.

The third negative review that Toy Story 3 has been smacked with is by Jeremy Heilman. I’m not really sure what I can say about his review except that he totally pans Toy Story 3, calling the plot threadbare and accusing it of being a rehash of Toy Story 2. This man gave a more favorable review to a movie called The Human Centipede, in which people bite the butts of a person in front of them, forming a long line – in essence, a human centipede. What the hell? How can a movie like that garner more favor than Toy Story 3? He accuses:  “Toy Story 3 frequently indulges in the cheap brand of crass humor that has defined that series, with fart jokes, ethnic jokes, and gay jokes throughout its run time.” I’m not sure what movie he was watching, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Toy Story 3. This smacks of attention whoring to me – giving a negative review late, destined to be on the front page of Rotten Tomatoes, and scarring the reputation of an otherwise well-loved film.

These men do movie reviews at least semi-professionally. They are the ones that the rest of us look to (in theory) to help us decide whether a movie is worth our time and money. How are we supposed to trust any reviewer when there are those who are willing to give negative reviews simply for the sake of doing so, or for the attention that will inevitably follow for being in such a minority? There ought to be a level of integrity expected from those whose job it is to tell us whether something is good or bad. These reviewers should have some kind of check and balance to keep them from habitually panning fan and critic favorites for the sake of being contrary. You like a specific genre better than others, yet you review all genres? You are not a reviewer whose opinion should be broadcast to the general public, because what you are spreading is a false representation of the truth. Perhaps you don’t like this film (and that goes for any film), but if you have a history of disliking specific kinds of films, how is that a real review? It isn’t a criticism of the film itself, it is a criticism of the genre, disguised as a review for a specific film.

In the case of Toy Story 3, these reviewers have gamed the system and gotten away with it at the loss of something that Toy Story 3 and the Toy Story series deserve: a perfect record. The people at Pixar have poured their hearts and souls into this film, and it shows, just as it has with all of the ten films released previous to this. They strove to tell a good story, and they did. The only people in the world who disagree are these three assholes who can’t even manage to say anything real or valid about why they don’t agree that it was a cinematically well-told story.

Roger Ebert called Armond White a troll last summer for his inconsistent review history, and I’m going to go one further: Armond White, Cole Smithey and Jeremy Heilman: You are all trolls of the worst order. You don’t deserve to write reviews that other people are expected to take seriously. I hope Rotten Tomatoes yanks your T-Meter Critic status.

Disclaimer: I loved Toy Story 3. I am very incensed by what these men have written, but I think you should know that my bias in the other direction regarding this single film may affect your view of my thoughts here.

Fifteen years ago, the very first Toy Story film came out. I was ten years old, and I remember going to the theater to see it. I remember being amazed at how real everything looked, and loving the story. I thought Woody was the best toy ever, and Rex was one cool dude. I remember getting toys from Burger King, of all places, and playing with them a lot. (They were hand-puppets. Possibly the coolest kid’s meal toys that ever existed.)

In 1999, I was 14. Toy Story 2 came out and my mom again took us to see it. I remember being amazed that not only was it good (and sequels had a bad reputation by that time), but it was just as good if not better than the original! How could they manage such a feat? And then they released it with bloopers a couple of weeks later, and back to the theater I went, for the sole purpose of seeing it with the blooper reel at the end. It probably didn’t hurt that I loved the movie.

For the last eleven years, I’ve been enjoying both Toy Story and Toy Story 2, thinking that was all there was to the franchise, and thinking that was just fine. I was okay with Andy staying a kid in my imagination. And then I heard that there was going to be Toy Story 3. I was immediately skeptical. I mean, Pixar managed to capture lightning in a bottle twice with the Toy Story, erm, story. Could they really expect to do it a third time? Some of my fears were put to rest when we accidentally got to be part of a Q&A with Lee Unkrich, the director of Toy Story 3, at a screening of The Pixar Story at the Cleveland International Film Festival in March, 2008. He was so excited about Toy Story 3, about 3D, about all the things that both Disney and Pixar would be doing in the future, that it was impossible to decry the company as an imminent failure and the movie as dreck. (Not that I would ever, ever say such a thing! Perish the thought! Ahem.)

Since I now follow Lee Unkrich on Twitter, it was only natural to get excited as I heard him enthusing about the various stages of production over the last year or so. He posted countdowns, letting us know that Toy Story 3 was only months away, and then weeks, then days from release. How could I not get excited? Excitement, however, only leads to more worry, as it can often lead to the horrible feeling of anticipointment. (See: Ponyo.) I knew that we would have to see the movie on opening day, though. I couldn’t risk having the movie spoiled for me, and I definitely wanted to enjoy this movie without any expectations as to what the plot had in store (other than as seen in the trailer, of course).

On release day, we showed up at Crocker Park for our 9PM showing maybe a little early. We’re talking two hours early. Whoops. Radio Disney had a booth set up outside the theater where they were giving away prizes and encouraging all the kids to come and dance. I’m sure it was a major boon for the theaters those kids were in that they’d been dancing in the hot sun for a while and were likely to be slightly more subdued by the time they got in to the movie. Or maybe it just riled them up even more. Who knows? We hung out in the Borders next door for a while, and then about an hour ahead, walked over to the movie theater. We got a drink, and sat for a few, expecting to be let in probably forty to forty-five minutes early. We tried to go in, and the boy said that it would be about twenty minutes before he could let us in. Oh! Eventually a line formed for the Toy Story 3 showing in 3D, theater 6. We got let in at around 8:45, and some people ran to the theater as if all the seats would run out before they got there. We got seats in the back and settled in for the start of the movie.

First, I’d like to commend those who worked on the short. I loved it. Day & Night was charming and interesting, and while it’s obvious that it was Pixars traditional computer animation, it also had a feeling of some of the drawn cartoons that I watched as a kid. The combination was really neat. I loved the use of sound effects, too – it was clever and well-done.

We saw Toy Story 3 both in 2D and 3D. We saw the 3D first, so that factors more into my thoughts about the film at the moment. The opening Pixar logo in 3D was really fun. It had such depth, and the way that it was rendered wasn’t gimmicky at all. Really – one of the things that stood out to me was the opening logo. Weird? Maybe. But it was cool! Then, after waiting for three years (since hearing of the film at The Pixar Story), it was finally time to see Toy Story 3.

The movie starts with an action-adventure feeling, featuring all of Andy’s toys. It’s difficult to know why this is going on at first, but it was exciting to watch the toys in action sequences more fitting for the kinds of characters that they are. Wild west, anyone? We find out later that it’s Andy’s imagination as he’s playing with his toys, and then he gets interrupted by mom with her video camera. It’s a sweet opening sequence, reminding us of the Andy that the toys (and we, by proxy) loved in Toy Story and Toy Story 2. Then we come to real time. Andy is grown up. He has graduated from high school and is off to college in a matter of days. The toys make a last-ditch effort to draw his attention to the toy box in which they have languished for years, waiting for him to realize how important they are to him. And it doesn’t work.

Andy’s mom shows up and gives him an ultimatum: he needs to sort through his stuff before he leaves to college. College, attic and trash are the categories he has to choose from, and with a heavy sigh, he decides to make some hard decisions about his toys. They’re going into the attic, with the exception of Woody, who’s going to college with him. But then – disaster strikes! Of course it does, it’s a movie! Andy is silly enough to put the toys into a trash bag to put them into the attic, but he is distracted by Molly, who is taking a box of her own old toys downstairs to be donated to Sunnyside daycare. He helps her take the box downstairs and leaves his bag on the floor, right under the stairs to the attic. Mom finds them and assumes the bag is trash. Because … it’s a trash bag. And it’s on the floor. What else is she going to assume?

The toys are being thrown out! They start freaking out! They manage to use Rex’s tail and escape from the trash bag, just in time not to be picked up by the garbage man (cameo: Sid Phillips! I love how self-referential Pixar films are). They do their usual “hide under something and run” trick to get into the garage, where they get into Andy’s mom’s car and deposit themselves into the donation box. Woody tries to talk them out of it, assuring them that they were meant for the attic, not the dump, but nobody believes him (as usual!), and they all end up en route to Sunnyside.

Now we have the plot and the conflict, and I’ll leave you at that. I don’t want to summarize the whole movie because it feels much more clinical than actually watching it. No amount of summary could do justice to this movie.

Toy Story 3 is really a celebration of everything that Pixar is capable of, and of how far it has come in the fifteen years that they’ve been producing feature films. It’s amazing to me to watch and see that the screws on Buzz look so real that they could have been film instead of animation. The attention to detail is, as always, incredible. It’s a beautiful movie as far as the rendering is concerned. But the beauty doesn’t end there – it also has a beautiful story. Andy grows up and goes to college, but the toys are given new hope for the future; hope that they’ll be played with and enjoyed for years to come by a kid just as wonderful as Andy himself. (I know, I spoiled that bit. I gave a warning waaaaaay up at the top that I would!) It was so sweet to watch her, and also to think about the precious toys that I have had packed away since I grew too old to play with them and also too old to have them on display. (It’s maybe weird for a married alm0st-twenty-five-year-old to have her stuffed animals out for viewing.) I pulled Holly bear out of her box when I got home after seeing the movie on Friday night. I slept with her for the first time since probably high school, maybe longer. She smells the same as I remember – like whatever fabric softener my mom used to use when she’d wash the bear for the umpteenth time. I thought about Andy giving up his toys, and it made me emotional all over again. Could I do that with Holly? Not a chance.

Two days later, I can’t even adequately describe how the movie made me feel. I laughed, I cried (3D glasses are good for hiding the tears, but they do nothing for muffling the sniffles that accompany), I got nervous and excited. It was 103 minutes of movie bliss. We saw the movie again yesterday with Johnathan’s mom, and I’m going to suggest we go to see it at the drive-in next weekend (we did the same with both Wall-E and Up), so that we can talk during the film and nobody will get mad at us for it.

My favorite moment while watching the movie for the first time came not from the movie itself, but from the two or three year old girl who was sitting next to us. She really didn’t have a whisper voice, or even an inside voice, which was pretty annoying most of the time. She redeemed herself only by saying possibly the most funny thing I’ve ever heard a child say at just the right moment. In reference to a scene with Mr. Potato Head: “He looks more like Mr. PoTaco head!” I had to stifle my giggles because the moment onscreen was definitely not as funny as what I had heard. Yes, little girl, he did look like Mr. PoTaco head!

I loved Toy Story 3. So much. There’s really nothing else I can say in praise of this wonderful movie. Can you believe that Pixar has done it eleven times now? Eleven successes! Way to go, Pixar!

After we got home, I added the movie to our Netflix queue so that I could watch it again. Part of me wanted to ensure that I hadn’t just imagined how good it was, and that I wasn’t just in a particular mood to like it, which would mean that it wasn’t as likely to be repeatable. The rest of me just wanted to watch it again. (I do things like that.) I got it on DVD (because, sadly, it is not available on Netflix streaming), and verified that, yes, I had enjoyed it and it was a lasting enjoyment. The colors were vibrant and the dances were interesting. The usage of music was so unique to what I’m sued to in American cinema that I couldn’t help but be drawn to it.

Netflix, as it turns out, has a fairly healthy variety of Bollywood films available for streaming, which conveniently we can do right from our Playstation 3. I’ve been making my way through the ones that look interesting to me lately. So far, I’ve watched ten Bollywood films on Netflix Streaming. This doesn’t sound like a lot, but at an average of 2.5 hours long, I can, at best, watch two or two and a half films during my work-from-home day, which is when I use the streaming most. (As a matter of perspective, I can easily watch 4 American films, sometimes 5 in this same span of time.) They are long, but somehow they keep my attention through the end.

What I have seen so far:

• Chance Pe Dance: This has the same actor in it as My Heart Goes Hadippa – Shahid Kapoor. For this reason alone I put the movie into the streaming queue, and I don’t regret it. He is a very good dancer, and he seems to have less reservation when it comes to looking silly on film, which I find incredibly endearing. Chance Pe Dance was about a guy who was trying to make it in the film industry in Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay), and his struggles as relate to that goal. It is an endearing movie, and the dance and music sequences didn’t hurt its entertainment value.

• Kismat Konnection: I found this one very interesting. It also stars Shahid Kapoor, but it takes place not in India but in Toronto, Canada. This, I have learned, is not uncommon for Bollywood cinema. The films may be intended largely for Indian audiences, but they do not all take place in India, which differentiates the industry from Hollywood, where most American films take place in the United States. It, of course, centers around an Indian community, which makes sense. There’s a boy who was once very successful, but now seems to have nothing but bad luck. He’s told by an oracle that he needs to find his lucky charm and stick by her. He finds her, and they immediately don’t get along, but of course that changes through the course of the story. The conflict surrounds an Indian community center, which is going to be demolished to make way for a mall, and boy is an architect who finds his luck in being signed on to the project.

• Jab We Met: Shahid Kapoor again! Are we shocked? Boy is depressed because his mother ran off with another man and now his fiance has left him, and he has a business to run but doesn’t want to anymore because his mother is making crazy demands on her rights regarding the company. He gets on a train with the intention, it seems, of killing himself, and a well-meaning girl intervenes. She is chatty and interfering without, it seems, intending to be, and the movie centers around the things that happen to them as she tries to get home and he tries to figure out what it is that he really wants out of his life. Very sweet, very endearing.

• Pyaar Impossible: Nerdy boy sees popular girl and falls in love with her. She gets in trouble and he saves her, but as a result of her trouble, Daddy takes her out of college. She gets married, and boy doesn’t see girl again for a long time, but remains in love with her. Later, he has some software stolen and goes to Singapore to track down the evildoer who stole it, and happens to run into girl while he’s there. As it turns out, she is divorced and has a 6-year-old daughter, and he, through a series of misunderstandings, ends up as the nanny. Mayhem ensues. This is the first film I saw with Priyanka Chopra in it, and I was very impressed with her from the start. I found her very endearing, and I must say, she isn’t bad to look at, either. (She didn’t win Miss World for no reason, I suppose.)

• What’s Your Raashee?: Boy is away at college in Chicago, and his family calls him home under the pretext of father having a heart attack. (This seems commonly done in Bollywood films.) His family convinces him to get married within ten days so that he can get his inheritance from his grandfather to pay off his brother’s debts. He goes to a matchmaker of sorts, refusing a dowry, but insisting that he meet one girl of each Raashee (sun sign) to help his chances of finding someone with whom he will be compatible. Priyanka Chopra was also in this one, and played twelve different characters in the film – all twelve girls that he goes on a date with. His grandfather explains this similarity away by saying that he is searching for the face of his perfect mate in each of them, which is why they all look so similar. I think this has been one of my favorites so far, because of how well Priyanka Chopra played all of the different women, and how well executed it all was.

• Main aur Mrs. Khanna: Girl is an orphan and has no surname as a result. (God forgot to give her a last name, she explains.) Boy woos her and marries her, saying that she can share his name. Aww. They get married and move to Australia. Then his career tanks and he sort of unintentionally takes it out on her. He goes to Singapore for an opportunity, and instead of booking a ticket for her to go with him (as expected), he buys a ticket for her to fly to Dehli. She doesn’t go, and befriends two rather bumbling bartenders and gets a job at the airport. One of the bartenders calls her Mrs. Khanna all the time instead of her name, and this is a big deal throughout the film. It was a sweet film, although not as engaging as some of the others, I’d say.

• Bachna Ae Haseeno: Boy wants to be a playa. He befriends a girl on a vacation in Switzerland, and woos her. She falls in love with him, and he promises to save her from her arranged marriage. When they separate at the airport, he brags to his friends about all the “stuff” they did, none of which is true. She hears and her heart is broken. Later, he shacks up with another girl. He expects her to stay behind when he gets a job in Australia as a video game designer, but she decides it’s high time for them to get married. She goes so far as planning, well, everything, and then he ditches her on their wedding day without a single word of apology, and flies to Australia. While in Australia, he meets and messes around with a different girl each night, always managing to strike out with them eventually because he doesn’t actually care about them. He later meets a girl who is a taxi driver and she doesn’t believe in marriage, and he ends up falling for her, and she breaks his heart much in the same way as he broke the hearts of the other girls. Go figure! So he decides to go on a mission to apologize to the other two girls, learning a lot along the way. I won’t tell you how it ends, although I’m sure you can guess. It was very sweet, and I really liked the perspective of how Indian women are expected to live and behave, versus what I’m used to in the USA.

• Fashion: Priyanka Chopra again. Meghna (I love that name) wants to be a fashion model. The movie centers around her experiences in the fashion world, from beginner to top model and everything in between. It is dark and gritty, but also really shiny. It focuses less on music like other Bollywood films, but it definitely exposes a side of Indian culture that is different than American culture. The fashion industry there is much more… I want to say sheltered, but that is not the case. It has different standards and as a result, their scandals are not the same as our scandals. Interesting film.

• Chup Chup Ke: Boy is badly in debt after money-making scheme after money-making scheme failed. His creditors are on his case and want their repayment now, or else! He decides to throw himself into the ocean and drown himself so that his family will get the insurance money and will no longer be burdened by his debt. He… fails. And ends up playing a deaf mute in order to survive with his new companions. This one was long, and not my favorite as far as halfway through. I actually let it sit for over a month before finishing it. It turns out the end is better than the beginning! I really like Kareena Kapoor, and she was in this one (as well as others), and of course, Shahid Kapoor (no relation). I thought it was very sweet, and I might have cried a little.

So, ten films and counting (I recently popped a bunch more into our streaming queue for my work-from-home days). What have I learned? I don’t know a lot about Indian culture and norms. The movies help me learn a little bit, but I think it is distorted knowledge, because of course they’re movies, not accurate representations of life. I need to learn a lot more about the culture if I want to truly understand these movies. It probably wouldn’t hurt to learn a bit of Hindi, either. I’ve also learned that while the characters might say things like “shit” or “damn” or “bastard,” the translation will never, ever say that. It makes me laugh, actually, how much the subtitles are censored.

I feel like I have discovered a whole new genre of movies, and in a way, I have. It’s not exactly new, but it’s new to me, and it is, I think, braver than American cinema. American filmgoers are not happy to accept singing and dancing characters unless the movie is advertised as a musical. Some of these films have singing and dancing but would not, I feel, qualify as musicals because often the musical numbers have little or nothing to do with the actual story. It’s like a shiny, modern version of the 1930s and 40s Hollywood musical era. The music might not relate to the story, but who cares? We love those movies anyway. I love these Bollywood movies more than I ever expected I would. And I am all for expanding my horizons!

Since Ponyo was released in American theaters last summer, I’ve been hearing good things about it. Johnathan is a Miyazaki fan, so we’d intended to see it while it was in theaters. Then suddenly it wasn’t in theaters anymore, and we hadn’t managed to see it. Somehow it has fallen off of our radar consistently for almost an entire year! We got it on blu-ray the other day from Netflix, and finally got around to watching it (rather than letting our Netflix discs sit for months on end, as I have managed to do on more than one occasion).

Ponyo is very, very beautiful. The colors are wonderful and the characters are whimsical which makes it a treat to watch, at least from a visual standpoint. The film is hand-drawn on paper rather than cels, digital rendering or even digital drawing. The texture that results creates a depth that I’m not sure could quite be replicated any other way.

To my dismay, however, I did not find the plot as engaging as the art. I felt that it was a little bit lacking in overall plot depth. Little fishy wants to get away from her father/father figure and swims out into the open ocean, then ends up right near land, where Sosuke finds and saves her. Because she tastes human blood, she is able to morph herself into a human, albeit a socially inept one (since she’s not a human – she’s a fish). There’s talk about how when a fish with a human face comes to land, there’s a tsunami, and sure enough there’s a tsunami. Sosuke’s mom Lisa is a bit reckless and kind of stupid at times when it comes to handling the weather, and ends up abandoning the two small children in the house on the hill instead of evacuating as they were warned to do, and then in the end, some magical spirit lady shows up and says that if Sosuke really loves Ponyo then she can stay on land, and if not she has to become a fish again and live in the ocean. Sosuke promises that he does and everyone promises to be very good to each other, the end.

Nothing felt like it delved very far down below the surface, and I ended up bored enough that I just looked for the artistic details instead of paying much attention to the story. It was simple enough to comprehend that it did not require even half of my attention. I’ve watched only one other Miyazaki film to date, and of the two, this one was the less weird, but also less engaging. The other was much longer, but had a more complicated storyline which kept me interested through the end of the movie.  It was much darker, in art and in plot, but I think that was fitting for the story. Ponyo was light in color for the most part, but also fairly light in plot, with the majorest of events being the conflict of whether Ponyo will be able to live with Sosuke on land or whether she will have to return to the sea with the other “ponyos” and her parents.

While I view animation as a medium, not a genre (and certainly not a children’s genre), I felt that Ponyo was a movie aimed at children. It didn’t seem to have enough depth to keep me engaged, and in fact, I really liked The Princess and The Frog better than I liked Ponyo, which was totally unexpected. Ponyo was certainly a beautiful film, but I found it lacking in story development. I really wanted to like it, and maybe I would have if I had been watching with younger kids, who would likely have been enraptured by Sosuke’s adventures. I was really just disappointed by it, maybe because my expectations were so high. As Johnathan likes to put it, it was anticipointment.

I remember hearing that Disney was bringing back their 2D animation studio, and was pretty happy about that until I heard that the first thing out of the gates was going to be another princess movie. It was to feature a black princess, which excited people for about ten seconds before they started complaining. Why is her prince not black? Her name isn’t black enough! Etc, etc, etc. Drama. Walt Disney World was laden with banners and advertisements for the upcoming release of the film, and I really wasn’t all that excited about it. Usually I’m on board with seeing films in the theater (there’s nothing quite like a dark, quiet movie theater for immersing yourself in a film – emphasis on the quiet), but I really didn’t want to see The Princess and the Frog.

After the movie was released, I was expecting to either hear an ecstatic response, or a multitude of groans about how horrible it was. I heard neither. Maybe it’s because all of my media sources hadn’t seen the film in theaters, but then I didn’t hear about it after it came out on DVD, either. I figured, though, since Tiana was clearly a new Disney Princess and a mainstay, at least for a while, at the parks, I should at least see the movie so I would know what it was about. Into the Netflix queue it went. (On Blu-Ray,of course!)

Johnathan and I sat down to watch it with much reluctance, expecting that we would not at all appreciate it for what it was. We popped in the blu-ray disc and navigated through the approximately eighty previews to get to the menu, only to have it sit on that lightning bug for something like eight minutes before we gave up. It occurred to Johnathan that maybe the disc was prompting our system (Playstation 3) to look for a network connection before allowing us to go to the menu, so he went to unplug our router (which was currently just plugged in, but lacking in internet connection as Time Warner had disconnected us before our requested date, and we had not yet gotten our DSL modem for our new AT&T service), and poof! It worked! We had a bit of a facepalm about that, then proceeded in starting the movie.

I loved the style from the beginning, though Johnathan wasn’t as fond of it. I thought it pulled really well from the popular art style of the time. The story was pretty cute from the start, and we had a moment of amusement when we recognized John Goodman’s voice (it was akin to our “Patrick!” recognitions). It was cute. Princessy white girl and the black girl and her mother – mom’s telling a fairytale and sewing another princess-y dress for the white girl while the black girl enjoys the story, too. Appropriately, the story told is The Frog Prince. What else would it be? Then we see how Tiana lives – in a poor tenement with parents who clearly work very hard for what little they have but dream of having a better life. Then we are introduced to the moral: hard work and love will get you everything you need. Aww.

Tiana and her friend (whose name escapes me right now, but is definitely a spoiled princess by nature if not by title, but she’s at least not mean-hearted) grow up and Tiana works hard at two jobs trying to save up for her dream restaurant while the other girl is a rich daddy’s girl who is trying to woo a prince who is coming into town that very day. Plot point! Blah blah blah, Prince is arrogant, Tiana is prejudiced toward him and they both end up getting turned into frogs by an evil witch doctor who wants Big Daddy’s money, even if it means tricking the poor little rich girl into marrying a man who looks strangely like a monkey (the prince’s henchman). Through a series of wacky hi-jinks, Tiana and the Prince start to get along and fall in luuuuurve, and then there’s drama and a little creepiness and everyone lives happily ever after. That’s a seriously simplified version of how things went, but the ultimate sentiment is true.

The moral of the story is hard work and love. That stays consistent throughout. Tiana has her eyes fixed hard on her prize (her dream restaurant), and Prince Naveen wants some money so that he can continue living high on the hog and having fun without any responsibility. Big Daddy’s Princess wants to marry a prince and really doesn’t seem to have any goals at all outside of becoming a wife. Big Daddy’s Princess seems worst off out of everyone because she doesn’t really learn anything through the end of the movie, although she is a refreshing take on that type of character. She is not mean-hearted, even if she is spoiled, and ultimately she refuses to let Prince Naveen “sacrifice” himself by marrying her, but agrees to help Tiana and Naveen anyway. The others grow in their own way – Tiana learning that maybe hard work isn’t all there is to life (love) and Naveen learning that love of fun and money isn’t all there is, either (hard work and love). Aww. They get married and then, through hard work and a little help from Big Daddy’s Money, fix up the restaurant that Tiana had almost been blocked from buying because she’s a poor black woman (three strikes, you’re out).

There was a lot of humor in this movie, which I think helped it along, but there was a prevalence of dark elements which surprised me. The villain was a voodoo witch doctor who called on evil spirits to help him do his dirty work. He had a real motive, which is not something I have been able to say of all villains in animated films. He wanted Big Daddy’s money. (I’m sure that character has a name, but frankly I’m too lazy to look it up.)  He saw that Prince Naveen and his henchman had something that they wanted and used those wants to draw them into his evil plot. I’m not entirely certain why Prince Naveen had to be turned into a frog, but without his frogginess, we wouldn’t have had a Frog Prince story, would we? The evil spirits were actually pretty frightening in their ability to move about, and I was impressed with how unabashed the evil-ness was. As a small child, it would have terrified me. I remember being frightened by Sleeping Beauty and Alice in Wonderland as a child, though, so it wouldn’t have been out of line with some of the other Disney films. I actually quite liked the dark elements. It gave a real sense of danger and of conflict that propelled the movie along.

The Princess and the Frog also dealt more openly, I felt, with things like World War I, racism and sexism. Tiana’s father, it is implied, has died in the war, which I found to be an interesting element. It is never explicitly stated, but anyone with a knowledge of history should be able to glean that from the brief shot of his photograph in uniform on her desk. It might go over the heads of some smaller children, but they’ll figure out soon enough that he died, without having to go into great detail as to why. The racism and sexism come later when Tiana has finally worked hard enough and earned enough money to purchase the old sugar mill which she and her father had dreamed about turning into a restaurant. She gives the money to the realtors, and asks them to bring the contract to sign as soon as possible (smart girl) so that they can seal the deal. They agree, but later “regretfully” inform her that she has been outbid, and unless she can come up with the difference within a few days, the other bidder will own the property. The realtors comment that it was probably a bit much to take on for someone from “her background.” They are, not so subtly, referring to the fact that she is a poor black woman. I thought this bit was quite bold of Disney to address, considering it would have been the exact kind of opposition that any woman, but especially a black woman with no means other than what she creates for herself, would have experienced. Obviously she could have purchased another place, but she wanted that one, and what’s to say that she wouldn’t have run into the same kind of opposition for any property that she tried to buy? She was blocked from buying that which she had the means to purchase, simply because those selling viewed her as inferior. There are sexist overtones to the statement, too, but the racism is the strongest part. I really admire that the people involved with the film were willing to leave that element in.

Ultimately, she does get her building, and she buys it with her cans of money, but she has a little help from the alligator that she and Naveen befriend in their adventures in the swamp (grrrooowwwl!). It’s a little bit of a cheap way of her getting what she wants, but I’m glad that she didn’t have Big Daddy’s Princess sweep in and do it for her. This way, ultimately, she was getting what she wanted, largely on her own terms. And then she and Naveen do it the old fashioned way: by hand. I’m sure there was a little assistance from Big Daddy and Big Daddy’s Princess, and perhaps even Naveen’s parents, but I feel like Disney is showing that they ultimately did the work.

By the end of the film, it did start to smack us over the head a little bit, I liked the message. Magic didn’t get them what they wanted in the end, their love and hard work did. That’s not a bad thing to tell kids, especially with all of the other Disney films using such an emphasis on magical intervention and Happily Ever Afters. It’s the most realistic Happily Ever After I’ve seen in a Disney film. I really, ultimately, enjoyed the movie. Is it a perfect film? Not by a long shot. But I liked the story and the humor, and even the music was interesting. The art style was attractive and appropriate, and different than other Disney films, which makes it a unique creation. I’m sure Johnathan won’t be totally thrilled about this, but I’d like to own the movie, to put it on the shelf with the rest of my Disney fairytales that I go to when I need a dose of the unrealistic and magical. It was a pleasant way to spend an hour and a half. I just hope they’re not already planning a sequel. (No more sequels, Disney! John Lasseter, I’m looking at you!)