Disney returns to roots with fairytale 'Princess and the Frog'

Walt Disney's musical "The Princess and the Frog" celebrates an entertaining and overdue return to classical, hand-drawn animation that has been kicked to the cultural curb in an era of gleaming, sanitized CGI and magically morphing stop-motion.

More important, "The Princess and the Frog" introduces the first black heroine to appear in a Disney animated feature.

To be sure, these are both laudable achievements in the annals of Disney animation, even if the movie represents a mishmash of recycled Disney conventions, and the young, black heroine spends most of her screen time as a green frog cleansed of her human ethnicity.

The story takes place in New Orleans during the 1920s when a happy-go-lucky nuclear black family meets with strife when their loving dad dies, leaving behind a wife and a plucky daughter, Tiana, determined to open her own restaurant and serve the food her father would have liked.

Her best friend is an infectiously excitable rich white girl named Charlotte (slammed into vocal warp-drive by Jennifer Cody) whose own father, a drawling, Southern aristocrat named "Big Daddy" La Bouff (John Goodman), adores and dotes on his little girl.

Stepping over this sanitized setup (this is, after all, a fantasy) the plot kicks in when the grown-up Tiana (Anika Noni Rose) meets a talking frog who asks her to give him a kiss and change his life.

The frog used to be the handsome and available Prince Naveen (Bruno Campos) - until he ran into a nefarious voodoo master named Dr. Facilier (Keith David), who lured the poor man into a magic spell that transformed him into his current green status.

Tiana musters up the moxie to lock lips with Naveen, but in a fairy tale twist stolen right out of "Shrek," Tiana becomes a frog, too.

Understandably miffed, Tiana eventually decides to hop along with Prince Naveen to seek help from the movie's version of the Wizard of Oz, only she's the old and cagey Mama Odie (Jenifer Lewis), a singing voodoo priestess.

Along the way, Tiana gathers up her Tin Man and Cowardly Lion in the form of a trumpet-playing, jazz-loving alligator named Louis (Michael-Leon Wooley) and a Cajun comic relief firefly named Ray (Jim Cummings).

"The Princess and the Frog" comes from directors John Musker and Ron Clements, who previously worked on Disney's "The Little Mermaid" and "Aladdin." They also cowrote the screenplay, which incorporates Disney nostalgia (such as the midnight deadline from "Cinderella") along with sharp, funny dialogue and a few punchy plot twists.

Still, "The Princess" fails to capture the enthralling magic of Disney classics or even recent Pixar animated features. These characters are a tad too generic, and their circumstances too familiar.

Disappointing, too, are the perfectly serviceable songs from Randy Newman, whose contributions to the soundtrack of "Toy Story" (particularly the theme "You've Got a Friend In Me") were memorable in their own right.

Here, Mama Odie performs a showstopper with "Dig a Little Deeper," a much better rendition than the wishful ensemble piece "When We're Human."

"Princess and the Frog" stood to separate itself from the usual Disney princess heroines by making Tiana a working-class black girl.

But like the supposedly Arabian title hero from "Aladdin," Tiana has been homogeneously blandified to the point of being unnervingly noble and boringly white-bread.

"The Princess and the Frog"

Rating: ★ ★ ★

Starring

Directed by: Ron Clements and John Musker

Other: A Walt Disney release. Rated G. 95 minutes