The Princess and the Frog

The Princess and the Frog (2009)
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0780521/]

The Gist:
It was not my idea to watch this film. In fact, I'm not sure I would have ever seen it, not because I'm above watching kid flicks but because it seemed kind of a boring film/gimmick/potentially racist. On the last note, I ended up watching it in the context of a film lecture based on how Disney appropriates the black race for its own purposes. In that context, I have to say the film becomes watchable (but it's still dull, don't let me fool you). Anyway, what was proposed in the lecture was that the Dad's ethos is Disney's ethos (work hard and you'll succeed, blah blah blah), that New Orleans and the buzz of Katrina and Gumbo and financial disparity are all sanitized in order for Disney to hit that broad appeal, and that the focus is on family and marriage as the most important resolution for the female character. In summation, the film itself is neither great nor terrible, but fairly static storytelling, and if you look at it from a critical point of view it may or may not be ingraining its ideological tenets into the heads of impressionable little earthlings, inculcated them with its evil Disney mantra.