The first movie I saw theatrically was The Little Mermaid. The rise and fall of Disney during that period occurred during much of my formative years. The documentary Waking Sleeping Beauty covers a great deal of the first decade of my life. It'll be on DVD in the fall, so pick it up then, but the style of it made me want to apply some of my memories to mentioning a few things about some recent Disney home video releases. These pieces will post in a total of three parts.
The Princess and the Frog was generally subjected to reviews that overused words like "just okay" and "not quite a classic", which I think is an unfair examination of it under towering expectations. There was no way on the somewhat-green Earth that PATF could have had the impact on first viewing for me that Little Mermaid did. During the holidays, they moved more Tiana merchandise than any of the other princesses combined, however. I'm not going to fall back on a "the movies are made for children" defense, but rather, try to look at the progressive themes that are layered in to Tiana, Naveen, Louis, and Ray's journey relative to Mermaid.
Compared to Tiana, Ariel is a naive, dependent creature of luxury. She doesn't sign devil's bargains, and instead pushes for the path of hard work leading to reward. She finds love on her terms, and doesn't need Naveen to keep breathing like Ariel needs Eric. Naveen is a crucial part to her happiness, but he's a component rather than the whole. He's icing on the cake, whereas Eric is the whole cake.
The songs are catchy and rich with the very unique flavor of New Orleans, which is impossible to describe. You simply have to know it from having been there. They don't sound like Howard Ashman songs or Alan Menken songs, nor those of Elton John and Tim Rice. If the music were homogenized to precisely match what came before, everyone would have complained that it was too "generic" rather than "unmemorable".
The extras on the Blu-ray include the standard making-of, character, and "Disney legacy" featurettes. My favorite was the one that focused on the return to hand-drawn animation, which I re-watched a couple of days before Waking Sleeping Beauty. Some deleted scenes are included as well, along with a music video and some games.
Disney is on the right track with hand-drawn animation, though I'm not fond of the re-titling of Rapunzel to Tangled. More on that as we get closer to release.