Disney’s The Princess and the Frog & Chomet’s The Illusionist

Disneyphiles out there would know that the new trailer for The Princess and the Frog (Disney’s much-anticipated return to the traditional 2D animated musical, in the tradition of Aladdin and The Little Mermaid) hit yesterday. If you have yet to see it, here it is:

I was looking forward to this flick as much as the next guy, but the trailer left me feeling a little underwhelmed. And for the record, let it be known that The Lion King is one of my all-time favourite movies, animated or otherwise, and I have a special place in my heart for traditional, hand-drawn animation.

The trailer for The Princess and the Frog just failed to capture my imagination. And I don’t think it has anything to do with my being almost 24, as the latest Pixar movies (such as Wall-E) still had the ability whisk me away into childlike whimsy.

I know it’s Disney, and we’re supposed to expect watered-down, palatable mush (I don’t mean that as a negative – Disney’s job is to play to the mainest of the mainstream, and it usually does it well), and maybe I’ve been tainted by the Shreks of this world and am expecting too much edge in my animated features, but this feels just a little too diluted for my tastes. The big-butt jokes did not help.

I dunno. Maybe I was expecting too much. After all, it is a kids movie, and I’m hoping it was just a poorly edited trailer, but going from what I saw, my interest in seeing this has gone from a 9 to a 4 (and I have a very accurate interest-o-meter). I’m still super excited that Randy Newman is providing the music, but other than that, there’s not much else that’s getting me into the theatre to see this.

Anyway, as this is a drawing and design blog, it would be remiss of me if I didn’t address the look of the movie.

The initial concept art for Princess blew me away. It was lush, colourful (bordering on psychedelic) and full of life. Here are a few of my favourites:

The animation on display in the trailer, while technically top-notch, just comes off looking a little lifeless to me (especially when compared to the concept art). The crispness of the characters against the beautiful painterly backdrops was jarring. At first I thought I’d been tainted by 3D rendered Pixar flicks, where the characters blend effortlessly into their environments, but then I came across these stills from Sylvain Chomet’s latest feature (also a 2D hand-drawn animation) The Illustionist – and keep in mind that these are stills from the animation, not concept art (via /Film):

Any of these stills look as if they were ready to be framed and hung on a wall, and you wouldn’t think they were stills from a movie. They are finished illustrations in their own right. Compare them to these stills from the Princess trailer:

Check out how beautifully rendered the painted backgrounds are compared to the flatness of the cell-animated characters. I guess Chomet’s backgrounds aren’t as fully rendered as Disney’s, which means that he doesn’t need to spend a lot of time rendering his characters in every frame to achieve a cohesiveness of style (line-work, colour and depth) – a cohesiveness that the hand-drawn animation of Disney lacks, despite the dozens of technical leg-ups they have over Chomet. Plus there’s something about the imperfections of the artist’s hand in Chomet’s work that gives it an immediacy and playfulness that the technically perfect Disneymation also lacks.

Now, I realise this is the way Disney has done it since the beginning (and Warner Bros. animation, for that matter), and perhaps I’m being nit-picky, and maybe I seem a little shitty for calling out Disney on something that isn’t really a flaw, more a stylistic choice – after all, Disney movies have been animated this way for decades, and no one’s ever faulted them on their visual ingredients (except maybe for their infamous recycling of animations, which was done to cut costs) – but after seeing Chomet’s gorgeous images, I can’t help but wish Disney would go out on a limb and provide us with something more interesting to look at.

If the above stills from The Illusionist took your fancy, I highly recommend you check out The Triplets of Bellville, Chomet’s 2003 animated feature debut. It’s not as plot-driven and cutesy as your average Disney flick, but it’s musical, it’s gorgeous, and it’s French.

What do you think, dear reader? Have I gone mad for questioning what Disney does best?