The Princess and the Frog was released on December 11th 2009. The story is based off of Der Froschkonig oder der eiserne Heinrich (The Frog Prince/Iron Heinrich in German) written by The Brothers Grimm in 1812 as Tale 1 in their book, Grimms' Fairy Tales.The movie takes place in New Orleans, Louisiana in the 1920's while the original story take place in Germany during the 1500's.
The Princess and the Frog was the last Disney movie (thus far) to be traditionally animated (hand drawn).
Tiana is voiced by Anika Noni Rose except during her childhood where she is voiced by Elizabeth M. Dampier. She is portrayed as being 19 years old in the movie. She is the first "modern" Disney Princess. This is due to the fact that she has a job, is working toward a career goal, maintains interracial friendships, encounters automobiles, is raised in a still-existing city, is surrounded by jazz music which is still a popular form of music today, and owns more than one outfit (11 in total).
Prince Naveen is voiced by Bruno Campos and is portrayed as being approximately 20 years old. Naveen is the prince of a fictional land called Maldonia. Disney purposely created the unknown country to make Naveen racially ambiguous and therefore show how a person's race isn't an important part of life.
Maldonia was based off of the real-life countries of Maldives and Macedonia, Greece. In the movie the country was said to have the official language of Maldaquesh which Disney derived from the Italian language. Naveen also mentions that in Maldonia there are two numbers between 28 and 29 called twenty-badini and twenty-cazini. Naveen's name means "new" in Indian. And if you look closely at the newspaper at the beginning of the movie when "Down in New Orleans" is being sung you can see that it says "Maldonia cannot be found on the map".
The Princess and the Frog explains the existence of the second star to the right which ties it to Peter Pan (but you'll have to watch the movie yourself to find out why :D ).
For a full list of cast members click here
For more movie fun facts click here
That's all for now! I hope you're reeeeaaaadyyy for the next Disney treasure we'll uncover!
I've learned a lot from your post of the background regarding The Princess and the Frog. I never realized how modern Tiana was compared to people today. I think that method would help people be more compelled to the character because they might be able to relate. I also feel that it was a good idea for Disney to reveal to its audience how race doesn't define who a person is and it shouldn't affect his/her treatment by others. Because you brought it up, one of the main reasons why I like Disney is their style of incorporating other characters or movies into another to bring all the stories into one timeline.
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