Double Feature #4

Rango: Basically, four people involved with the Pirates of the Caribbean movies (Johnny Depp, Bill Nighy, Gore Verbinski, and Hans Zimmer) got together to do the same thing over again except as a Western. The town is even called Dirt (as in, "I've got a jar of dirt, and guess what's inside it?"). As other people have said, it's about someone who pretends to be someone he's not, revealed as a liar, banished, then returns to save the day. My favorite Pixar movie, A Bug's Life, is the same way. While I will always like that movie better for my own personal reasons, Rango isn't bad at it either. Though it was produced for Nickelodeon and is a bit immature at times, overall it is an enjoyable movie to sit through.

The Princess and the Frog: Another great Disney animated film said to measure up to some of its predecessors from the early nineties. It's set in New Orleans, and its protagonist is Tiana, a career woman driven by the ambition to open her own restaurant in honor of her late father. I like her as a character, especially as one of the more well-rounded Disney princesses like Belle or Jasmine. However, they still stick her with the plot that involves her falling in love with a prince in three days, and she is very much against it from the start as they are two completely different personality types. In fact, the prince is actually supposed to be marrying her best friend Charlotte, who is really hyper and bat-sh*t crazy (all Disney protagonists should have a BFF like this; actually, now that I think about it, she's kind of like a younger version of Blanche from The Golden Girls). Charlotte's father is played by John Goodman, which makes sense given his involvement in the show Treme, even though people say his casting is because he's Disney's b*tch (although at the costume party his character is dressed like Zeus). In the end, even though I'd like to say that Tiana's plot contrivance to fall in love and marry the prince takes away from the fact that she's a hard-working individual (Oprah as her mother saying she wants grandkids is classic), it is needed to balance out the give-and-take between her and Naveen. The villain in this is called the Shadow Man, and he is sort of like Ursula from The Little Mermaid in that he gives people what they want but with one hell of a catch. His villain song is even on par with hers. However, Ursula is the better villain, in my opinion, because she controls her own magical ability while the Shadow Man's is borrowed and he seems less of a threat because of it because you know his "friends on the other side" will get him in the end.

(Side note: I actually laughed during The Little Mermaid 2 when Sebastian said "It's Ursula's crazy sister!")