Why do you think the Princess and the Frog underperformed?

[beautybelle]

We loved it and would've already bought it by now but my mom is wanting to buy it and put it in my daughters Easter basket.

 

[iwrbnd]

I'm hoping it will catch on and be another classic. We feel it's good enough! The only thing it lacked was funny jokes. There were a few but not as many.

 

[Lisa loves Pooh]

I have no opinions one way or the other. I thought the movie was okay. Not super fantastic or anything.

But I have grown spoiled with computer animation.

The old animation format--I'm not too much of a fan. For that reason, Lilo and Stitch was "ok" to me as well. Nothing great--but not a movie that I rush to pop into the DVD player or anything.

I'm not sure if there is validity to my statements--but maybe folks didn't rush to it for that reason.

 

[Lisa loves Pooh]

4.) The economy was pretty bad and movies are much more expensive than they used to be. A movie ticket during the depression was $0.25. Adjusted for inflation that's $3.82 today. Movies in my area are $12 now.

I don't believe it was the cost of movies. Overall--movies are doing phenomenally well. Even kid flicks that are great wont' do so bad.


If a movie isn't doing well--it isn't the economy causing it.

Summer of 2009 had UP and they took in $414 million.

 

[Rora]

I liked the movie but I wouldn't say I love it. I didn't feel really attached to the main characters..Not sure why. I missed that connection.

I did LOVE the music, the animation, Charlotte, the voodoo sequences, Mama Odie, and the whole "feel" of the movie.

We will probably buy it.

 

[Kim&Chris]

My nieces, ages 10 and 7, thought it was ok. Nothing spectacular. It was heavily marketed here in the Philadelphia area.

 

[Handbag Lady]

My guess is that the release date was very, very wrong.

It should have either been a Christmas Day movie, or a Spring/Summer movie. The first week of December is a bad time. People are too busy shopping and getting ready for the holidays. A Christmas Day release would have given the movie a better chance.

I think that marketing also has a card in this game. Less princessy, and more emphasis on the plot. For those who have seen the movie (And I have three times!) when does the princess actually happen? Think about it.

If they would have marketed it as a journey-type movie, it would have fared better.


Overall, it was a great movie and did deserve to do better at the box office. The hand-drawn animation was so incredibly warm.

 

[Sorsha]

We bought it right away, but haven't been able to watch it yet. We are waiting for a night when we are ALL home to sit down and enjoy it together. Sigh... it may be a while.

I get such a kick out of people saying they didn't like the return to hand-drawn animation, that they prefer the Pixar movies. I am SO the opposite. The fact that this is hand-drawn is the thing I am MOST looking forward to! I am so very tired of the computer animated movies, and so DONE with the Pixar-ize-ing of the Disney franchise. Gah. They are good movies (mostly) but we don't have to see them everywhere we turn.

Anyhow, that said, I actually think that the reason this movie underperformed is that it didn't have a "hook" - nothing that's popular right now to draw the audience into the theaters. No pirates, no vampires (not that there should have been in a kids' movie), no ninjas, no superheroes, no racecars, no dinosaurs, no Jack-Black- or Shrek-style comedy, no 3D - nothing that seems to be what kids are looking for in their entertainment. The only "hook" they could claim was the first black princess, and a re-work of a familiar fairy tale. neither, it seems, was quite enough.

 

[*Fantasia*]

We saw it at the theatre.. and LOVED it! I want to buy the dvd.

 

[Bree89]

My BF and I went to see it about a week after Christmas and I was really looking forward to seeing it. Surprisingly, he liked it but I thought it was just ok(usually with animated movies its the other way around for us lol). It was good, but it was nothing to really jump out of my chair over. I felt it was all a bit rushed. Maybe that's just me, but that's what I got out of it lol.

 

[TheDisneyGirl02]

There was an article in my local newspaper maybe two weeks ago about the movie. It basically said that it is believed the movie didn't do as well as it could have because it had 'Princess' in the title and boys dont' want to see movies like that. Disney is releasing their version of Rapunzel (sp) in November and because of the way Princess and the Frog was received by audiences, they have changed the title from Rapunzel to "Tangled" to try to get the boys to the theaters. I found the article very interesting.

http://www.mcall.com/features/parenting/bal-disney-princess-movies-boys,0,2611679.story

 

[Geoff_M]

Personally I think the "racism" angle is just an easy angle to blame. I thought the film was very well done, I really liked the Randy Newman soundtrack, and I was pleased to see that my earlier pronouncement that "hand-drawn films are dead" was premature. I also don't really think we can blame Disney marketing. They sold the heck out of the film. They had trailers in the theaters for months beforehand, I saw lots of TV advertising, and there was all the PR buzz about the film containing the first Disney African-American "princess" and the fact that it was set in the US.

To me what likely hindered the film's box-office performance was:
1) It wasn't a Pixar film. You can't under-estimate the value that audiences have associated with the Disney/Pixar brand. And it isn't just the "gee-whiz" computer animation. The public knows that Pixar crafts great films both technically and in terms of story-line, characters, etc.
2) As pointed out previously, a lot of boys thought the film had cooties.
3) I suppose that you could try and put this film in the same class as Beauty & The Beast in terms of it being a well known tale thrown up on the screen by Disney. But a lot of the similarities end there. While I liked Newman's soundtrack, it doesn't have the mass audience appeal of Beast and isn't likely to launch a multi-year Broadway run. The story line, characters, etc. of Princess also seemed more in line with another middle-of-the-road performing Disney animated feature: The Rescuers.... except this time the insect talked and the alligator was friendly.

 

[DisneyJules]

I think it under preformed because audiences have grown and their taste in animated films have developed. When Disney came out with Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, the Lion King ect....it was all new to the audience. But then that formula got old and Pixar became very popular and have been extremely successful. I know while I watched Princess and the Frog, I had to keep on reminding myself that this was not a Pixar movie and not to have the same set of expectations. And that has NOTHING to do with it not being computer animated feature. In my opinion Pixar has good story and character development down to a science. A cutesy film with a lot of songs doesn't really cut it.

That all said, I still enjoyed the Princess and the Frog, it was just "different" from the animated films I'm use to.

 

[SundaeAfternoon]

I just saw it last week and it was okay for me. Not great and not terrible. Music was eh. They need to bring Alan Menken back. The music would have been much better if he'd been involved. I liked the beginning and end of the movie. The middle part with the two frogs just seemed long and boring to me.

 

[Sgt Mickey]

We liked it. I tool the entire family to it (three boys one girl and one dh) and we all thought it was cute. I went and bought the dvd and we all can't wait to watch it again but we have been saving it to watch on our way to Disney.

 

[FireDancer]

Most of the reasons I think it had trouble have already been mentioned:

Title turned off boys
Mainstream, Non-Disney audience not as drawn to hand-drawn animation as computer
Non-Pixar Disney animated movies seem to have a stigma at the moment due to some recent under performing movies (Home on the Range, Brother Bear)

Disney no longer looks at only box office to determine if a film has succeeded or failed. There is merchandising, DVD/BluRay sales, rental revenue, and other residuals that could make the movie a financial win even with a lower then hoped for box office.

While I'm sure there are some people who wouldn't see a "black" movie I think those people are outliers and not sufficient in numbers to really impact the bottom line.

 

[Kit'smommy]

I bought it last weekend because DS wanted to see it. I hadn't been wowed by the marketing, but I thought the movie was really good.

I do wish Tiana had been drawn as a more realistic character. She was lovely, but I felt like I was sometimes watching at an AA Belle.

Personally, I think Disney has quite a few movies that deserved a better reception than they got and I have watched several hits that I didn't think were really that good. Treasure Planet is one of my favorites (it bombed), and I know few people who aren't Disney fanantics that even know of its existence. We have lent our copy out numerous times to friends that were delighted with it. And I love Pixar, but did not like Wall-E in the least. Different tastes...

 

[mtemm]

my dd (just turned 6 last week) didn't want to see it when it was the in the theatres. she just had no interest, and when asked, she said she didn't care about frogs and it didn't seem like a real princess (bayou scenes and such). my boys had no interest because it was about a princess. to be fair, my eldest (age 8) is not a big movie lover anyway. very few and far between, and rarely do any hold much interest for him.

dd changed her mind (finally!) last week and we got it from netflix today and just finished watching it. she liked it, but she and her twin brother were scared to death of the shadowman. really scared of him. and they both said that while they liked it, they didn't have any interest in me keeping it so they can watch it again.

 

[EeyoreEma]

We all loved it, even dh! But I was surprised by how short a time it spent in our local theater. Admittedly, we live in a small town, but we did have to drive 45 mins to even see it. I don't think we were *That* far behind when it came out. Anyhow, we loved the movie - more than I thought we would based on the previews!

 

[5lilfish]

I would have had to drag my 12 yr old DS. My 11 yr old and 10 yr old DD wanted to see it. We didn't go to the theater because we knew it would be on the Magic when we sailed in Feb. We did go see it on the ship. Both DD's loved it. I thought it was ok but not fantastic or anything.

Jess