1. It begins with a star. "When You Wish Upon A Star" was sung by Jiminy Cricket in the 1940 Disney film Pinocchio and has become the anthem and theme song of The Walt Disney Company. There's lots of star-gazing in classic Disney films, but I can't tell if these stars hold a Hidden Mickey, like the ones in The Lion King did.

2. There's an Interracial friendship right off the bat. Tiana and Charlotte are BFF, and surely there's more to come about their relationship: One is black and one is white, one is rich and one is working class. But in this first scene, they're just two little girls who love a story.

3. Tiana's mom could win Project Runway. I just know it.

4. Tiana is a realist, not a romantic. When her mother is talks about the Princess kissing the frog, Tiana is justifiably squicked out.

5. Doting dad #1.

6. The gorgeous panning shot of the quiet transition of neighborhoods. From rich to not-so-rich.

7. Doting dad #2.

8. Foreshadowing of the jazzy, awesome nightclub to come. Also, this illustration of an illustration is just gorgeous.

9. "That old star can only take you part of the way. You've gotta help it along with some hard work of your own… Then you can set anything you set your mind to."

10. Two loving parents who also love each other. Of course, they're probably going to die very soon. This is Disney, after all. And as an ONTD commenter points out, Joseph Campbell's Hero With A Thousand Faces, which we studied religiously when I was a screenwriting major, is a pretty much the rule in Disney flicks.

11. Ridiculously beautiful hand-drawn animation. CGI can suck it. (Click "full size" to enlarge.)

Here's the video clip. As you'll see, it's not final; some scenes are missing color. But after pointing out possible problems with the movie, I have to say that seeing actual footage beyond the trailer is still really exciting. Then again, there's no toothless firefly in this clip.

First 5 Minutes Of The Princess And The Frog [ONTD]

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The Princess And The Frog
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First up, Barbie and the Rockers, playing a favorite song of my father's, "Catch Us If You Can" by the Dave Clark Five:

Next up, the most beloved cartoon girl rock band, Josie and the Pussycats, brings us their tune "Lie, Lie, Lie."

And now, it's the band of villains, The Misfits, with their jam "Universal Appeal."

Followed by their enemies, Jem and the Holograms, who are "Gettin' Down To Business."

And here we have one of my favorite cartoon bands, the Chipettes, doing a little Cyndi Lauper:

And last but not least, Ms. Ann-Margrock herself, rocking out on The Flintstones.

Entertainment Weekly:

In the brightly drawn sequel, as technically smooth as we've come to expect from the DreamWorks cartoon factory, all four use their time in Africa — the land of their ancestors! — as an opportunity for personal growth, only to wind up more or less the way they always were.

What, you were expecting a cutting-edge twist, maybe something about a lonely postapocalyptic robot? Wrong part of the animated kingdom, my friends. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa is pretty tame, but it knows how to keep its own turf tidy.

The New York Times:

It’s unsurprising that Alex’s mane registers as more realistic than any of his words or emotions, but it’s also a bummer. “Escape 2 Africa” is good enough in patches to make its distracting star turns, storybook clichés and stereotypes harder to take than they would be in a less enjoyable movie. Casting Mr. Stiller and Mr. Schwimmer may sear their brands onto under-age cerebral cortices but does nothing for the movie. And, really, did the hippo (voiced by will.i.am from the Black Eyed Peas) who courts Gloria with a low rumble and a suggestive shimmy have to sound like Barry White rather than, say, Marc Anthony or Justin Timberlake? I laughed, but honestly, if this country can vote colorblind surely its movie studios can animate colorblind too. (Can’t they?)

USA Today:

Though it doesn't add anything new to the genre, Madagascar 2 is amusing animated fare.

And with few current movies aimed at very young audiences, this menagerie offers more potential for humor and visual panache than, say, a movie about Chihuahuas.

Chicago Sun-Times:

It doesn't look like that plane is gonna make it. That doesn't mean across the Atlantic from Africa. It means across Africa to the Atlantic. Do they (or their audience) realize Madagascar is east of Africa, in the Indian Ocean? How I know, I had a friend from Madagascar once. Beat me at chess. Some people are probably wondering about the title "Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa," because they think the animals escaped 2 Africa in the first place. Now shouldn't they be escaping 4rom Africa? So they take off, and (spoiler?) crash in Africa. Now they are faced with exactly the same dilemma as in the first film: Can wild animals survive in the wild?

The Hollywood Reporter:

The pleasant but far-from-pioneering crew of the cheerful 2005 DreamWorks animated film "Madagascar" reunite for "Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa" to similar results. Essentially this sequel has settled down into a sitcom: Each of its major zoo-raised animals has a comical issue that must get resolved before the credits roll. The film, like its predecessor, is aimed mostly at children and should score a direct hit.

Variety:

"Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa" is the rare animated sequel that reps a notable improvement on its predecessor in every department. Lively and quite funny without being obnoxious, this follow-up smoothly mixes the original's New York Zoo escapees with a number of engaging new characters they encounter upon crossing from Madagascar to the mother continent. With the first film's creative team intact, this DreamWorks Animation franchise has been well tended to, meaning it's reasonable to assume a repeat of the earlier outing's $533 million worldwide haul (an unusually large percentage of which came from overseas).

Philadelphia Inquirer:

With its stylized menagerie resembling plush creatures on a Toys R Us shelf, M2 surely will appeal to undemanding viewers age 6 and younger.

Yet unlike Pixar films, this busy and noisy film has too-generic a story and too-undistinguished a look to offer much for those kids' older siblings and their parents.

The Austin Chronicle:

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa extends what Madagascar did best: fill up the screen with computer-generated visual novelty. The slapstick humor remains, as does the slack plotting. Introducing only a few new characters that are unfortunately unmemorable, this sequel is likewise a decent diversion that's not much worth talking about afterward.

The Los Angeles Times:

I took my kid and three of his pals to an Imax screening, and while I could've done without the film's martial arts slapstick involving the cranky old outer-borough lady on safari, in a role expanded from her Grand Central Station cameo in the first picture, well, if there's one thing parenthood teaches anybody in this country, it's that boys rarely fail to laugh at someone gettin' it in the 'nads from a senior citizen.

Reviews from our second-grade posse: "Really liked it." "Four million stars." "Five million stars."

Newsday ('Kidsday' Reporters):

The movie was hysterical, especially the scenes with the old lady and the penguins. One of our favorite parts was when the old lady beats up an evil lion named Makunga. Another funny scene is when Gloria, the Hippo, dances.

We give the movie 4 1/2 smiles!

The Toronto Star:

The movie even looks better than the original, approaching photo-realism in its jungle imagery. For better or worse, the music is every bit as corny as before: "Born Free" is still the theme tune and Barry Manilow and Boston is on the penguins' eight-track player – but what do you expect from those bird brains?

The highest praise I can give Madagascar 2 is to say that it reminds me of the antics of another animal, the one called Monty Python.

'Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa' opens today in wide release.

Our story begins in Ancient Rome. Or the place where they built Barack Obama's DNC speech set.

Our heroine sits, contemplating her perfectly Botoxed face in a mirror whilst keeping a firm grip on her Prada purse. Her "Shadow" lurks in the background, as the help is supposed to do.

"Did I overdo it with the injectables?" she wonders.

Fed up with the self-absorption disguised as self-reflection, The Shadow flees.

The Shadow wanders the streets of the deserted city. Not a soul to be found. Damn stock market crash.

The Shadow comes upon a young child near an aquarium. As with all little girls in movies, this child may or may not be Dakota Fanning.

Somehow, The Shadow ends up in the water. Friggin kids.

Then the shadow turns into a child.

Or does she? It is but a reflection in a well-appointed dressing room.

Ah, here is The Shadow. Veiled. Did someone die? Is The Shadow mourning the death of childhood?

The Shadow ditches her flowers and leaves the church.

Out in the courtyard, The Shadow meets a rawther large compass. They dance.

Back at the manse, the Lady of the house has yet to notice something is awry. Note that (DUM DUM DUM!) her Prada bag is missing.

The Shadow returns from her adventures; The Lady embraces her.

The Shadow returns to her seat in the back. The Lady's purse has magically reappeared. All is at it was in the beginning. All's well that ends well.

Moral Of The Story: Keep your eye on your Prada bag when shady characters are afoot.

Prada’s New Animated Short Film for Fall 2008 [The Frisky]
Fallen Shadows [Prada]
Earlier: Let's All Take Acid And Watch The New Prada Movie

New York Post:

There is far too much going on in "WALL-E" to take in during a single sitting; I would have happily watched two or three more times the other night.

Some day, there will be college courses devoted to this movie.

Kids will love "WALL-E," the robot's epic adventure and his heart-tugging love story. Some adults may be less comfortable, which is fine with me; most great works of art are inherently subversive.

NPR:

But through it all, Wall-E never loses its sense of wonder: wonder at life, wonder at the universe, even wonder at the power of computer animation to bring us to worlds we've never seen before.

Wall-E is daring and traditional, groundbreaking and familiar, apocalyptic and sentimental — and how often do we get to say that in these dispiriting times?

The New York Times:

ather than turn a tale of environmental cataclysm into a scolding, self-satisfied lecture, Mr. Stanton shows his awareness of the contradictions inherent in using the medium of popular cinema to advance a critique of corporate consumer culture. The residents of the space station, accustomed to being tended by industrious robots, have grown to resemble giant babies, with soft faces, rounded torsos and stubby, weak limbs. Consumer capitalism, anticipating every possible need and swaddling its subjects in convenience, is an infantilizing force. But as they cruise around on reclining chairs, eyes fixed on video screens, taking in calories from straws sticking out of giant cups, these overgrown space babies also look like moviegoers at a multiplex.

They’re us, in other words. And like us, they’re not all bad.

Salon:

"WALL-E" falls somewhere between those two poles. It's not as beautifully crafted a piece of work, either visually or narratively, as "Ratatouille" is. But it does have a soul, and for a portion of the movie, at least, Stanton (who co-wrote the script, with Jim Reardon; he and Pete Docter conceived the idea for the story) does take a surprisingly firm stance on the uselessness and unlikability of humankind. "WALL-E" shows us a future world in which humans — fed largely on junk food — have become so fat they look like old-fashioned rubber dollies bloated to obscene proportions. They're obese partly because they're lazy: Instead of walking, they've gotten used to coasting along on floating chaise lounges, and robots cater to their every whim. Instead of talking to each other face-to-face, they chat with their friends on computer screens that appear to be permanently affixed just a few inches from their faces — even when their friends are sailing along right next to them.

Slate:

Directed and co-written by Andrew Stanton, a longtime Pixar collaborator who also directed the Oscar-winning Finding Nemo in 2003, Wall-E isn't quite as transcendent as last year's Ratatouille, but it's more formally innovative. Some of the lesser characters, particularly the misfit bots who help Wall-E stow away on the Axiom, could have been better fleshed out (if one can say that of a robot). But the central couple—forlorn, googly-eyed, stubbornly loyal Wall-E and sleek, directive-obsessed, but ultimately tenderhearted Eve—are triumphs of the animator's art, as their characters are established almost entirely through movement and gesture (though Burtt, who also provided the "voice" for Star Wars' R2-D2, is an expert clicker and beeper). Despite the virtuosity of its technical execution, Wall-E never feels like a soulless, well-oiled entertainment machine. Rather, the movie resembles its resilient, square-shaped hero: a built-to-last contraption with a disproportionately big heart.

Entertainment Weekly:

WALL-E is a movie you want to discover, but without giving too much of it away, I'll just say that the early ''silent movie'' section, quietly enticing as it is, is merely the prelude to an eye-boggling future-shock adventure. WALL-E himself is the movie's mascot and unlikely hero; it's up to him to save a spacebound colony of humans who've ''evolved'' into hilariously infantile technology-junkie couch potatoes. Yet even as the movie turns pointedly, and resonantly, satirical, it never loses its heart. I'm not sure I'd trust anyone, kid or adult, who didn't get a bit of a lump in the throat by the end of WALL-E, a film that brings off what the best (and only the best) Pixar films have: It whisks you to another world, then makes it every inch our own.

Variety:

That, presumably, could be addressed in a sequel. In the meantime, "Wall-E" pushes an agenda that could, and no doubt will, be interpreted as "green," or ecologically minded. It's a theme that is certainly present, at least as pertains to what forced humanity off the planet in the first place. But in a bigger sense, the picture seems to be making a quiet pitch for taking clear-headed responsibility for the health of the planet as well as one's body and mind.

The adages about how you must lie in the bed you make, and you are what you eat, both would seem to apply here. But Stanton, his co-story hatcher Pete Docter, co-scenarist Jim Reardon and the entire Pixar team operate on the principle that entertainment values come first, and they have applied it throughout to sprightly effect.

Chicago Sun-Times:

What’s more, I don’t think I’ve quite captured the film’s enchanting storytelling. Directed and co-written by Andrew Stanton, who wrote and directed “Finding Nemo,” it involves ideas, not simply mindless scenarios involving characters karate-kicking each other into high-angle shots. It involves a little work on the part of the audience, and a little thought, and might be especially stimulating to younger viewers. This story told in a different style and with a realistic look could have been a great science-fiction film. For that matter, maybe it is.

Newsweek:

Following high-concept movies about a superhero family, talking cars and a gourmet rat, this is the Disney computer animation arm's boldest experiment yet. "WALL-E" is essentially a silent film in which the two main characters, a mismatched pair of robots, communicate through bleeps and blips and maybe three words between them.

And yet director Andrew Stanton ("Finding Nemo") is resourceful enough to find infinite ways for them to express themselves — amusingly, achingly, and with emotional precision. He's also created, with the help of a team of animators, a visual marvel. Not that this is in any way surprising from a Pixar flick, but still, it's worth noting.

Wall Street Journal:

The first half hour of "WALL-E" is essentially wordless, and left me speechless. This magnificent animated feature from Pixar starts on such a high plane of aspiration, and achievement, that you wonder whether the wonder can be sustained. But yes, it can. The director, Andrew Stanton, supported by a special-forces battalion of artists, voice artists and computer wizards, has conjured up a tender, comical love story between two robots whose feelings for each other seem as nuanced and deep as any you're likely to encounter these days in live-action drama. Better still, their story plays out in two disparate worlds that amount to a unified vision, stunning and hilarious in equal measure, of what we human creatures have been up to and where it could get us.

'Wall-E' opens today, nationwide

Leave it to the Japanese to make a simultaneously adorable and creepy cartoon about pooping (see also: Everyone Poops). The video above — seen today on parenting blog Babble — shows a little tiger named Shimjiro. His tigerents are trying to potty train him, and is he ever excited about weeing in the toilet! I'd probably be super psyched about my excretions, too, if they came out in little animated droplets and exclaimed "Yahoo!!!" on a regular basis. Anyway, the video is supposed to help toilet-train human children, and at the end of the video there's a real live kid atop a toilet that is equipped with a handrail (WTF is that rail for? Extra leverage?). While the animated portion of the video is amusing, sensitive readers may want to wait until after lunch, as the kid's semi-realistic poop-pushing groans are fairly disturbing.

[YouTube via Babble]