Princess And The Frog Trailer Rallies Classic Animation

The Disney Channel unveiled the studio’s next animated feature Saturday, previewing the trailer for The Princess and the Frog. You can catch it below.

Why should you care? After all, there isn’t a single TIE Fighter in it. No killer robots. Not a single laser blast or skyscraper-shattering explosion. The princess isn’t a scantily clad zombie, and the frog doesn’t transform into a missile-laden Porsche.

But there’s also no all too familiar CGI, either. This is Disney’s long-awaited return to hand-drawn animation — moving away (temporarily) from the Pixar-dominated CG era of Toy Story, Cars, Shrek and Madagasgar. It’s the grand rally of the art form that brought us classics like Snow White, Dumbo, Fantasia and The Lion King. It’s the chance for anyone under the age of 21 to discover what intricately rendered animation drawn by a human hand with pen and ink looks like on a big screen. Any movie lover should root for such a big comeback.

The Pixar technique will take over full-time soon enough, and there’s nothing wrong with CG-animated movies. In fact, it’s fair to say that Pixar hasn’t made a bad movie yet. But there’s a richness and a soul to hand-drawn animation that the more high tech art form has yet to match. It’s easy enough to root against Disney on occasion, but here’s hoping this movie scores big. See for yourself:

As for the trailer itself, it looks great. But does it look good enough to get you excited about the return of classic Disney?

Thanks to AICN for finding this new trailer (for as long as it lasts).

The Princess and the Frog opens on December 11, 2009.