At the Movies: The Princess and the Frog

The Disney animated feature The Princess and the Frog opens in theaters on December 11. The soundtrack album featuring original songs and socre by Randy Newman will be released tomorrow. Samples of the songs performed by Ne-Yo, Anika Noni Rose (Dreamgirls), and other cast members can be found on the Disney website.

The album cover is a square version of the movie poster. This has been a growing trend with soundtrack albums. It is somewhat disappointing to see that Disney has chosen to recycle their movie poster art for an album cover. The soundtrack for the 2007 Disney film Enchanted featured original art for the album cover (right). Perhaps it is just a sign of the troubled economy.

While the image used for the album cover works as a movie poster, I do not believe that it is the right for the soundtrack. The image of the Princess holding the frog is secondary to the movie’s villains. There is just too much going on in the frame. The album art for Enchanted eliminates the secondary characters and simplifies the image, resulting in a much stronger composition. Let’s hope Disney does not continue to crop movie posters for their album art. We should expect more from them.