DISNEY POC »

You know what they say in Hollywood. That your movie is only as good as your villain. Well, one of the main reasons that Disney’s “The Princess and the Frog” was so highly praised (Richard Corliss of “Time” Magazine flat-out called Disney’s return to hand-drawn animation “… the best film of the year”) and is such an entertaining motion picture is Bruce W. Smith’s ground-breaking work with that animated feature’s villain, Dr. Facilier.

Of course, it’s easy to understand why Ron Clements & John Musker were anxious to have Bruce come work on this production. Given that he’d been a supervising animator on “Tarzan,” “The Emperor's New Groove” and “Home on the Range,” Smith was already familiar with the ways things worked at the Mouse House. He’d also proven in the past that he could handle the pressures of working on a full-length animated feature.