Dr. Facilier is NOT Dr. Utopia. Even though they look alike.

Dr. Facilier is NOT Dr. Utopia. Even though they look alike.

Dr FacilierHere’s one of those things that are totally a coincidence, but amusing nonetheless.

This Christmas, Disney’s latest animated film comes out — with “the first black princess”, as Disney has been billing this…a character named Tiana, who is turned into a frog, has an adventure in the swamp, and then presumably returns to human form to live happily ever after with her Prince, Naveen (the characters were named Maddy and Harry, respectively, until Al Sharpton and the RAAACIST! brigade complained they weren’t “African” enough).

The story’s set in New Orleans, a city we love, and the cartoon itself is chock full of as many fart jokes as Disney could manage, based on the trailers — because, apparently, that’s what Disney does nowadays. Oprah Winfrey’s doing one of the voices, so maybe that’s why there’s so many fart jokes in this (because, as you know if you’ve ever been in an elevator with Oprah, where there’s Winfrey, there are farts).

The villain of the story is a charismatic huckster named Dr. Facilier, who hypnotizes his victims, promises them hope and change, and deals in the shadowy and nebulous.

If Disney had drawn him as a skinny, effeminate black man, we’d swear it was a nod to Dr. Utopia…but Facilier is a skinny, masculine black man, judging by the trailer and his trading card image…so the two have nothing at all to do with one another.

We haven’t watched a cartoon in years, but were intrigued by Princess and the Frog because of the 1920s New Orleans setting. However, we will never pay money to see anything with Oprah in it. Not when we can just wait for our very own local Charybdis to beach herself somewhere, closing down large swaths of the city like she did this last Monday, and gape at her enormity for free. If we end up seeing this in theaters, it will be one of those occasions when we buy a ticket for something else starting at the same time and then walk into Princess and the Frog instead…just to screw with Disney’s box office.

And, for the record, Oprah’s not the only one we do this with. We will never pay to see a Mel Gibson, Tom Cruise, Julia Roberts, or Ashley Judd movie because we don’t like those people either, for various reasons. Though, none of them managed to close down a large portion of Chicago this week, to hold a giant farting contest, or tape her show, or be fed whole herds of cattle — or whatever Oprah was doing that taxpayers helped pay for.