If you can't find it on the internet, does it really exist?

[quaggy]

For some reason, I've had this one movie stuck in my head. It was a live-action adaptation of the Frog Prince, circa the late 1980s. I'm pretty sure it was on the Disney Channel. (Seems too sweet and girly for Nick.) There were two princess. One was blond, spoiled and selfish and the other, the heroine, was sweet, if a little childish and plain. The thing is that only one of them was a "True Princess" (though they never explained why, but I guess it had something to do with the fact True Princesses had magical powers), but their mother never said which was which because she wanted them to be loved equally. Everyone assumes that the older sister is the True Princess, but as you might expect, she's not. The Frog Prince part comes into play because younger sister gets help from a talking frog-like man (who's really an enchanted prince) and the golden ball that she drops down the well turns out to be magic. Well, actually, it turns out that she just thinks that the ball is magic and she's the one actually doing everything, because she was the True Princess all along. I'm pretty sure the little sister was played by Soleil Moon Frye and I think the older sister had name recognition too. Does anybody remember this? It seems far too real for me to have dreamed up when I was too high on pixie stix, but I'm beginning to doubt my sanity!

In other news, I owe people drabbles. Life's been a little abnormal, but I'll try to get to them as soon as possible. I swear!



ETA: flippet found it!! The Frog Prince! It stared the girl from Annie, not Punky Brewster. That's what was tripping me up. Now the real question is: Do I dare watch it again?

Comments

[anatolealice.livejournal.com]

This sounds vaguely familiar, but I couldn't find anything on imdb for SMF that sounded right. Hmmmm. Now I'm doubting my sanity. It's the true/not true princess bit clicked for me.

[quaggy]

I know. It's when it didn't turn up on imdb that I really started to wonder if I was crazy.

[flippet.livejournal.com]

YES ITS REAL I WATCHED THIS, LIKE, LAST MONTH.


I think my kids got it from the library? I can't imagine where else we would have picked it up, I'm pretty sure it wasn't netflix. (Unless maybe it was an instant watch? Hm...I'll have to see.)

But yes, as soon as you started describing it, I was like - oh yeah, that freakishly weird frog prince thing.

If I think really hard, maybe I can remember who was in it for you - it seemed to have someone who was semi-known?

[flippet.livejournal.com]

I FOUND IT!!! Yay, Netflix!

It's this: The Frog Prince (http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/The-Frog-Prince/70147395?trkid=438403). (If that link doesn't work for you because it's on my login or something, maybe you can just search for it there.)

It starred Aileen Quinn as the True Princess, and her sister was - wait for it - Helen Hunt. :-)


Really weird little flick, but it passed the time.

[quaggy]

Oh my god, Flip! You're amazing! (So it was the mis-remembered Punky Brewster connection that was tripping me up!) Thank you! You will not believe how that was driving me crazy! And HELEN HUNT?!! I would have never made that connection!

[quaggy]

The Frog Prince was also the guy who played Jambi the Genie on Pee-wee's Playhouse. He's at least 20 years older than Aileen Quinn. I remember that the prince was an "adult" while Zola was still a little girl... but it's still a little creepy.

[flippet.livejournal.com]

I remember that the prince was an "adult" while Zola was still a little girl... but it's still a little creepy.

That absolutely jumped out at me when we watched - I found it highly creepy too, and was hoping against hope that they wouldn't cross that line. (I don't remember that they did, but they walked it carefully in a few places. It's almost like they were aware of it, and tried to pull back a bit, but the basic storyline kind of held them to it.)


Glad I could help, though! I think our taste is pretty similar in many ways - I suppose it's not too surprising that it's something I would have picked out/okayed for my kids to watch, and that you'd seen it too. It is kind of obscure, though.

[quaggy]

Yeah, I remember as a kid thinking "Wait, he's old... and not cute!" They technically could have gotten someone younger to be the Prince after the spell is broken. Nobody would have cared if he was shorter and had a different voice.

I think our taste is pretty similar in many ways

Yeah, if I had to take a guess, I would have said you were the one out of all my friends who would've seen it. How funny that it was only recently though! Like you said it's obscure and if I had started pondering a year or two earlier, you wouldn't have seen it!

[shutterbug-12.livejournal.com]

Always tricky, watching childhood favorites! Sometimes I'm afraid to watch some things I loved when I was a kid, afraid they'd be different now and that nostalgic sort of love will go away. But, yay, glad it wasn't a weird figment of your imagination!

[quaggy]

Yes, I'll never watch She-Ra again, even though I loved it as a kid, because I know it won't hold up. Bad enough Jem & the Holograms will be forever tainted for me once I realized as an adult what a lousy boyfriend Rio actually was.