Louis (The Princess and the Frog)

Louis is a friendly, jazz-loving, big-lipped alligator and one of the tritagonists in Disney's 2009 feature film The Princess and the Frog, the other being Ray. He is comical, manic, high-strung and plays the trumpet. Louis is a Disney character who is a comic relief. He serves as a comic relief for the movie and despite his size and ferocious appearance, he is something of a coward and has a large fear of guns. He also dreams of becoming a human who is a famous and popular trumpet player. He is voiced by Michael-Leon Wooley.

Personality
Early on in the story, Louis was meant to be incredibly cowardly, phobic and timid to the point where even frogs can frighten him. Eventually directors John Musker and Ron Clements changed the character into what we see today.

Louis is a kind and very fun loving type of character. He is very fond of his trumpet and his dream is to become a famous jazz singer and performing in front of a human audience without scaring anyone. He believes the only way to do this is to become human. He is terrified of guns because once when he snuck aboard a river boat to play he was shot at several times.

Design
Louis is a large, overweight alligator taller than a grown man. He was animated by Eric Goldberg who won an Anne Award for his animation.

Role in the film
Louis first appears after both Tiana and Naveen are transformed into frogs and stranded in the Bayou. Tiana and Naveen had great fear of Louis at first, thinking he is about to eat them, but quickly realize he has no appetite for them. Instead Louis wants to play his trumpet while Naveen plays his ukulele. Tiana then tells Louis her and Naveen must be moving on. Louis asks why, and Naveen explains that they are actually human and the spell was done by a voodoo witch doctor. Louis then tells the duo about Mama Odie the queen of the bayou, and they ask Louis to take them but tells them there are too many dangers along the way and refuses. Naveen then convinces Louis to come, after pointing out that he will be able to play the trumpet for humans without scaring them if he was "smaller and less toothy", and Louis decides to ask Mama Odie to turn him human.

Louis then takes them while singing When We're Human Louis along with Tiana and Naveen meet the firefly Ray. Turns out Louis took them in the wrong direction. Louis, Naveen, Tiana and Ray set off to Mama Odie's home, and along the way the characters become the best of friends. Louis and friends eventually meet Mama Odie. After she tells Tiana and Naveen to dig a little deeper Louis then asks to be human to, but she tells him to dig a little deeper as well. Louis and friends take a river boat back to New Orleans, where band players think Louis is in a gator costume (as they are also dressed up as animals for Mardi Gras) and invite him to play with them. Louis is thrilled and immediately joins them. At the Mardi Gras parade Louis notices Ray trying to fight Doctor Facilier's shadow demons and rushes to rescue him, but he is too late and finds the crushed body of Ray, and is shown to be very emotional about this. Louis carries the dying Ray to Tiana and Naveen. Ray sees everyone one last time and once he closes his eyes Louis begins to cry. Louis attends Ray's funeral and is overjoyed to see Ray become a star right next to 'Evangeline'. Louis also attends Tiana and Naveen's wedding in the swamp.

Louis helps Tiana buy her restaurant by growling at the Fenner Bros, and once Tiana's Palace opens, Louis is a star and lives out his dream even though he is still an alligator.

The Princess and the Frog: The Video Game
Louis takes part in many of the mini-games involving him and his trumpet performing music with other characters.

Disney On Ice: Dare to Dream
Louis plays the role he did in the film, assisting Tiana and Naveen in their journey to find Mama Odie and become human. Like the film, Louis also dreams to be human.

Disney Parks
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Louis made his theme park debut along with Tiana, Prince Naveen and Dr. Facilier in 2009. He first appeared in Tiana's Showboat Jubilee.

Louis' likeness is also featured at Disney's Port Orleans Resort in Walt Disney World.

Tiana's Showboat Jubilee
In the temporary boat show, Louis, Tiana, and Naveen sing various songs from the film. In the middle, Tiana sings about her dream of her restaurant which gives Louis the erg to talk about his dream: to become human.

Mickey's Soundsational Parade
Louis is seen during Tiana's Float and sings and dances along the parade with Ray and Naveen.

Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom
In Walt Disney World's Frontierland, Tiana is kidnapped by Doctor Facilier, who has been revived from the dead by Hades. Louis is first heard alerting Mama Odie about Facilier busting Lawerence out of jail and is later seen mentioning Tiana's kidnapping. Later on, Louis assists the guests when battling Facilier for the mystic crystal of the Magic Kingdom. After Facilier's defeat, Louis retrieves the crystal so it can be returned to Merlin.

Trivia

 * He is the first crocodilian character in a Disney film to be friendly in nature since Ben the dancing alligator from Fantasia.
 * Despite the fact that alligators have incredibly thick skin and can recover very effectivly from serious injuries such as broken legs, Louis has a very low tolerence for pain as shown when he screams in agony when a pricker sticks to him and when they are pulled out.
 * When his eyes are lime green as shown whenever he widens his eyes.
 * When Louis says: "All kinds of voodoo.", he grabs vines and widens his eyes like Madam Mim does, with her hair, and he even looks like her a bit when he does that.
 * Louis shares the same first name with Louis Armstrong, a famous trumpet-player from the time period that the film takes place in (1920s). The alligator may have been named after him.
 * Armstrong is also referenced in the song from the film "When We're Human".
 * Louis bears some resemblance to the character King Gator from the film All Dogs Go to Heaven, who was infamously known for performing the song "Let's Make Music Together", which in turn was also the basis for the "Big-Lipped Alligator moment", a phrase first coined by the Nostalgia Chick while co-starring in the Nostalgia Critic review for Ferngully: The Last Rainforest that is used to describe a scene in a given story that shows up at random and completely irrelevant to the story's plot, and is often ignored later on after that scene is over, as in the case of Ferngully, a musical number performed by a goanna voiced by rapper Tone Loc.