Frozen

 

Frozen

2013

Animation

4 stars out of 5

Frozen continues in many ways traditions started in the early years by Walt Disney and his first feature length animated films: fairy tale, orphans, princes and princesses. This can be both bad and good. Overall, the effect in Frozen is good. Justifiably nominated for Oscars in Best Song and Best Animated Feature, Frozen is a movie loosely based on the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale The Snow Queen and is definitely worth seeing by children and adults.

I watched this movie twice (with my granddaughters) and having done so, substantially improved my opinion of it. Initially, I was put off by the Disney tradition of parental death and of girls seeing the future solely in terms of some man carrying them off into the sunset. Yes, it ends differently and it does feature sibling love and devotion, but these aspects seemed to me to get lost in yet another variation of the story lines that run endlessly on the Disney Channel programs aimed at young teenage girls. I also enjoyed both times the comedic angles introduced by Olaf the snowman (Josh Gad).

The second time around I was better able to enjoy the music by Idina Menzel as Elsa in the role of the senior sister; most especially as she sings the Oscar nominated song, “Let it go.” Having seen her before in a non-singing role in Enchanted and hearing her very strong voice in this song, I keep wondering why she isn’t a wildly successful pop singer. She really nails this song and others in the movie. Kristen Bell as the junior sister Anna does a fine job in her singing and acting, but Idina is a hard singing act to follow.

The second time always allows one to better see and observe nuances in the story telling. In this case, you can really see that somewhere in time an artist was inspired by a snowflake and the beauty within. Maybe that artist decided to write a movie around all the visual imaginings that one could possible think of on the various solid forms of water. Frozen imagines and executes these wonderful works of art with exceptional skill.

Finally, I had with the second viewing an opportunity to ignore the frothy sub-story of Anna and her beau, Prince Hans (Santino Fontana) and to focus much more on the sibling love and affection aspect of the story. Rather than the Anna/Hans story being predominant, it was much easier to see the Elsa/Anna story line as being the true story arc. Somehow this was lost in the first viewing, and seeing it a second time made my enjoyment of the movie far greater.

While I think Frozen lacks the emotional punch of the first Cars or the first two Toy Story movies, or maybe even the high quality of the songs in The Little Mermaid, Frozen does a great job of carrying on the Disney traditions and is a really fine movie to see with your grandchildren.