The charm attributed to Disney’s
latest feature animation is something that has passed me by. Exhibiting little
originality in story, art or character, Frozen
is nonetheless a double Oscar nominated film. Loosely based on Hans Christian
Anderson’s The Snow Queen, this is a
classic tale of Disney princesses overcoming adversity, finding happiness
through hard work, perseverance and love. Following a typical first act
tragedy, Princesses Anna (Kristen Bell) and Elsa (Idina Menzel) are left alone
in their Scandinavian castle. Though formerly very close, Elsa’s ability to
create ice and snow from her fingertips is considered a danger to others and
she hides away for years until she’s old enough to ascend the throne. Soon
disaster strikes and the Kingdom is plunged into icy darkness while Elsa
absconds to the mountains to lead a hermit like life. This leaves her younger
sister Anna to bring her back and save the Kingdom from ruin.
I have to admit that I found very
little to like in Frozen. I was bored
by the predictable storyline and disliked the musical theatre style songs. The
one ray of sunshine though in this otherwise cold film was the character of
Olaf the snowman. One of the best Disney characters in years, everything Olaf
says and does is funny or sweet and he brightened up what was otherwise a dull
102 minutes.
I have to admit that I am in the
minority with my dislike of this movie. I understand too that I have an extra Y
chromosome and twenty years on the target audience which is fine but I’ve been
able to enjoy other Disney films in the past. My main problem was that it was
all so boring. I barely smiled without Olaf on the screen and found that the
humour was derived solely from that character. It didn’t feel very inventive
either and just seemed to run from A to B without considering a fun or
interesting diversion. The songs made me want to shove broken glass in my ears
to drown out the over dramatic Wicked
style singing. As a man with a Wicked
obsessed girlfriend I was acutely aware of how similar the two productions
sounded. As a man who’s sick of hearing the songs from Wicked, I really disliked the songs from Frozen. Despite my own personal dislike, Let It Go has been nominated for an Oscar and even I can admit it
was catchy.
On the plus side, the animation
is good but it’s a Disney film so you’d expect nothing less. It didn’t appear
to push the boundaries unlike say Tangled
but early scenes featuring blocks of lake ice were particularly well rendered.
I also enjoyed the idea that the Kristoff character had a sort of split
personality and talked to his reindeer Sven, changing his voice to speak Sven’s
part of the conversation. This was a nice idea given all the talking Disney
animals over the years. The film’s message is also something I approved of. The
young female lead does almost everything herself and has little or no need for
her Knight in Shining Armour. This empowering message for young girls is
something I can get on board with.
So overall I wasn’t particularly
impressed with Frozen. Olaf is a
terrific character who will surely be seen again and the film features a nice
message but I found it too long, really dull and the songs did nothing for me.
I felt let down after the wonderfully inventive and amusing short that preceded
the film and expected more from a film that I’d heard so many good things
about. I’ll end by saying I also didn’t like The Lion King so feel free to discount everything I’ve written.
5/10
GFR 8/10
You may also like
Tangled 2010
Get a Horse 2013
Brave 2012
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