I do have a tiny bone to pick with Disney and
their distrustful marketing department in regards to their
otherwise enchanting CGI film 'Frozen'. I rarely watch
live TV, only on football Sunday, and thus the Disney
Marketing machine decided to market this movie to me,
featuring characters playing football. Not a single song
reference, no dance numbers, just strapping CGI dudes and a
snowman kicking around a football. Guess what?
Ain't nobody playing any football in this movie. What's
up with that? What I did get roped into was CGI chicks
singing about being in love and stuff. Well played
distrustful Disney marketing execs… well played.
Princess Elsa (Voiced by Idina Menzell) is some kind of
mutant. Apparently she was born with the power to turn
stuff into ice, a power that her beloved little sister Anna
(Kristen Bell) just loves to have fun with as they go outside
and make snowmen and whatnot. Unfortunately Elsa
accidentally pelts her sister's dome with an arctic blast,
which places Anna is some physical distress until she is saved
by the neighborhood trolls. The good thing, according to
the Troll King (Cieran Hinds) is that Elsa zapped Anna's
brain, which is a quick fix. If Elsa had zapped Anna's
heart… well… that would be bad. The fallout from this
event is that Elsa's folks, the King and Queen, now have to
take great pains to keep Elsa's mutant power a secret, even
brainwashing Anna into forgetting her sister has this power,
and to keep her from hurting her sister again, she has been
instructed to avoid her which makes Anna very sad.
Anna and Elsa both grow up into hot
CGI chicks, their parents tragically leave the Earth, and now
is the day for Princess Elsa to face the world, for first time
since forever, as Queen Elsa. This is a big day for Anna
as well as the gates of the palace will finally be opened and
she can finally find love, and gosh darn if love isn't right
there waiting for her in Prince Hans (Santino Fontana).
So in love
is Anna with Hans that she wants to marry him
right there. Even though they just met. I'm pretty
sure it's a hormonal thing more than love but this a Disney
movie so they didn't go there. Problem is, Elsa being
the mature one, says no which cascades forth an unfortunate
series of events in which Elsa's mutant powers are revealed to
one and all, and unfortunately leads to the Elsa unknowingly
freezing all of the kingdom of Arrendale.
Elsa flees to be by herself, Anna follows to bring her sister
back and hopefully help her fix the constant winter she
created. Anna is assisted in her adventure by the
strapping Ice farmer… that's what he is… Kristoff (Jonathan
Groff), his trusty reindeer sidekick Sven, and the funny
walking talking snowman Olaf (Josh Gad). Why is there a
walking talking snowman? Because we need something to
stick in happy meals and on toy store shelves, that's why.
Elsa does not want to be bothered, seriously. Truth be
told, Elsa is pretty darned dangerous. In fact Elsa puts
her sister in kind of a bad way that only a classic Disney
resolution can fix. Or maybe not. Look at Disney
getting a little twisty on us.
So I enjoyed 'Frozen' as it was a superbly animated,
wonderfully voice acted, fast moving film that is a nod to the
Disney movies of old with an added healthy dose of Grrrl
Power. I could be wrong here, but I think this is the
first Disney CGI animated musical. I'm sure other movies
might've had a song here and there, but this one was more
along the lines of 'Snow White' and 'Cinderella' or 'Mary
Poppins' with the way the songs were presented. Now we
did just see 'Saving Mr. Banks' a couple of days ago, and
there were no Sherman-esque memorable 'Supercalifragilistic'
or 'Spoon Full of Sugar' type songs in the mix, but team Lopez
still did well with the songs. And did Kristen Bell do
her own singing? Impressive if she did.
Now if we wanted to be critical of 'Frozen' we could mention
that the story was all over the place and was lacking in
cohesion, offset by the fact that this was largely an action
movie that moved on rails so it's hard to notice this.
Even the song sets were action filled. We could also
point out that movie has no classic Disney villain, though one
was revealed to us near the end, but that also brings up some
rather inconsistent characterization and also tosses in some
tonal unevenness into the mix. Tonal Unevenness.
How about that for a critical term? These movies tend to
be at their best when there's someone completely evil to root
against. For the majority of this movie the only person
to root against was Princess Elsa, and we didn't want to root
against her.
Still, 'Frozen' was a very entertaining, funny, thrill ride of
a romp. As I always say when reviewing these CGI movies,
they are largely for children, despite some slightly
disturbing imagery in this one which might frighten the
youngest children, and I'm thinking kids will love it.
Plus it has a little bit extra to keep the older kids
entertained as well.
