Frozen **** (2013, voices of Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel, Jonathan Groff, Josh Gad) – Movie Review

Another year, another Walt Disney animation. After Wreck-It Ralph, they go back to basics with an old-fashioned fairy tale, a princess, a wicked queen, happy comedy relief, a quest, a threat, some danger, a warm-hearted message, a feel-good ending and, hey, some good old Broadway show tunes. Hooray!

Inspired by The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen, it’s written and directed by Chris Buck  and Jennifer Lee (who scores a double as the first woman director of a Disney animation and a rare case of a writer promoted as director too, in an industry where the animators usually become director). This dynamic duo have given The Snow Queen a total makeover. And it’s a clever one. They’ve melted the  Snow Queen so she isn’t just the traditional villainess. And they’ve changed the whole drift of the story. It’s still a toast to true love, but not the instant, first-sight romantic kind. It’s love that’s tried, true and tested. And in this case it’s sisterly love.

With two heroines for the price of one, and two handsome blokes vying for the hand of the young princess, this is a different kind of story, with an fairy-tale ending of a different kind. As the story begins, two tiny princesses are playing in the royal palace and the older one can shoot snow and ice from her hands. They start to grow up. Years later, the younger princess, bored and shut out by her icy older sister, has only one thing on her mind. A man! When a likely Mr Right, Hans (Santino Fontana), suddenly turns up at the palace, her dream of true love seems to be fulfilled in this arrival of love at first sight. But then…

Idina Menzel, star of Rent and Wicked on the Broadway stage, stars as the voice of Elsa the Snow Queen, whose icy powers have trapped her Nordic kingdom in eternal winter. She’s been charged with never using her powers or showing the world who she really is.

Kristen Bell (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) also stars as the voice of her teenage younger sister Anna, a fearless optimist who teams up with the kindly young huntsman Kristoff (Jonathan Groff) and a snowman named Olaf (Josh Gad) on an epic journey. They encounter arctic conditions on their mission to find Elsa and do something about those pesky icy powers of hers.

The singing and the songs are great, if you love show tunes. Let It Go is the showstopper, a coming-out anthem with its lyrics ‘conceal, don’t feel, don’t let them know. well now they know). This movie is a toast to sisterly love, with the men definitely sidelined. One of the men is a duplicitous trickster, there just to sniff round for wealth and honours. The other man’s a proper hero, but his love is inferior to the sisterly love.

Though there is plenty of action and adventure, it’s all very gentle. I can’t imagine many boys and their dads going for Frozen, but then it’s not made for them. This is a brilliant experience for young girls and their mums. It’s a gorgeous, enchanting movie, very pretty to look at, beautifully realised, lovingly designed, carefully, painstakingly written. The vocals are ideal, Kristen Bell is sweet as Anna, Menzel belts out her numbers as Elsa and Josh Gad definitely stamps his comic personality on Olaf the snowman, making him hilarious.

As a modern take on a fairy tale, Disney’s animated adventure is a sweet festive treat.

I’ve forgotten to say it’s in 3D, which this time doesn’t help at all. The glasses were heavy, blurry and irritating.

Frozen and The Wolf of Wall Street starring Leonardo DiCaprio were the two most-pirated movies for 2014 with each title downloaded about 30 million times by torrent users worldwide.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Movie Review

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