Frozen (Film) - Review

I was taken by surprise at the decent acclaim that Tangled garnered, and so too was I taken aback by the response to Frozen. The trailers make Frozen out to be nothing too special, but that isn't the case. This is a special movie that will almost certainly go down in history as another Disney classic. With Frozen, Disney has crafted a self-aware, forward-thinking, and also very enjoyable film.

Frozen follows sisters Elsa and Anna, the former born with magical powers that allow her to create snow and ice with her bare hands. After these powers accidentally hurt Anna during childhood play, Elsa is kept away from others because she is thought to be dangerous. As adults, Elsa's powers are eventually revealed for the first time in many years, to devastating effects. Throughout the film, Anna juggles love interests and tries to help her sister and the town she has put in danger.

This is a story that foremost tackles love. Anna is, at first, the prototypical Disney princess that has sparked controversy in recent years; she is incredibly weak at the knees to acts of chivalry and falls in love quickly. At the beginning of the movie, the audience is teased with the possibility that we're being exposed to yet another one of these love-at-first-sight romances, but comedy throughout criticizes this, a twist towards the end harshly inverts the trope, and a powerful climax solidifies the problem with this kind of romance while still filling the void with something equally wonderful. The movie really does put a lot of work into breaking down brash romance, which could have been jarringly bleak, but the movie avoids that by championing another kind of love to astounding effect. This other kind of love can actually be considered true love, and it isn't even a kind of romance; there's more incredible emotions to life other than romantic love, after all.

When we're exposed to the brash romance initially, it's unfortunately not done as well as it should have been. These initial parts are done to set up subversion later, but unfortunately it's not actually so subversive as it's happening. The brash romance is played mostly straight at first; if you cut the first parts of this relationship out, these could have easily been actual parts from an actually clichéd movie, albeit a goofy one. But, as already made clear, this does serve a purpose that absolutely works in the end, and as far as this hokey cliché goes, these bits are not particularly bad examples thanks to the goofiness.

On the surface, putting aside all of these compelling things done thematically, Frozen is a pretty and fun movie. It's a musical to the same extent that movies like The Little Mermaid are musicals, and the songs are really quite good. More hokeyness creeps into these songs occasionally, but for the most part these are invigorating, enjoyable tunes. The best song is "Let it Go," which serves as Elma's shell-breaking anthem as well as the most dazzling display of the film's animation. Frozen is a silky-smooth, colorful and flashy movie, with excellent use of stereoscopic 3D.

The comedy is very modernistic, and mostly character-focused. The snowman named Olaf, who is liberally flaunted in the trailers, is actually not an incredibly important or even prevalent character, but he is welcome all the same. He's hilarious and entirely adorable, with his sugary-sweet voice and mannerisms. The hunky second love interest of Anna's, Kristoff, is funny with his beloved Reindeer who he's convinced talks. There is a bizarre, ridiculous salesman and sauna-operator towards the middle of the movie who only has one brief scene, but he's very memorable due to just how odd and funny he is. There's some action, mostly towards the end of the movie, which is neat, too.

I really enjoyed Frozen. It's a great movie that boldly defies conventions while still being fun and uplifting. It also kicks the crap out of Pixar's offering this year, Monster's University, and if the various end of the year awards don't reflect this, it will be a travesty indeed.