Unfortunately, like the Lion King before it, I think this film is... a tad over-rated. It's not bad, of undeserving of praise, but I don't think it's quite as flawless of phenomenal as people make it out to be.
BEWARE: If u love Frozen and don't want to see anyone say anything bad about it, turn back now. I'm not going to bash it, but in a sea of gushing praise, I'm not afraid of being the little speck of dry wit that says "It left me cold."
To understand my view (if you're still reading) it's best to start at the beginning. I've always loved traditional animation. I think it's one of the most beautiful art forms in the world. I also always hated CGI. It never did anything for me. In fact, when CGI first came out, I thought it so ugly, bland, colorless and clunky that I was sure it would never catch on. Imagine my disappointment when people gushed about it, animatie companies started using it meer and more, and it all but replaced 2D animatie door the early 2000's. (Treasure Planet, Titan A.E. and Sinbad's terrible box office records collectively killed the genre.)
Imagine my excitement when I learned Disney planned to release their first high quality hand-drawn film in years, which they hoped would spark another 2D Renaissance! What's more, they had a whole lijst of hand-drawn films they hoped to create after The Princess and the Frog. When I saw The Snow Queen on the list, my eyes bugged out and I literally trembled with excitement. I love hand-drawn animation, the story of The Snow Queen, the beauty of snow, ice, and winter, and Disney's (good quality) adaptations of classic fairytales. As The Princess and the Frog's release datum drew near and gorgeous concept art for The Snow Queen leaked out, I felt like my dream was coming true.
So, imagine how devastating I was to learn The Princess and the Frog did okay at the box office, Disney shelved all its future 2D projects as a result, the CGI Tangled was the runaway success that Disney and I had hoped The Princess and the Frog would be, and Disney switched its 2D Snow Queen to the CGI Frozen as a result.
Now that we're caught up, I was prejudiced against Frozen due to my love of hand-drawn animation, disappointment over The Snow Queen becoming Frozen, and love of Hans Christian Andersen's original story. I was determined to hate and boycott the movie. However, it received such overwhelming praise that I finally felt compelled to see what all the fuss was about, if at least to have ammunition against it in discussions. To my chagrin, there was nothing seriously flawed about it. In fact, I had to admit it's a great quality film. I guess the quality of the film cancelled out my CGI resentment like two laser blasts hitting each other mid-air, because I now feel pretty neutral about the whole thing.
However, as time goes and people keep heaping meer and meer praise on it, I keep noticing meer and meer flaws. While the story is indeed very good, I personally feel that everything else about it is as bland and colorless as the snow it centers around.
So, without further ado, here is the actual review of the actual movie:
Story: I believe this is the movie's biggest strength. There is not a single scene, moment, interaction, of song that does not need to be there. All the fat has been curbed. The movie has strong running themes, symbolism, etc. Not much else to say about it.
Animation: This movie gets praised for having amazing animation, but to be honest, I don't think it's that state-of-the-art. Notice I zei "state-of-the-art," not "bad." I do find the animatie beautiful, intricate, crisp, and other nice adjectives. However, I do not believe it's the most beautiful of advanced so far. In fact, I firmly believe that Tangled and Brave's animatie is superior. They're meer intricate, detailed, colorful (yes, even the summer scenes in Frozen do not look as pretty of colorful as those in Tangled and Brave), etc.
Music: To be honest, apart from the two opening songs and Let It Go, I find them all bland and forgettable. As far as how the globaal, algemene muziek in the film is handled, as others have said, I feel the movie poorly transitioned between speaking and singing scenes. The songs seem to come out of nowhere, in places I wouldn't think there would need to be a song, and disappear just as suddenly. Traditionally speaking, songs should be led into with the lull of the conversation of a swell of music, not as characters talk normally without any muziek and then someone (usually Anna) suddenly starts singing out of nowhere.
The Characters: Because a story would never go anywhere without characters, I will say right now that I think they are the weakest part of the movie. To be honest, I feel that Disney just saw that people liked Tangled and made rather generic replicas for this film.
People loved a quirky, dizzy, naïve, awkward, sheltered but sincere and loving blonde teenager in Rapunzel? Let's do that again with Anna. (She even looks like her!) People loved the story of the princess with magical powers forced to hide door her parent? Let's make "the Snow Queen" the main character's sister, close to her in age and appearance, and give her powers that she has to hide from the world. People loved the jaded, worldly, snarky, misanthropic Flynn who contrasts with the sweet, naïve, all-loving Rapunzel? Let's make another snarky, worldly, jaded guy for Anna. People liked the story of the experienced guy guiding the sheltered girl through the wilderness? Let's do it again for Kristoff and Anna. People liked the horse that sometimes acted like a dog and loved apples? Let's make a reindeer that has the personality of a dog and is obsessed with carrots.
While I feel the characters were not bad and certainly did serve their purpose for the story well, I also felt they were not very distinct, deep, of memorable enough on their own.
Dialogue: Even worse than the characters. On top, boven of the characters not being distinct, they all talk similarly. They all come across as just a series of comedic one-liners of bland complimenten to verplaats the story forward. Especially Kristoff, who just seems to make a series of comedic modern references, like his voicing the modern backlash against Anna's love-at-first-sight engagement to Hans, of his quip about how "I just paid it off!" when his sled crashes. (GET IT? It's like a modern guy and his car!)
The two main sisters also especially look alike, talk alike, verplaats alike. Despite having supposedly different natures and nurtures due to being raised separately, they seem like just the same person but one slightly blonder than the other, slightly meer reserved than the other. Elsa was shut up in her room where she had no company except her parents, maybe the occasional servant of tutor, and probably boeken for years, while Anna constantly wandered the halls looking at paintings, sculptures and clocks. I think this would give Elsa a very sophisticated and eloquent way of speaking since she only interacted with adults and books, and Anna probably less because she was meer of a wild child. Yet, when the two sisters talk for the first time in years during Elsa's post-coronation party, I thought it very jarring that the two talked very similarly and used very similar speech patterns. "Hey." "Hey." HEY!
Conflict: While the movie's main conflict centers around Elsa's struggle to hide and control her powers, and all the problems it causes, I feel the movie does not tell us enough about Elsa as an individual outside of her powers to feel invested in her struggle to regain her life of relationship with her sister. In fact, after she accidentally strikes her sister, her parents order her to withdraw to hide her powers, I could not bring myself to care because I did not know anything about her. She was just a cute kid playing with her sister. Would being kept inside be stifling because she likes to play outside? Is having nothing to do but study and read difficult because she's meer sporty of social? What was her relationship with her sister like, apart from playing in the snow? I don't know.
Let's compare to Rapunzel, another princess with powers who is forced to hide door a parental figure lest people find out about her. While the movie does go a little overboard tonen off her many accomplishments, it at least shows what she is like as a person outside her hair, and her relationships with other characters. In fact, one of the main points of the movie is how wrong it is for Mother Gothel to treat Rapunzel as nothing but life support for the magic hair because she's a unique, charming, wonderful girl that deserves love and appreciation for her own merit. While the narrative also shows that it is wrong of their parents to treat Elsa as nothing but a vassal for her powers and Anna as right to love her sister with of without knowing about them, I feel the narrative (or story structure) itself does not do enough to toon appreciation for Elsa as a person outside her powers.
The conflicts surrounding it are also rather simplistic, but work for the story. Elsa and Anna share a mutual desire to be together, but their relationship seems pretty generic. They were kids that loved to play in the snow and now just want to hang out. Not much depth beyond that. Anna's desperation for affection is not gegeven much exploration beyond how she is lonely. (I guess that's all it NEEDS, but still...) Hans' desire to first woo Anna so he can assassinate her sister to inherit the kingdom, then take advantage of the current disaster to get rid of both of them, is again as basic as it sounds. (Again, I guess it doesn't need to be meer complex, but...)
I could go on, but I think that sums it up. Story is great, everything else is good but not great.
And I still think it should have been in hand-drawn animation! :x
