Frozen

FROM THE CREATORS OF MICKEY MOUSE.

Hello all, The week is half over and that means it's time for more movies! It's cold as hell here and I figured that would make it an appropriate time to talk about Frozen, a film all about being cold and maybe dying from exposure to extremely low temperatures, and also living in a world devoid of warmth, left out alone in the snow, or locked away where no one can see you. SOUNDS LIKE FUN RIGHT? Well yes and also maybe not so much, but we will get to that in a bit. For starters, Frozen is the latest Disney film that is computer animated and about princesses who live in castles. This particular film concerns sisters Anna and Elsa, one of whom is super outgoing and energetic, and the other of whom has been hidden from the world her whole life because she has icy frost magic. The king and queen of Arendelle die, and so Anna and Elsa are left mutually alone, as Elsa shuts everyone out, to try and protect them from her unholy frost witchcraft, probably gifted to her by the devil (well that's how they treat her anyway). Elsa is eventually to become queen, and on the day of her coronation there's a big hullabaloo and a fancy party. There, Anna (Who is voiced by Kristen Bell, I actually have a really weird and awkward movie with her in it to talk about some other time) meets Hans, who seems like the handsome and kind prince she has been waiting to fall in love with at first sight (As we know, that always works out SO WELL) Anna wants to marry him right there on the dance floor, but Elsa isn't as thrilled as her (Elsa by the by is voiced by Idina Menzel, who previously appeared in Disney's Enchanted) and won't give her blessing. They fight, Elsa gets emotional, and then maybe she shoots some icy magic, is chased out for being a witch, and then accidentally blankets the kingdom in unending winter. Oops.

People don't like the snowman Olaf or something?

Elsa flees deep into the wilderness, to the top of a mountain where she creates a massive ice castle and sings a song about how she doesn't give a fuck about what anyone thinks anymore, and that's pretty cool I guess. If I thought she wasn't also really sad it would be better, but okay go with it. Naturally Anna pursues her, meets Kristoff, an ice salesman who is clearly unbalanced (he talks to his reindeer and talks back for it, so I can really relate to him, minus the having a reindeer thing) and naturally he is the guy she REALLY will fall in love with blah blah color by the numbers you get it. Also there are little rock trolls, that was pretty cute I guess. The movie is very nice to look at, I don't know that it's stunning, but I certainly enjoyed what I was looking at. Some people thought it was brilliant, others nitpicked it... i guess I fall in the middle on this one. I know that someone out there will hear that and think "Well I mean you aren't an ARTIST so obviously you wouldn't notice this mistake/fully appreciate what's on offer." To that person: Go to Hell.

The lovely and talented Veronica Mars.

ANYWAY, The movie doesn't throw anything groundbreaking at the audience as far as I was concerned. It's nice that there is a princess (turned queen) who doesn't have to find a prince, and is okay to do her thing while her sister goes all boy crazy, but I mean Tangled also presented what I thought was a decent (for Disney) female character. People seemed really stunned with how like, independent Elsa was or whatever, but really she was first cloistered away, and then shunned, and didn't seem thrilled by it except in the scene where she sings her song about how much she doesn't care that she has no friends and everyone thinks she's a monster. I also felt like the (spoilers) secret evil prince thing was kind of a band-aid villain for when the writers decided that Elsa was too sympathetic to be the actual villain of the movie. I'm GLAD she wasn't, but the whole grasping noble thing was pretty obvious even for a Disney movie.

Elsa used Blizzard! It's super effective!

I guess ultimately that was my beef with the movie though in general. Not to sound really on point about it, but the whole thing felt really cold, like it was just going by a playbook. We need X character types, they'll do Y and there will be Z songs in the movie, because this is Disney dammit and that's what we do. The movie felt really color by the numbers, which wasn't an impression I got from say, Tangled. The movie felt really... small somehow to me, and the songs felt disinterested and perfunctory. It felt like after a certain amount of time someone would start singing, because that was just what was expected. I know a lot of people will disagree with me, because everyone seemed to really like Frozen a lot, and I didn't dislike it, I felt like the setting was pretty and I found Anna to be a likable character (and Elsa was interesting too) but ultimately I think I found the movie to be just kind of forgettable.

Nice face Anna.

That's all I have to say about it! Join me next week, when I talk about the dangers of Dungeons & Dragons in the 80s!