Frozen, 2013.
Directed by Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee.
Featuring the voice talent of Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel, Jonathan Goff, Josh Gad, Santino Fontana and Alan Tudyk.
“Magical” is a word that gets bounded around Disney fairly often and for very obvious reasons. Aside from the fact the word makes up the first half of one of their park’s most famous areas, Disney movies carry a certain aura about them that screams “magical”. It is a word that can be overused and is even attributed to Disney films that don’t deserve so, but 2013’s Frozen is a movie that really earns it. Frozen is simply magical. But more than that, it’s a damn fine movie.
Set in that part of Nordic Europe where everyone has an American accent, Frozen tells the story of Anna and her older sister Elsa who has a secret – she can create snow and ice from her hands. After an accident involving her powers, her parents decide it’s best to shut her away from the world until she can control her terrifying affliction. Unbeknownst to this, Anna just thinks her sister is ignoring her which means she spends the better part of her childhood just wishing her sister would come out and play with her again. When Elsa is forced to leave her room and interact with society, the news that her care-free sister is getting married on a whim causes her to lose her temper and create an eternal winter across the land. As she scurries away into her own ice castle away from the world, Anna must track her down to see if she can convince her sister to come back home and relieve the town of their frozen landscape.
It’s been talked about often enough so it doesn’t need repeating here, but one of the shining elements of Frozen is how it doesn’t play up to the now solidified Disney formula. But Frozen is a movie that is more than just bucking the trend by focusing on sisters rather than a princess finding a dashing prince. Like Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and The LEGO Movie, it parodies the genre conventions without being patronising and remaining a film that can entertain its target audience. Tropes like falling in love with the first man you meet are pointed out for being ridiculous and the anthropomorphic snowman created from nothing without any explanation is glossed over with such blatant disregard that it’s clear Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee were having fun with the genre conventions. It is nice to see a Disney movie with a different set of morals, but to ignore the clever writing is a disservice to the filmmakers.
But what would a Disney movie be without a fantastic toe-tapping soundtrack? Let It Go appears to have been covered more times than A Bridge Over Troubled Waters, but the rest of the music in Frozen is just as good. Even the redundant rock trolls have a good up-tempo track and the lack of the traditional slow love song means that Frozen always stays alive and in high gear. The exposition heavy Do You Want To Build A Snowman is perfectly crafted while the love song parody Love is an Open Door is a brilliant duet that is inkeeping with the movie’s genre-bending motif. While it may seem like a pointless stop gap, Olaf’s In Summer is the movie’s true earworm and features some very clever lyrics that achieve that balance of fitting the song while also being funny.
As stated at the start of this review, Frozen is just a brilliantly magical movie where everything comes together beautifully. The fact that it throws out all expectations from a Disney movie sets it apart from the Snow Whites and Beauty and the Beasts and has thrust it into “instant classic”, but there is so much more to Frozen than just a simple change of pace. It’s a good story with interesting and defined characters, it has a big heart and a good moral compass. The songs are good, the voice acting is good and its design is bright and colourful without being offensive to the eyes.
It is different yes, but we shouldn’t be focusing on that. We should focus on the fact that this is a great movie.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Luke Owen is one of Flickering Myth’s co-editors and the host of the Flickering Myth Podcast. You can follow him on Twitter @LukeWritesStuff.
Originally published March 31, 2014. Updated November 10, 2019.
