Marval Movie

Frozen is the new Disney musical that seeks to regain its former glory by going back to its roots with an animated musical based on a classic old fairy tale.

The story of Frozen is based on The Snow Queen, by Hans Christian Anderson. The Snow Queen is one of those old dark tales (the ones I love) but its also the kind that doesn't really fit with a Disney musical. So as you would expect there have been some changes. The changes to this story are as great as what Disney did to The Little Mermaid, this doesn't ruin the story because the original story still exists, but also to me its fine as long as what we get is a solid story in its own right. The story here is pretty good, not at Tangled level but on a simple experience level its fine.

Instead of just one, we get two Princess's for the price of one in this movie. There sisters, the youngest (as-well as our lead) is Anna (Kristen Bell). A young, spirited girl with a sweet speaking and singing voice. She is admit-tingly a cliche of the animated princess but to be truthful I have a weakness for these characters so I'm happy with her. The elder sister is Elsa, voiced by Broadway veteran Indina Menzel. She is a character who goes through an arc and who's personality is actually very understandable. Something else is that she's actually a queen, not just given the princess title because it sounds cute. Also I love her voice and her singing, but that's to be expected by a top notch talent that Menzel is.

One distracting part of these two characters is that their faces look a lot like Rapunzel from Tangled. The fact that they look similar is fine with me because their related, but they look just like Rapunzel. I don't know if they just happened to land on the same character design, or this is showing the limits of 3D animation but it was a little bit of a draw back for me.

Once again we get two leading men for the price of one. The first one we meet is Hans (Santino Fontana) a very charming prince, who is the first boy Anna meets so of course they instantly hit it off. The second is Kristoff (Jonathan Groff) a woodsman that will help Anna on her journey. Kristoff might be my favorite character (tied with Elsa) he seems to be the most cynical as well as the most self aware of the Disney cliches.

As is the law there must be some comic relief characters in a Disney movie and here we get a living snowman named Olaf (Josh Gad) and a reindeer named Sven. Olaf is a character that Disney has been really pushing on the people with their advertisement and their trailers, they seem to be really proud of him. They shouldn't be. He actually isn't as bad as I though he would be, he did make me laugh a few times, but they really overplay him, most of his lines can be cut. Luckily though he isn't the Jar-Jar-Binks of Disney like he was predicted to be. Sven is actually pretty funny, he's a character with no lines and I always love those characters, this is the character that Disney should be promoting more than Olaf.

The animation, what else would you expect from Disney, its top notch! Everything has great detail and energy to it. There are also great colors here, I would have expected a movie that takes place in a winter environment would have a limited color scheme of white and blue, but there are actually a wide range of colors that make for a glorious looking movie. But then again what else would you expect from Disney.   

What surprised me in the movie was actually the amount of comedy. There are some big laughs in this movie. They range from visual, to character based. Some of them come from throw away characters that only make one appearance. But this movie has some big laughs working for it.

The songs in Frozen are handled by  Robert Lopez and Nasrani Anderson-Lopez, the team that brought us such great soundtracks as Avenue Q and Book of Mormon. Now I was worried that Disney may have gone a little nuts with choosing them for their music. It's not that their not great, I love the music and the songs from both Avenue Q and Book of Mormon. But they are both very adult musicals, luckily they know how to handle the Disney material. They know not to put any risky language or dodgy metaphors within their work, these are good clean songs for the family. But for the Soundtrack as a whole its just OK. There are about three really good songs in it (Let It Go is my favorite) but the others are just good but I don't really remember them.

This is a fun movie with really nice visuals and more that a few memorable jokes and characters. Go and see the movie, you'll have a good time. Yes there are some really old story and character cliches, but their really old for a reason. Their a lot of fun.

Rating: 3 1/2 stars out of 4

Get A Horse Review:

The short that stars before this movie is a Mickey Mouse short and it is adorable. It is a smart funny short that messes with the boundaries of film and both 2D and 3D animation. This short is well executed and will have you smiling before the movie even starts. It also reuses Walt Disney's voice as Mickey, its just good to hear that classic character sound like his classic self.