A Song of Ice and Snow

Rating: 10/10 (8 July 2014)

By now, if you aren't a three-year-old – in which case I would be puzzled to see you reading this –, you know what to bargain for when watching a Disney production: ravishing animations, a feel good story teaching morals, more or less fun for the whole family, but also a rather unoriginal script abounding with clichés.
Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee's Frozen preserves the modus operandi, but is one of the most exciting and entertaining features the film studio has forged in recent years nevertheless. This also applies for the music incorporated in the 102-minute-long retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen, led by the lovely "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?", the comical "In Summer", and, of course, the film's powerful flagship "Let It Go", yet getting slightly hoary and tedious during other numbers. For a one- time view, the breathers in quality, such as a ridiculous stone troll family, a strained twist in the final act, or the cloying 'act of true love' stepping in as a deus ex machina, are pardonable due to an excellent voice cast and plenty genuine laughs for the young and the old. However, Frozen will hardly go down as a Disney classic in view of all these flaws.
If you seek a good family film, the men and women at Disney are who you can bet on to deliver and with Frozen, they've found the right mixture of fun, romance, and peril yet again. But that also makes it an archetypal Disney animation – yet again.