All Things To All Audiences --The Perfect Epic of Artificial Feminist Adventure

Rating: 7/10 (10 October 2016)

Towards the end of John Sayles' dark American classic EIGHT MEN OUT, fat cat baseball owner Charlie Comiskey is terrified of losing his whole championship team because they threw the 1919 World Series. But his slick legal counselor tells him not to worry. "There will be a reform movement, a movement demanding change in baseball. You must be a part of this movement. In fact, you must appear to be leading it."
What does this have to do with FROZEN?
Disney Studies is like Charlie Comiskey. They're confronted with a massive backlash, feminists attacking their "princess" movies as tired, stale, reactionary, and politically incorrect. Disney's response is to become a part of this protest movement -- in fact, to appear to be leading it.
Hence in FROZEN, you have a princess who does NOT meet Prince Charming. Instead she throws a blizzard-size tantrum and goes off and lives in a frozen castle, and this is represented as a heroic feminist act of empowerment, even though no one actually benefits and she doesn't learn or grow in any discernible way.
Meanwhile, the princess' cute kid sister meets a handsome prince and falls in love at first sight -- only her prince turns out to be a rat, a Hitchcock style villain who switches sides at the drop of an icicle. This allows her to hook up with a cute ice-chopper, but it's made very clear that this relationship is a lot less important than her relationship with her older sister, who returns from exile and is saved at the last moment by the little sister's self sacrifice. Which is great, no problem there, except that "bad" prince just sort of turns bad out of nowhere. And this happens after we've seen him ruling the kingdom better than either sister ever did. But the feminist fable needs a scapegoat, so Hans has to "take one for the team" and be banned for life, just like the innocent Buck Weaver in EIGHT MEN OUT.
If all this sounds like a tiresome bad review, or a series of snarky criticisms, I really don't mean it to be. I liked FROZEN; at least, the first forty minutes or so. I thought "Let It Go" was a real show- stopping number, a true classic. It's just that the second half of the movie drags, and a lot of the characters are forced to behave in ways that aren't authentic just to maintain the illusion that this is a princess movie you can feel "good" about watching. Because the happy ending is (sort of) man-free.
Or something.