Good, but I still liked Tangled better

Rating: 7/10 (3 December 2013)

Well, the new animated fantasy film "Frozen" has gotten some great reviews and been doing excellent box-office, so I decided to check it out for myself---always have been a push-over for Disney animated films.
First off, it's best if you put any comparisons between this film and the old fairy story "The Snow Queen" right out of your head immediately, because while the film is supposedly based on the fairy tale, there's pretty much nothing left of the original story. So, just go into the cinema thinking of this as something entirely new, and it will play better.
Overall, I most definitely did enjoy the film and am glad I went. It's gorgeous to look at, and has some great vocal performances. Okay, it's true enough that off-hand I can't recall a single one of the songs (and I've just seen the film a few hours ago), but that's due more to my (typical) extreme forgetfulness than to a lack of memorability on the part of the score. At least a few of the tunes were quite strong, and I'm sure if I listened to the soundtrack a few times I'd get a better feel for the music, and decide which tunes were my favourites. (Yes, Broadway veteran Idina Menzel does in fact get her own show-stopping number, and it's quite impressive both visually and vocally.)
Comic relief was thankfully kept within acceptable bounds---I LOVED the goofy reindeer, and while I wasn't particularly enamoured of Olaf the talking snowman, he wasn't nearly as annoying as I thought he'd be. (The early adverts featured the snowman to an excessive degree, but in fact the character had a much smaller part in the film than the adverts indicated.)
However.... While I liked the film, perhaps I'm not feeling quite as enthusiastic about it as I thought I would. The plot in general seemed a bit weak, and the big climactic scene fell very flat indeed for me. I suppose I didn't find the heroine Anna to be particularly interesting--- the film is told from her perspective. But her sister Elsa, along with the male lead Kristoff, were the characters I wanted to see more of.
This is one of those films that I'll have to see a few times before I come to a definite conclusion as to precisely how much I like it. Oh, I enjoyed it well enough that I'm likely to pick up the Blu-ray when it becomes available, so ask me again in a year or so what I thought and I'll have a much more detailed and well thought out review
In the end, I believe I still prefer the production team's earlier animated film "Tangled" over this one; it seemed like a stronger picture. But---I've seen "Tangled" innumerable times by now, and am quite familiar with the material. A similar familiarity with "Frozen" may raise my opinion on this new film quite a bit---and remember, I'm not exactly complaining about it in the first place. I do recommend it-- -and it's a great way to help get in the mood for the upcoming holiday/winter season.