Disney Is Back But Could've Used Tighter Script

Rating: 7/10 (14 March 2014)

Frozen is set here as a loose adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's book The Snow Queen but here in this Disney universe she is a misunderstood character and someone that can be more relatable to audiences (this was something that Disney have tried to tell for a long time). Here we start with young Elsa (The Snow Queen in question) accidentally ice blasting her young sister Anna in the face, to which the parents rush her to a bunch of Trolls for one of them to save Anna and manipulate her memories so that she won't remember of her sisters powers. We get a montage then of how the two grow up, parents die and eventually stop at Elsa getting crowned as The Queen of the Kingdom. Of course things go wrong as Elsa accidentally reveals her powers to the Kingdom and runs away, also putting the Kingdom into eternal winter in the process. Anna decides to run off to find her sister to remove the eternal winter while joined on her quest by Kristoff, an ice master, and his reindeer Sven.
Well Disney Animation at least has been picking up a bit of form recently what with Tangled and Wreck It Ralph and now Frozen continues the momentum for the studio to be back being big game players once again.
No matter how many Pixar or Dreamworks films you have watched over the last decade or more, you honestly can't help but enjoy a by the numbers Disney film with some heart and musical numbers, which Frozen brings in spades. Sure some of the musical numbers are kind of forgettable (For one I can't remember one word right now from the song by the Trolls and I only watched it last night) but you'll be at least humming away or singing inside your head to the big belter 'Let It Go' (Which won an Oscar for Best Song) as well as 'Do You Want To Build A Snowman' or for more funnier reasons 'In Summer'.
The start of the film is decent enough but you hoped that some things were developed more with Elsa, after all she is the Snow Queen but don't really answer the origin of the powers and actually throughout the film she's kind of the background character that gets the other characters something to do while she runs off and builds her ice castle on a mountain topas you do. Despite a spectacular misjudgement of character from Anna, which I'm sure would have annoyed a number of cynical people (meets guy for literally 5 minutes and a song and gets engaged), but I liked her character as she stands by her sister regardless and ultimately that's where the heart of the film lies in is this sisterhood.
As much as this film has positives there is negativesquite a number of them. The structure of the story jumps from time to time, with this story being in development hell quite a few times it seems that several ideas are still there but not touched (Elsa's powers – where did they come from? Anna gets her memories incepted and yet THAT doesn't come back in the plot at all the rest of the film? ). The villain plot twist was expected and got the point of that but that leading into the ending it all felt a bit rushed to me.
Kristen Bell and Idena Menzel do a great job as the sisters and the show stealer goes to Josh Gad as snowman Olaf who randomly comes into the film halfway through at the right time to provide the laughs for the rest of the film.
Few songs they could've done without and the ending felt a bit rushed but overall it's a great return to form that Disney is forming here from the Tangled era onwards. Prepare to have 'Let It Go' stuck in your head for the next while.