Beautiful, hilarious and heart warming.

Rating: 8/10 (29 December 2013)

Very loosely adapted from Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen, the latest family flick from the Mouse House is an absolute treat for young and old. The effective prologue - that effortlessly goes from heart warming to heart breaking - will have grown men "getting the dust" out of their eyes, before the movie leaps forward to present day with a couple of belting tunes from Kristen Bell's Anna and her sister, Idina Menzel's Elsa. After it all goes wrong for Elsa we spend the next hour on an icy trek with Anna and her ragtag pals: the rough-around-the-edges Kristoff (Jonathan Groff), his loyal and amusing reindeer Sven, and the hilarious, adorable and show-stealing snowman Olaf (Josh Gad). It's all very predictable and rarely veers away from the traditional folk tale mould, but it moves along at such a fast pace and features so many funny and/or touching moments that the cliché-laden narrative beats are hardly a problem. The songs are catchy and the animation is crisp and beautiful, which, after the unremarkable and rather indifferent Tangled, assists Disney in a wonderful comeback in the fairytale genre.