Not a Masterpiece but Some Great Characters and a Beautiful Look

Rating: Null/10 (9 December 2013)

Frozen (2013)
*** (out of 4)
The latest Disney outing has a few flaws but there's still enough magic here to make it worth sitting through. Princess Anna goes searching for her sister, the Queen, who has special powers, which accidentally freeze their village. Anna hopes to bring her sister back home but there's a villain who has other ideas. FROZEN is such a visual beauty that one can really overlook the flaws and just sit back and enjoy the film. I'll start off with the flaws, which are the songs. It's not like we just get one, two or three songs but it really feels as if five-minutes doesn't go by before we get yet another. There are a couple stand out musical numbers but I just really felt that there were way too many and it ended up taking away from the story and the characters. Speaking of the characters, each of them were simply marvelous and they certainly helped draw you into the film and make you care about what's going on with them. The Anna character was one of the most charming in recent years. The sister, the hero and the snowman and reindeer were just flawless characters that added to the romance as well as the comedy. The constantly back and forth between the snowman and the reindeer was priceless and the two certainly could use their own movie. The one weak character turned out to be the villain who was someone we've just seen way too many times in these type of animation films. The visuals in the film were just amazing to see on a big screen and especially the beautiful snow-covered valley. I really thought the effects were wonderfully done and I especially liked a sequence early on where the Queen rushes across some water with the ice sparkling as she touches it. FROZEN isn't a complete masterpiece but it's another charming winner from the studio.