Amiable Disney flick that will entertain most.

Rating: 6/10 (12 February 2014)

Inspired by (rather than adapted from) Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen, Disney's latest offering, Frozen, is a light, amiable singsong through the ice and snow that will entertain most, delight the young and eventually fall into place behind The Lion King, Aladdin and numerous other classics in the Disney catalogue.
Princesses Anna and Elsa are as close as good fairytale sisters can be until Anna inadvertently unleashes her ice power upon her younger sibling and almost kills her. Her parents decide the best way to prevent it happening again is to hide Anna from the world, and prevent her from seeing Elsa by locking her in her room. Their parents die some time later, the isolation continues, much to the dismay of Elsa, until the decision is made to open the gates to the world for Anna's coronation. In a bout of misunderstanding, Anna (Kristen Bell) almost terminates Elsa (Idina Menzel) again, horrifies the townsfolk and takes to the hills. Elsa recruits reluctant ice salesman Kristoff (Jonathon Groff) and his trusty reindeer, Sven, and aims to bring her back to end the winter that has sprung up in her wake.
Frozen has the feel of a musical (à la Les Misérables) rather than a comedy film with songs (The Muppets) inasmuch as the songs aren't used as condiments to the meal but as principal ingredients, and there is a danger of this wrenching the viewer out of the film instead of propelling them along with it. Most of the songs very quickly fade in the memory and, with a solitary exception, I cannot name a single one less than a day after the event. The exception, however, is the mighty fine (and, I predict, the soon to be Oscar-winning) Let It Go.
In a film that lacks magic, this is the sequence that makes the ice truly sparkle and stands out as the moment Frozen becomes a film worth watching. In the transformation of Anna as dejected queen into icy vamp, she firmly supplants Ariel as the most fanciable animated character on the big screen.
The animation in this sequence also comes alive. From the opening scenes of water and ice being cut into blocks, the backdrops are the stars of Frozen but in the latter part of Let It Go, the character animators finally hit their strides and we are given a character that is as watchable and complete as the scenery.
Disney has, in the past, become a byword for schmaltz and sanitized stories. Take another look at Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame for stories that have been watered down for delicate audiences. Here, again, Disney holds back on the trauma and, whereas in Bambi we were left in no doubt as to the fate of his mother, here it is almost a suggestion and glossed over quickly. So much of Frozen feels like a trip of shortcuts when it should be a journey of adventure, false turns and new avenues.
Frozen also suffers from the lack of a bona fide villain. Yes, the Duke of Wesleton (Alan Tudyk) has his moments and for an awful moment it looks as though Anna may transmogrify into something evil but there is nothing we can really sink our teeth into. The comedy character, Olaf (Josh Gad), the snowman, adds some comedy variation but even he is amusing rather than outright funny.
Frozen is a sweet, easy fairytale that will distract your children from killing each other one rainy Saturday and most Disney animations are worth having on the DVD shelf eventually. But therein rests the issue: this is a Disney film and not a Pixar event.
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