Classic Disney But Updated

Rating: 10/10 (23 April 2014)

Frozen is excellent. If you have kids or retain any childlike sense of wonder or humor, this belongs in your collection.
The 'classic' part of my review title is what we've all seen before from Disney: a princess (in this case, two of them), a strong handsome guy as a love interest, an animal or anthromorph as comic relief, catchy songs, and the good guys win in the end. If you like virtually any other Disney animation movie, this will not disappoint on those scores. It hits all the right notes as we'd expect. As I said: classic Disney.
Where Frozen excels, in my opinion, is where it strays from the classic Disney boilerplate. We see the two princesses as children, to start...very rare if not unique. We get an immediate sense of the sister's closeness, upon which the entire movie hinges. There would BE no movie without that bond.
Elsa, a child, makes a 'mistake'...more like involved in an unforeseeable accident...which harms Anna. The parents race to save the situation, and get some 'help' which actually does more harm. This is a fairly mature theme rarely explored in ANY movie, much less a Disney animation. The trolls save Anna (of course), but give some spectacularly bad advice and the parents don't do a lot better with it. Elsa has special abilities which WILL get stronger; teaching her to fear and hate them is not a good path to put her on. Locking her away from the world...and the sister who loves her...is just plain stupid and an accident waiting to happen. Granted without that bad advice...again, no movie.
Elsa, guilty over her powers hurting her beloved sister, being told the only way to stop from hurting anyone is to pretend they don't exist, kept locked away from the world like someone's dirty little secret, made to feel her suffering and loneliness is necessary...
And the parents do the same to Anna. She's stuck in the locked castle, too, without a word of explanation. So on the first day she's let out, she gets a little crazy, 'falls' for the first 'suitable' guy she's ever met. Wants to marry him, asks Elsa (now the Queen) for her blessing. Elsa is smarter than Anna, says, "No, you just met this guy!" Anna pushes back, and eventually Elsa loses the control she's never really had a handle on.
So Elsa leaves...again, trying to protect Anna and the kingdom. Anna seeks her out, Elsa tosses her out since as far as she knows, the only way to keep Anna safe is to keep her far away.
The movie is about the love of two sisters for each other, and shows the stupid things people do to 'protect' those we love. While the 'romance' angle for Anna is a given, there's been a lot of complaints that Elsa doesn't have a love interest. For me, that's a huge selling point, as is the way Anna's is handled.
There is NO way Elsa is ready for any sort of romantic love. She can't even handle sisterly love for the majority of the movie; all her life she's been told she has to keep it locked away, don't feel, stay apart. She's dangerous, will only hurt those she's close to. Yeah, there's lots of wiggle room for a spurious romantic interest there! Anna, as the sister that ISN'T saddled with terrifying powers or the guilt, can have a love interest. And as Kristoff mocks her, "Wait, you got engaged to a guy you JUST MET TODAY?"; it's eventually shown that he and Anna actually grow closer through their mutual adventure, learning about family and friends and habits and so on.
Frozen is ANNA's story. I'm hoping Frozen 2 would be Elsa's. She isn't ready for a love interest in the first installment, without it being some horrible cliché that would ruin one of the better characters Disney has come up with. Anna is fun, but there's a lot more to Elsa, and I sincerely hope she gets a chance to really shine in a future movie.
Final accounting: classic Disney fun, with some deeper themes you can ignore or explore at your own leisure. Honestly, my favorite Disney movie since Aladdin.