A pleasant diversion, but no classic and leadened by weak musical numbers.

Rating: 5/10 (2 March 2014)

This was a pretty decent animated film, though nothing really exceptional.
There are some good points on a conceptual level, such as the focus on multiple female heroines and to Scandinavian setting. The best aspect is that this looks astounding, with very appealing character designs and settings. The comic relief is also a mildly strong point.
But this is really a quite average film. The skeleton and glitz is there, but there's not much depth and nuance (by Disney standards) that really make this film stand out among the Disney or Pixar classics. The story progression is also very patchwork where conflict is presented and resolved with a blink of an eye and ponderous diversions eat up screen time before hastily resuming the plot. When a movie like "The Emperor's New Groove" outdoes a film like this in all of these aspects, you know something's wrong. Even the better character development, such as Esla and Anna's relationship, doesn't seem as strong as it should.
Some of these issues could be blamed on the musical aspect, a genre Disney had cornered for decades in the animation medium, taking up the script. But this film has got to have some of the weakest musical numbers in Disney's film canon. They're so generic that they could easily have been salvaged from Disney's direct-to-video "cheapquels". Lyrics are bland and repetitive, simply doling out exposition without being remotely memorable. At best, they are mildly diverting though still seem like lesser numbers lifted from a Disney Channel music video. It's sad when the "Olaf in Summer" number is the best of the bunch (sure it was completely pointless, but it was at least kinda entertaining).
There's also this odd sense that this movie had serious "in-development" issues similar to movies like Bolt, Tangled, and Brave. While Tangle came out much better for it (and personally a better film), this one came out not so well where it seems like there wasn't much of a solid direction. While the bare bones plot survived along with a handful of well-realized character moments, Disney ended up holding this together by padding and bridging sequences with superfluous musical numbers (troll song anyone?) and plenty of fluffy comic relief moments while other seemingly important characters like Wesalton are wasted supplying little more than comic relief and expositing antagonistic dialogue here and there.
I know that this was intended as a kid's/tween's movie. The themes aren't too complex beyond the importance of family, trust, and the power of love. I have no issue with that. But this one seems like it's made almost exclusively for youngsters and a product of complacency and low expectations rather than be something that older audience members can equally appreciate like the best of Disney, Pixar or even Dreamworks.