A female fantasy without real power or shape

Rating: 3/10 (29 January 2014)

Well a story of two princesses is going to lean on the feminine side of storytelling no doubt but I have no problem with that if the story is engaging, well structured etc. People might accuse me of being sexist and they might be right in general but I am also an appreciator of good movies regardless of the tone be it masculine or feminine. This movie however doesn't satisfy me in that regard. Of course, the scriptwriter as I checked is a woman. And this is going to be important as I analyze the themes of this movie because I will take the author's gender and sensibilities into account. So basically the story fails to engage because of its simplicity and baseness. It is so based that it struggles to even be called a story since it almost has no deep characters with conflict, nor any metaphors or an underlying message hidden in between the lines. So basically you have an older and a younger princess. The older one is defined as having an extraordinary talent which allows her to freeze anything on touch, even build complex structures out of ice and give life (!) to a snowman. She is also a beautiful young blond. That would be her outward appearance and actions. Inwardly she is "shy" and closed because of the fear her power will hurt others and so has to act responsible and overly cautious. The younger sister is an "ordinary" girl by her own admission (or should I say the words of the female author). Maybe next movie we will have a villain stock character say "I'm a villain" or a cool hero stock character say "I'm just a cool hero". Anyway she is a gorgeous red-haired beauty that travels the movie with wide eyes and easily falls in love. Her inward appearance is vibrant, full of life and naive. So basically you have a "conflict" between two sisters. One tries to be responsible with her power, the other one tries to live her life to the fullest. This sets in motion a conflict free movie where the older sister has to stop the winter she unknowingly unleashed while the younger one is a protagonist who falls in love with any man she spends more than one minute with. So why is it a bad story? Like I said, written from a female perspective what we do have is a villain that is not threatening, a girl (young sister) that goes on a not so dangerous journey to talk to her sister (who we know loves her and is going to stop the winter in the end anyway since all of it is just one big misunderstanding). We, or at least I, know all this before it happens but the journey itself is boring. So the focus of the movie becomes the younger sister's interactions with a stranger that helps her travel to her older sister. She is already engaged to a prince back home, but spends most of the movie making the moves on the handsome stranger looking at him with wide eyes and basically acting innocent while being all over him. Well one female fantasy for certain was fulfilled while writing this script. Who will the younger sister choose? Her fiancé or the handsome and rugged stranger? Of course any woman would choose the dangerous stranger over the boring fiancé and that shows in the story. I admit I didn't watch till the end but apparently the fiancé at the end turns out to be bad. So I guess the woman screenwriter solved that dilemma efficiently. "hmmm I don't want my girl to look bad by leaving her fiancé for another man so I am going to make the fiancé the last minute bad guy. That solves everything and absolves me from being morally reprehensible. This way I can live out the all-female fantasy." What else? Oh yes, this entire movie wouldn't have happened if the trolls (side characters meant to be cute. Meant to be.) didn't advise the older sister to keep her powers hidden from everyone and live a life of shame and fear. So that is why I put the "shy" part in quotations when referring to the older sister's characteristics. She was forced to shy away because of one really ill gotten advice when she was a young girl. The real villain of the movie - the cute little trolls. For shame.