Pleasing, and startlingly beautiful

Rating: 9/10 (19 December 2013)

When Princess Elsa nearly kills her younger sister Anna by careless use of her magical freezing powers, the King and Queen react by magically erasing Anna's memory, and raising Elsa in isolation. When the sisters meet again at Elsa's coronation, her powers again wreak havoc, and she runs away to live in isolation where she can't hurt anyone. But Anna follows, to try to persuade her to return for she has left her realm in the grip of a never-ending winter.
Inspired by, but not based on, Hans Andersen's The Snow Queen, Frozen is an original fairytale delivered in the same manner as Tangled - traditional Disney fare, but with computer animation rather than traditional hand-drawn animation, albeit anyone watching it will not be surprised to see characters which could have sprung from Cinderalla, Sleeping Beauty et al. Many of the better CGI movies reflect strides made in modelling one particular area and, with Frozen that is, not surprisingly, snow and ice. In fact, much of this film is breathtakingly beautiful as regards how full use is made of the possibilities which CGI opens up to the animators. The 3D is also very good. The film is a treat for the eyes.
Which is not to short-change the story. Unusually, there is no formal villain as such: what we have is an antagonist who causes harm but does not wish to: a potentially tragic character and, in fact, the opening sequence is a wistful and sad opening to family fare, not that Disney has ever shied away from making hard choices in storytelling. The two sisters are nicely realised, as are the two handsome young men, and also the comedy relief reindeer and snowman. Pleasingly, the voice talent is relatively low profile, but they do very well.
The story carries no major surprises (but one or two minor ones), and remains pleasing. I felt it didn't have quite as much heart as Tangled, but there were still moments when it brought a tear to the eye, whether through a story moment or simply because something is jaw-droppingly beautiful to look at.
Recommended.