Do You Want To Build A Great Disney Film?

Rating: 8/10 (10 January 2014)

'The Snow Queen' had plagued both Walt himself in the 40's and others at Disney in the 90's trying to adapt it into an animated feature, and rightly so, for the charming Hans Christian Anderson fairytale was a story about two Danish children encountering a metaphor for isolation and emerging victorious through Christian faith. And while it HAD been adapted into some foreign animated films in the past, they were just not the sort of films you could market to a family audience. And in this mini-renaissance of Disney since John Lasseter became Disney Animation head in 2006, they finally realized that the answer to making a movie from the tale was the same as some of their past loose adaptations - adapt it in spirit, rewriting all but a theme and a few vague ideas/details.
This is kind of all right, as it turns out - such Disney films as Aladdin, Hercules, Mulan, The Jungle Book and more are successes in spite of how far they stray from the source. And so, with Frozen, it's not terribly important that it is technically adapted more then the fact that it is. For the movie is fully it's own thing.
In the kingdom of Arendelle, there are two princesses, Anna and Elsa, the latter blessed with magical ice powers. They use this to play games, until Anna is smacked one day in the head with an ice blast. They get help from a shaman who fixes Anna and erases her memories of Elsa's magic, advising her to control this by keeping her hidden. "Conceal, don't feel," they say, except this had the added effect of making Elsa so nervous she can't deal with even a little emotion without her power manifesting. Some time later, it is Elsa's coronation, and, For The First Time In Forever (one of the movie's better songs), the gates are to be opened for citizens and diplomats alike to mingle and partake. Yet when a fight breaks out between Elsa and Anna, and her power is shown, she flees the kingdom to the nearby mountain. The magnitude of her outburst freezes the whole kingdom, destroying much of everything. Forgiving and feeling a bit guilty, Anna sets off to find her sister, and fix the curse.
You could be forgiven, from looking at the above, for thinking that Elsa is the protagonist. Alas, it is Anna, and that is the main factor that keeps this from reaching the level of last year's Wreck-It-Ralph, a film which this is otherwise very close to; the most interesting character is the deuteragonist. Otherwise, the film is a remarkable success. While the plot may seem imbalanced, that character is the focus (as it is in many great Disney Animations) shields this potential issue.
Though the marketing took great efforts to conceal it, this is a musical, and a splendid one at that. If not on the level of Beauty And The Beast, is is still extremely good. Only one noodle-of-a-number fails, with most of the rest effective, two doing their job with exciting gusto, and one towering over the rest. That would be "Let It Go", the solo for Elsa after her flight. It is destined to be the song that takes this movie to Broadway.
And the movie works because Anna, despite being upstaged by her sister, is likable. So is her companion Kristoff and his reindeer Sven. Even the comic sidekick, Olaf the snowman, is likable, despite being designed from a marketing viewpoint. Partly because the movie makes it clearly he is dumb, but mostly because he actually has a place in the plot. And the movie is fun, and has depth, in ways that it makes abundantly clear, but are still very much appreciated.
And it is unquestionably gorgeous; possessing some of the best CG animation from Disney amongst a color scheme of muted colors and hazy lightning indoors, reserving the visual splendor for the snow and ice. The way they shine and reflect, their structural precision, the diffraction and refraction... like Wreck-It-Ralph before it, it is better suited to CG then traditional animation, the one area it which it surpasses that film; it is very hard to imagine any look serving the film better then the one it has.
Frozen is a simple and straightforward film. It does take risks by, among other things, having no real villain (though it can't help but position a Duke early on as though he is, and the character barely registers thereafter, the one plot mishap that really rubbed me the wrong way), and it knows and embraces it's tradition of fantasies for children and children within adults. It is a great Disney film - beautiful in it's detail of character and design, possessing a simple and sweetly touching emotional template, and full of thrilling sequences. Not a Disney masterpiece, but more then capable of standing with some of the other Disney greats over the years. As long as they can keep making films this great, more power to them. 8.5/10