Up until this week, I had only ever seen two good animated movies: Finding Nemo and Monsters Inc (I refuse to see the new Monsters movie, as it will undoubtedly rape my childhood). But now, I am forced to begrudgingly add a third movie to that list. To be honest, I really don’t know what to think of Frozen. Parts of it are absolute genius and other parts made me want to ram an ice pick through my ear canal. But the genius parts so outweighed the bad parts, and were so God damn entertaining, I couldn’t really help it. This movie is shockingly good, and it helps that I didn’t go into it with any expectations short of “anus of cinema.” But this movie does away with most of the sentimentality and sepia-toned tearjerking bullshit that has plagued animated movies for the last decade (I’m looking at you, Up). I am legitimately shocked that I liked it at all, let alone this much.
Unlike most kid’s movies these days, which are usually either sequels or rip-offs (this year saw Despicable Me 2, Planes, and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2), Frozen has an original premise and a talented voice acting cast. Kristen Bell absolutely kills it as the main character, a princess (gee, who saw that coming?) whose ice queen sister accidentally freezes everything.
Yeah, okay. Anyway, I can’t say that the general outline is terribly original, but the whole curse/gift that the sister (Elsa) has is intriguing as fuck. There’s a reason why I singled out this movie to see instead of the aforementioned animated movies of the year, and that’s because the premise is so hopelessly fascinating. It also helps that at the time this came out, I was bouncing around a story similar to this to write myself (but with far more swearing and explosions), so it caught my interest immediately. It’s a good thing that the dialogue doesn’t let down the premise, because almost all of it is well-written. This blew my mind-- I was used to lines like “Kachow! I’m Lighting McFuckface!” or some of the other auditory turds that Disney/Pixar has been throwing our way. It’s possible that I was expecting total shit and was just impressed by the mediocre writing, but hey, I’ll take that.
Almost all of the scenes are very well-animated. The sequence in which Elsa accidentally creates some ice spikes out of thin air is both intense and well-done. By the time she started building her fortress of fucking solitude, I was pretty much hooked visually. But ugh, some of the dialogue... yikes. It’s more than objectionable, it’s downright discouraging. This is one of those movies that can have a wide range of quality, even within the span of a few minutes. I’d like to split it into two movies and rate the two halves completely differently, but sadly I’m not allowed to do that.
I really want to say that I love Frozen, but there are several flaws that hold it back from a higher score. Firstly, the fucking snowman Olaf is the most annoying comic relief ever. He is Frozen’s equivalent of Jar-Jar Binks. All he does is dick around with stupid slapstick humor, and it drove me nuts. Fortunately, he doesn’t show up until the second half of the movie, but when he does, it is grating. Up until that point, the movie totally sucks you in, but once this bullshit character is shoehorned in to sell toys, you remember that you’re watching a product of a well-oiled Hollywood machine and not an actual attempt at storytelling. This movie would have been ridiculously better had it not been for him, but the kiddies will still throw temper tantrums in the checkout line at Toys R Us for little Olaf dolls.
Also, I can’t judge all of this movie, because (I admit) I had to skip over some of the songs. Sorry, but musicals, animated or not, are just not for me. It doesn’t make sense that anyone would just break into song in public randomly. Not like it makes sense that someone would randomly be gifted with ice-manipulating powers, but that works in the context of the world the movie creates. The songs made me grit my teeth, and although they got stuck in my head, that’s not really a compliment-- Justin Bieber songs would probably get stuck in my head too (if I ever was forced to listen to that drivel).
But speaking of the ice-powers... where did they come from? What was the point of that? I expected there to be some backstory revealed there, but that never happened. It never feels like there’s much at stake in this movie, because the most powerful force in the film is a very sympathetic main character. Why wasn’t there some vindictive ice demon/force/queen/thing that caused all this? Why was it never explained? The fact that the most dangerous villain in the movie was some guy who couldn’t do jackshit against the power to THROW A FUCKING BLIZZARD AT SOMEONE’S FACE WITH YOUR MIND. I know I shouldn’t be such a hard-ass (and I probably shouldn’t swear so much), seeing as this is a kid’s movie, but it had way more potential than this.
Final Score for Frozen: 6/10 stars. There are aspects of this film that I actively despise with a passion, but I enjoyed the other parts way too much to completely write it off. It could have been great, but settles with being merely good at the end. What saves the day at the end? Why, the power of love, of course! It’s a Disney movie! Like I said, I really wish I could give this a higher score, but there are some aspects of it that completely ruin it for me. But it’s a fun movie, and probably the best animated movie of the year, but it’s certainly overrated. We’ve had to put up with the pablum of other animated films (Free Birds, anyone?) for so long, this mediocre movie seems like a great cinematic achievement. And that is truly sad.
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