Frozen Review

Frozen. Because now Disney has a thing about naming their movies after one-word adjectives? And speaking of Tangled, they just decide to copy the animation style of all the characters in that one? Meh. Who cares. I've been a tad bit nervous about this movie in the last few months, but when strong reviews started to come out, I became excited. And yes, Disney hits a home run with this one. In 20 years from now, when we are looking back on all the Disney animated classics, Frozen will definitely be a part of the conversation.

Since the trailers for the movie have been a bit vague, allow me to explain a bit about what the movie is actually about. It is loosely based on the classic fairy tale "The Snow Queen" by Hans Christian Andersen. I don't really know much about that fairy tale, but I don't think it matters too much. Disney always takes stories and does what they want with them.  The story centers around two Princess sisters named Anna and Elsa. Anna is the friendly sister, while Elsa is the closed-up sister. Earlier in their lives, Elsa almost killed Anna on accident with her ice powers that she was born with, and that's why she is the way she is. Now in the present, a certain chain of events happens where Elsa accidentally turns the whole city into a wintery wonderland as she is running away into the mountains. Anna then embarks on a quest to find her sister and convince her to turn the city back to Summer.

It's not too terribly difficult to predict what happens in this movie, but such is the case with most of Disney's classics, especially the Disney princess movies. A clever, unpredictable story is not what they are going for here. What they do have is a story that has a lot of heart to it, and one wherein you become attached to all of the great characters as you watch them learn and grow throughout the movie. In addition to our two main female protagonists, we have our two male protagonists, Hans and Kristoff. Hans is our prince is out to sweep Anna off of her feet, and Kristoff is the level-headed male who is helps Anna on her journey. And of course we have our comic-relief side characters in Sven the reindeer and Olaf the Snowman, both of whom are great.

What Frozen also did to me was take me back to the nostalgic days of the 90's and earlier wherein Disney's movies weren't just great movies, they were also great musicals. Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, and other 90's classics are movies that I especially am thinking of. Sure Disney has always been doing this, but those movies stick out to me as being some of the best Disney musicals. I would say the music in Frozen is right on par with that generation. It wasn't just one or two good songs thrown in there, the whole movie was littered with times when our characters would burst out into music. And I loved it!

Overall, this year in my opinion has been great year in animation with The Croods, Monsters University, Despicable Me 2, and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 all being enjoyable animated movies. Frozen ends the year in animation with a bang, and I hope it gets a good look when the Best Animated Movie award is being discussed in the Oscars. Frozen is a movie that the whole family will enjoy, both kids and adults. So give it a look this Holiday season. I give Frozen a 9 out of 10.