Picoreview: Frozen: conflicting.
There are a lot of things I didn’t like about this movie. The music is possibly the worst I’ve ever heard in a Disney film. Usually their songs tend to fit into the narrative pretty well; this really felt like the songs were being forced to fit into spaces unnaturally, and that these characters would prefer to be speaking.
There were any number of times that I found myself thinking how much I would like to have seen it done in hand-drawn animation. There were moments where the characters just looked so plastic and uninspiring. And I thought, y’know, I don’t know, the ice and snow animation was so incredible and I dunno if they could have rendered it so beautifully in hand animation, but then I thought of the utterly mind-blowing opening of The Lion King and yeah, they coulda done it.
Further on the animation front, I am sick unto the very death of these weird-headed Disney princesses whose entire forehead slopes down into the teeniest, bridgeless, ski-jump nose with a bizarrely foreshortened lower face. The wasp waists have always been absurd, but just come *on* now. And this is as an ElfQuest fan who didn’t develop a bridge to her nose until her late twenties: it’s not like I inherently disapprove of impossible physiques in cartooning. But I’ve had more than enough.
All this kind of thing really left a bad taste in my mouth, which is incredibly unfortunate, because the movie’s story is actually shockingly good. And yes, I do mean shockingly, because, like Brave, it goes somewhere you don’t expect a Disney Princess movie to go, and I’m a long way out from that ceasing to surprise me.
I’d really like to get to the day where I’m *not* surprised by it, but for now, I am surprised.
First off, this is not, by anybody’s stretch of the imagination, The Snow Queen. In the end, the only reason to say “inspired by” is because they’d mentioned beforehand that they were doing a movie based on The Snow Queen and they probably would’ve caught endless shit for un-saying it. Its resemblence to the Hans Christian Anderson story begins and ends with there being snow and a queen in it. If this is likely to disappoint you beyond measure, don’t go see it.
Now I’m going to put a cut, behind which I will tell you all the reasons why you *should* go see it. It will be chock full of spoilers.
This is basically a movie about a little girl whose parents (and some trolls) screw her up irrepairably while trying to do the right thing, and who comes out of it not just okay, but utterly fabulously brilliant, because of her sister’s unstinting love.
There’s a romantic storyline. There are even two. But the love story that matters is the one between Queen Elsa The Screwed Up, and Princess Ana The Determined, and it’s terrific.
Elsa’s ice powers harm Ana when they’re both very young, leading to some nice well-meaning but stupid trolls taking away all of Ana’s memories of Elsa’s ice powers, which Elsa then has to hide from Ana forever.
You can see why this might go wrong. Elsa grows to fear her powers, Ana doesn’t understand why she’s been suddenly rejected, their parents die, Elsa is finally old enough to be crowned queen, her ice powers get out of control and she runs away…
…and all the Disney Princess Movie rules get broken.
It’s not about Ana. Ana is fine. Ana is a Modern Disney Princess, she goes forth pluckily, etc etc etc.
It’s *Elsa*. Elsa–look, just go read Ursula’s review, because it’s all the thing she says.
This is the point where Elsa becomes the bad guy. Where she embraces her powers and turns evil and becomes the thing they have to defeat and you all know how this story goes.
And she does embrace it. She’s *so* relieved to be able to stop hiding her magic (the pop version of her song has a line that goes something like “I know I’ve just left my life behind but I’m too relieved to grieve,” which I thought was wow), and she’s not off to conquer the world, she just wants to be left alone with her power so she can’t hurt anyone. When she learns she’s turned the whole kingdom to ice, she’s devastated, but she’s terrified too, because she’s never learned how to control her magic and is afraid anything she does will just make it worse. So she lashes out–
–and hurts Ana again, much more badly, and this time it’s only an Act of True Love that can save Ana, and there’s an increasingly tense (well, you know, for Disney movie levels of intense) scene where Ana’s searching for her true love and Elsa is in trouble and
look, this is 100% spoilery for the end of the film, so stop here if you really don’t want to know
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All right, it’s on your own head now.
Throughout the film, Elsa tries not to feel; that’s how she’s trying to control her magic. Then she’s told she’s killed Ana with that magic, and there’s a to me pretty well flawless moment of response: the huge, desperate blizzard she’s called up goes *poof* out of existence as her feelings are finally, totally, completely numbed. It’s perfect: it’s that moment I’ve tried to write at least half a dozen times, the shock of unbearable news, the nothingness of it, so beautifully, perfectly reflected in animation. I was so, so happy with it.
And across the suddenly clear ice fields, Ana, who is dying (freezing to death, turning to ice) sees the boy she’s fallen in love with coming toward her but still a long way away. And much closer is Elsa, who is about to be beheaded by the actual bad guy.
And again, perfection: we see Ana look to Kristoff, the boy, and then we see her make her choice…and she chooses Elsa. She chooses her sister over herself, and runs to save her. And does, and that’s the Act of True Love that saves her, as well.
But it doesn’t just save them both. It teaches Elsa what will thaw the ice: not fear, but love. She’s able to undo the freeze she’s put over the kingdom.
Let me repeat that: Sisterly love saves the kingdom. It’s not a prince, it’s not True Love’s First Kiss, it’s one sister who never gives up on the other.
I’ve never seen its like. And that’s why, despite its myriad flaws, this is a movie worth seeing. Waugh.