Let’s start with the worst thing about “Frozen”-the songs are just plain awful, all of them, even “Let It Go”, even “Let It Go” when sung by Idina Menzel, certainly one of the best Broadway singers of the 21st Century, even with a Idina Menzel portraying Princess Elsa, the Snow Queen -a sort of Silver Surfer who can’t control her powers.
Elsa’s spunky kid sister Princess Anna, voiced by Kristen Bell, falls in love at first sight with a Prince at Elsa’s coronation and Elsa is so upset she loses control of her powers and runs off to the forest; Anna joined by an ice salesman Kristoff (Jonathan Graf), a reindeer and a snowman (did I mention this is a Disney movie?) follow her.
There are a couple of twists to this tale, a loose retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen” and while a least one of them is a bit of cheat and makes zero sense, the two sisters relationship works very well and Kristoff and Anna play up the meets cute to a wonderful conclusion. The movie is smart and looks gorgeous, especially in 3D where the ice is just gorgeous. In the middle of 95 degree weather in Disney World a winter wonderland will be a terrific ride.
The story itself is a little unaware of itself, Elsa’s terrible decision to isolate Elsa makes no sense, it is just not fairytaleish and while when the villain shows its face its a surprise its a surprise because we had earlier seen it doing something kind to a horse with no one present. That’s cheating. Still we spend most of the movie with spunky and spirited and funny Anna and that’s where we should be.
But the music is terrible. Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez wrote the pretty good songs for “Winnie The Pooh” last year but these are nowhere near as good, let alone a masterpiece like “Beauty And The Beast”. There is nothing catchy about them, nothing melodic, the cute ones aren’t cute, the big one’s aren’t big. Nobody seems capable of writing big musicals any more. It is all sound and fury.
Still, this is a lovely animation from a Disney and will join the pantheon of Princesses with pride.
Grade: B+