Frozen

After the demise of 2D animation, I am not really into Disney's cartoon anymore particularly if it involves Disney's Princess franchise. I am quite "ancient" that I prefer 2D animation for the classic feel. I skipped the last 2 Disney's Princesses movies a.k.a Tangled and The Princess and The Frog which means Frozen is my first Disney's Princesses after Enchanted, which technically isn't a full animation movie, or Hercules, although Megara is not regarded as a Princess.

As much as I love cartoon, I still watch selectively depending on the review. The Incredibles and Wreck-It-Ralph are as great as what reviews say while I enjoyed Rise of the Guardians greatly despite the less-than-favourable reviews. I was initially not interested in Frozen because I expected this to be a typical Disney's Princess movie for little girls. However, after reading things like "Best Disney's Princess movie in the recent age" and "it feels like a musical", I decided to give in.

Not gonna say anything about the story as it is available widely on the net so I will just say what I think about the movie: I am disappointed! Haha.. It is not bad but I don't think it is worth the big "hoo-hah" people are saying. There are a lot of plot inconsistencies so that debunks the whole "best Disney's Pricess movie" thingy and there are not enough singing to rebut the "feels like a musical thingy".

I think it is first time that a sisterly love is being explored by Disney and it is what making Frozen rather different from typical Disney's Princess movies. And it is different in a good way: sweet and touching way. Unfortunately these sweet and touching moments are mostly only at the beginning and the end of the movie and with the comedy in between, they are not good enough to make up the poor story telling.

The overall plot is rather weak with the absence of a "villain". I can't believe that Hans turns out to be a bad guy so this marks the first Disney's Princess movie with a love song duet being sung with a bad guy. I don't know if Disney intends to have children as the target audience because the political reason for Hans' villainy is not something that children will appreciate, or worse, it teaches children to be bad and manipulative using love. Terrible! Olaf the snowman nails most of the comedic parts although I find them too morbid as a joke involving various parts of his body being dismembered.

The whole story hinges on Elsa's poor control over her icy powers. However, when she escapes to isolation, I don't see anything about poor control when she builds the beautiful ice palace. I don't think she can't control her power with her able to fight off 2 men trying to murder her or for her to build the giant snow monster to protect her castle. Very contradicting with her inability to stop the winter and snowstorm. The end (spoilers here) was even more contradicting that suddenly the snow and winter stopped when she was overcome with grief when Anna is frozen to protect her. The reason is: Elsa discovers that love is the key to control the power -__-" Yes you can argue that at the start she is overcome with fear and worry over her power but that is because she loves and does not want to hurt the people around her with her power. So the love thing was useless.

I love Anna's characterisation -right up to the point of looking for a true love's kiss. Oh my gosh! That just destroys her character as a human and more importantly as a female. To make it worse, after realising that Hans does not love her, she decides that she should get a kiss from Kristoff o_0 Kristoff does like her (although I find it weird to fall in love with someone just after climbing mountain together.. but I suppose that is better than love-at-the-first-sight from the really ancient stories of Cinderella, Snow White, or Sleeping Beauty haha.. ) but for her to decide "I need to get him for his kiss" is awful. Thank goodness that the act of true love which saves her is her own personal sacrifice to save Elsa. It will be terrible -albeit cliche- if she returns to human form after a kiss from a guy.

I commend Disney's attempt to break away from typical Princess movie/characterisation but I sincerely think Disney should keep their success formula intact. Seeing the poster, I was expecting to have 2 couples so I am disappointed that in the end Elsa is still single while Anna-Kristoff relationship is questionable. Why is Hans even featured in the poster if he is one of the bad guy sia -__-"

To end this, I am sharing a clip when Elsa unleashes her power to build her castle. The lyrics are powerful and meaningful. Although she is voiced by a Broadway star, people say that her voice does not suit her face or a Disney's Princess voice which I agree. It is nice so listen+watch the clip at the same time. But if you just listen to the music, you will agree with people's negative comments. However, still a great song sung by a great singer. But I hate the "the cold never bothered me anyway" part.

Oh ya, forgot to mention that the movie opened with a short clip of "ancient" Mickey and friends titled Get A Horse. The story is quite brainless but I think it is a nice tribute to Disney's history from the ancient times up to the modern 3D animation era. To make it even more special, Walt Disney's recordings when he voiced Mickey Mouse were used and spliced together for this short clip. In fact, Walt Disney is credited as Mickey at the end of the clip.