Film Review - Frozen (2013)

The latest Disney animated movie, Frozen is the story of two sisters Anna (Kristen Bell) and Elsa (Idina Menzel), Elsa is born with great ice powers that grow stronger as she grows older, one day she causes a permanent winter in her home kingdom and Anna may be the last hope to save it from being a frozen wasteland.

I went into Frozen with mixed expectations, while the previews for the film made it look promising the feeling I had was that it was really nothing more than a tradition Disney Princess film most of which I'm not a huge fan of, could the film itself rise above that or fall to an icy grave.

Well, the truth is is that I sit somewhere in the middle on this film, I think that it's okay but for me personally it didn't do the trick, first off I will talk about what I did like about the film and I loved the sisters dynamic and those scenes were easily the best thing about the film though sadly there are too few of them and I also thought that Olaf the Snowman was a lot of fun to watch and he did remind me a lot of Gabbo from the Simpsons in both his look and his voice.

But as good as those elements are, the film has two big problems holding it back:

- The first of these is the lack of a strong villain to drive the conflict in the story and these films much like action pictures rely on a strong villain to anchor the film, here there really isn't one until the third act of the film and even then it feels like a twist that's poorly handled and feels like it's come from an entirely different film.

- The second is the songs themselves, don't get me wrong I think "Let it Go" is a good song but the songs here are nothing compared to great songs that Alan Menken and the late Howard Ashman wrote.

You know songs like "Under the Sea", "Poor Unfortunate Souls", "Part of that World" and "Kiss the Girl" from the Little Mermaid or "Gaston, Tale as Old as Time and Be Our Guest" from Beauty and the Beast or "Arabian Nights, Prince Ali, Proud of your Boy and High Adventure" from Aladdin, songs that you listen to once and then are permanently sitting in your memory, when this film was over "Let it Go" was the only song I remembered.

In fact, when this film was over I kept thinking to myself "I wish they made another film like Aladdin" which is a film I adore as it works for boys as much as for girls, has great comedy, a terrific villain and great songs that are memorable and seamless but this is probably just a fool's hope of mine but to wish, perchance to dream as someday it may happen, one can never tell.

But before I wrap this up I have to talk about the Mickey Mouse short that plays before the film which is a very nice mix of black and white, sound, colour and computer animation which generated a few laughs in my screening.

So all in all, I thought Frozen was okay but I doubt if boys will click with it as much as girls will so it's best to keep the boys at home as well as very young children as a fair few of them got restless at times during my showing, 2 out of 5.