Frozen

Wonderfully Familiar, Refreshingly Progressive

by Hunter Isham

        It's been a while since Walt Disney Animation Studios turned out a picture that lives up to the legacy of its renaissance in the early 1990s. Truthfully, I think the last feature produced solely by WDAS that I saw theatrically was 2008's Bolt, as it was the first film released after Pixar's John Lasseter was named the head of the Mouse House's original animation division (plus it was well-reviewed, a rarity for Disney films at the time). I've heard good things about Tangled and Wreck-It Ralph, but with Frozen, Walt Disney Animation seems to finally come full circle in its own evolution, delivering a film that is befitting of the Disney name while pushing its traditional fairytale model in a progressive new direction.

        Loosely adapted from Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen, the film tells the story of Anna and Elsa, the princesses of Arendelle, a norse kingdom. Elsa (Idina Menzel) is born with powers to manipulate the cold, creating ice, snow, etc..., and her parents make the decision to close off their family from the outside world to hide and protect her as she learns to cope with her ever-strengthening powers. Anna (Kristen Bell), the younger of the two, is kept in the dark about her sister's abilities, and is left with a life of optimistic solitude while she grows up as a practically only child. Years later, following a coronation gone wrong, Elsa flees into the mountains as Anna chases after, taking what starts as a generic Disney princess tale and turning it into a story about sisters finding each other for the first time since childhood.

        There's a prince, as well as a handsome mountain man (Jonathan Groff), not to mention the expected yet charming and thankfully restrained comic relief in the form of a snowman (Josh Gad) and a reindeer named Sven. They all play their important roles in the film's success, but nothing in Frozen plays out as you'd expect. Without spoiling the plot, I can say that this film is not just another Disney film about a princess finding the man of her dreams. You may not believe me midway through, or even in the film's climactic moments, but when the credits roll, you can look back at the story and see that every cliche was carefully placed to aid in subverting your expectations. If Disney has to keep making fairytale princess films, this is how it should be done.

        The more modern touch provided by the characters' dynamics may be what refreshes the potentially stale elements of the Disney formula, but one element worth retaining and restoring that Frozen excavates with ease and care is a soundtrack full of original songs that approaches the quality of the Ashman/Menken scores of the Disney Renaissance. Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez provide the film with wonderfully catchy tunes, beautifully performed by Bell and Menzel. "For the First Time in Forever," a duet between the isolated sisters, and "Let It Go," a power ballad expressing Elsa's freedom, are standouts. Menzel's fantastic voice brings the same passion she delivered on stage in Wicked to the latter song, an early favorite for Best Original Song at the Academy Awards. The one true complaint I have about Frozen's songs is that there are too few of them, as the film turns into more of an adventure than a musical as it progresses, but it's a minor quibble when Disney's tuneful toons are increasingly fewer and farther between.

        The one part of this film that left me a bit cold (sorry), was the resolution to its overall conflict. There's some business about an eternal winter that's hastily solved with an explanation that is one step too far into fantasyland than is logical, but it hardly tarnishes the events that lead up to it. The film's emotional arc between the two sisters is the real story here, and its resolution is absolutely wonderful. I was continually afraid Frozen would slip into its predecessors' old habits, but romance takes a back seat to a different kind of relationship that is no less loving. No film can ever replace The Little Mermaid or Beauty and the Beast, but if Disney wants to keep making princess films, Frozen is an argument for its ability to evolve without losing its identity. Some may criticize the studio for churning out another safe storybook movie, but I for one am happy to see Disney making a film that feels new and old in all the right ways. 8.75/10