Well, I have to admit that while I'm a fan of animated films and of Disney it's been a while since I was one of their movies. I remedied that tonite; just caught a late showing of
Frozen. It's a loose retelling of the Hans Christian Anderson story "The Snow Queen." Here's the basic plot- Elsa and Anna are the daughters of the kindly King and Queen. Elsa has magical powers to create cold and snow but can't control those powers. She accidentally hurts Anna and becomes withdrawn, forced to conceal her abilities.
Minor quibbles first: I really don't care for the way Disney cartoons are all musicals, and this one is worse that most. Musically it may be the weakest of any of the Disney films I can remember. It's not the performances, they're stellar for the most part. Idina Menzel, who voices Elsa, has a knockout voice, truly terrific. I was pleasantly surprised by Kristen Bell who voices Anna, her sister. While I've long been a fan I didn't realize she also sang. Apparently she did her own vocals for the songs and her voice is much better than I would have expected. But the songs are pretty hokey and overly maudlin (as you might expect in a Disney cartoon aimed at kids). The songs are actually pretty weak, and there's not a single verse that I still remembered walking out of the theater. Not up there with
Aladdin or
The Lion King.
On the plus side though the voice acting is great. Alan Tudyk voices the Prince and was a nice surprise. Of course the real star is the wonderful animation! Disney really outdid themselves, here. The good characters were very likeable, in great part due to the charisma of Bell. The villains are appropriately skeevy and the visuals are amazing- this is probably be best looking animated film I've seen. Another great virtue of the film is that both of the female protagonists are strong characters, too- not meek flowers waiting around for the men to save them and put the story right. Maybe Disney realizes it's 2013 and not 1913! We can hope.
While I didn't care much for most of the songs I really loved
Frozen. I might even pick this one up on BR when it comes out. FWIW I've never purchased any other animated Disney film on BR before. Highly recommended!
