Frozen (2013) Reviews

• For the first time in forever a true Disney classic is realized

  CarrieJa2013-11-25

  When people speak of their favorite Disney movies, the big four of the Renaissance and films of the Golden Age of animation are likely to be mentioned. The past decade has seen Disney movies that were hit or miss. Some considered classics, some forgotten and some close to being classics but not there yet. Frozen changes this dynamic and creates a full fledged classic. Frozen IS not just a classic, it is THE Disney classic of the decade. It could position itself up there with the best of them. Disney returns to its roots with a vengeance. The best animated film of the past few years in my opinion. The story is heart melting, filled with the pure feeling and heart that has become a staple with the best Disney movies. It is a moving story that has family at its center. It is unpretentious in what it is trying to portray. The comedy hits right on the mark and the action packed adventure and thrilling journey make this a tale with a little bit of everything in the exact right amounts. It is a daring movie that is laugh out loud at the some moments and stunning and provoking at others. All achieved in balance. A true triumph in story telling that proves exactly what Disney does best and again proving that they are back to producing top quality films. This is an affecting human story, one that is significant. Startling and stunning, beautifully envisioned, emotionally powerful and relevant. Gorgeous visuals, stunning backdrops and intricacies like you have never seen before. The environments, the costumes, the character movements among other things make this film a gigantic step forward. The brilliant voice talents that breath life into this project need to be applauded and then some. The cast consisting of Kristen bell (Veronica Mars) and Idina Menzel(Wicked!)among many others bring winning charm, superior voice acting and magnificent vocals as well as heart to this tale. The sensational wit and humor, the arrays of different personalities, their emotions, their triumphs and falls make them some of the most interesting characters that people can relate to and some of the best i have seen in animation. The cast fully become the characters. The score and music is perfect. The score is grand. The sound, the texture, the harmony, the melody is in a class of its own. Above and beyond anything attempted by the animation studio in the past decade. I would place the songs up there with those of the 90's movies and 2000's Enchanted. A true all round musical triumph. Songs that will be stuck in your mind and you will be humming them and you won't even know it. And some you will be belting out at the top of your lungs because they are that good. Songs that progress the story and an essential part of it. So you have meticulously crafted breath taking animation, an affecting tale of the bond of family, romance, hilarious wit and humor courtesy of the characters especially sweet Olaf and heart stopping adventure. A true fairy tale that i would say could very well be The Little Mermaid or The Beauty and The Beast of this generation. FROZEN has that Disney MAGIC that has been missing for so long and it comes in full force here.

• I Don't Get Why Everyone Loves It

  michael-burnard2014-02-03

  Let me start this off by saying that I generally like Disney films, and that this is not some anti-kiddie flick internet geek writing this. Now that I have that out of the way, I would like to tell you how terrible this movie is. First of all, there is only one song that I think was actually good. The first song in the film is a fantastic number about the hardships of winter, with a great track, expert vocals and a grand, sweeping tone. The rest of the songs are not nearly so good, as they are all sung by the protagonists, which is fine the first few times but gets really monotonous by about halfway through. The movie also wasn't especially funny, which is a saving grace in some of Disney's other lackluster releases. The comic relief character was okay (in that he wasn't nearly as annoying as everyone else) but he was only there to provide some moderately executed slapstick comedy, and the only funny spoken line in the movie. While the script is fine for a TV special or maybe the first episode of a Nickelodeon series, it is definitely not right for a high-profile animated film. Let's just say, there are trolls. Singing, incredibly annoying trolls who show up basically just for the hell of it, and then disappear without a trace. And, while there was one character turn which was actually quite well executed, it is wasted almost immediately, because it changes absolutely nothing about the story. No events drastically alter because of it, there's no clever subtext, and the entire thing feels like it was just inserted so the screenwriter could show how clever he was. I mean, the trip to the cinemas wasn't completely pointless. There was a quite funny Mickey Mouse cartoon they played before the picture, and the trailer for the Lego movie looks like it could be worth something. Otherwise, this movie was terrible. Avoid it if you can, unless you have some kids you need to get out of the house. If so, make sure you bring a good book.

• Most Overrated Movie of 2013

  ruth-music-12342014-03-31

  I'm an 18 year old girl, who is a HUGE Disney fan and loves watching what her friends deem "little kid movies". I was looking for a way to celebrate finishing my first semester at college(in December), so I went to see Frozen, which had gotten great reviews. The beginning of the movie was decent. Do You Want to Build a Snowman made me tear up and Kristen Bell and Santino Fontana's voices sounded like they were made for each other in Love is an Open Door. However, the positivity stops there. At the end of Love is an Open Door, when Prince Hans asks Anna to marry him, I immediately KNEW that something was wrong and that this was an attempt to mock the Disney "love-at- first-sight" cliché. Now, before I continue, I'd just like to point out that I am ridiculously sick of people praising Elsa for being the first Disney princess to say "You can't marry a man you just met". 1) This is a result of people on the internet poking fun at Disney Princess movies. However, if those people even bothered to REALLY watch them, they'd realize that although this movie may be the first to explicitly state that girls shouldn't marry someone they just met, this is not a new concept in the Disney world. In fact, I don't recall Pocahontas, Mulan, Rapunzel, Tiana, Jasmine, or Belle marrying men that they just met. 2) Re-watch that scene. She only said that because she was worried about Hans' brothers staying over for the wedding and having yet another social event that she'd be required to attend. She panics and says "No one's brothers are staying here. No one's getting married". See her priorities? Elsa's reason for not blessing their marriage doesn't stem from their quick engagement. It's much more self-centered than that. Next, let's not forget the plot holes, the most obvious one being the anti-climatic ending: "Of course...Love!" Sorry, what? Elsa trying to protect Anna from herself wasn't love? Besides, why does Elsa even have powers? Why are there trolls and where did they come from? Why did Prince Hans protect Elsa if he wanted her dead? He could have been "distracted" when the guard was trying to kill Elsa. Why does Olaf come to life and where has he been the entire time the girls were growing up? Maybe the directors should have paid less attention to casting *famous* people and more to making a good plot. (Casting complaint: Elsa looked like she was in her mid-twenties and sounded old enough to be Anna's mother.) Anyways, moving on to my next complaint: Olaf, the snowman AKA my least favorite character in the entire movie. His awkward attempts at jokes and sheer stupidity were torturous to sit through. In Summer was one of the worst songs in the movie, right up there with Fixer Upper. What is Fixer Upper even promoting? Cheating?!?! Because that's what I thought as the trolls sang about getting Anna's fiancé out of the way. Also, I could not stand how Anna flirted with and almost MARRIED Kristoff while engaged to Hans. Luckily for her, Prince Hans just *happened* to be a villain. How very convenient (and completely unnecessary). Elsa, having been alone her entire life, could have used a love story and Kristoff would have been the perfect match for her. Elsa and Kristoff could have bonded over her powers and his love for ice. Instead, Kristoff and Anna ended up being an extremely weak, unlikeable rip-off of Flynn and Rapunzel. Lastly, having watched Disney movies all my life, I have to say, this movie has the largest percentage of bad songs I've ever seen in a single movie. "Let it Go" is the most overrated song I have EVER heard and I was quite disappointed to hear that it had won the Oscar for Best Original Song. The rhymes were unoriginal and it was not memorable at all, although after hearing people sing it 24/7, it does get ingrained into your brain. Some of the other songs were catchy, but there was still a HUGE lack of originality in the rhymes. Even my nine-year-old sister criticized the Frozen songwriters' creativity, pointing out that they rhymed "door" and "anymore" in four songs ("Do You Want to Build a Snowman", "For the First Time in Forever", "Love is an Open Door", and "Let it Go"). To summarize, this movie was not deserving of the Oscars it won. Then again, there was not much competition this year. This movie was basically a slap in the face to all the Classic Disney Princess movies and is tied for #1 with Brave on my Worst Disney Princess Movies list. If you REALLY want to see a movie worth watching, I recommend Tangled, which is as underrated as Frozen is overrated. The songs, plot, and characters are much better developed and the whole movie is absolutely delightful. The music was beautifully composed and don't even get me started on how amazing Donna Murphy, Zachary Levi, and Mandy Moore's performances were! Whereas I will never re-watch Frozen, I re-watch Tangled every couple of months even though I can quote the entire movie and sing every song. I know many Tangled fans went to see Frozen - expecting it to be as good as Tangled- and were very disappointed. Disney may be gaining new fans, but they're losing their loyal fans. Look at Frozen's percentage of 1/10 ratings compared to those of Tangled. Until Disney gets their act together, I will not be wasting any more of my time watching these movies in theaters. As Zazu said, "If this is where the monarchy is headed, count me out". tl;dr- Plot holes galore. Lackluster songs. Terrible morals/lessons. Save your money and time. (Apparently 0/10 is not an option, so I'll give it one point for the animation.)

• A story that's all slush.

  The_Film_Cricket2013-12-12

  It is sort of disheartening going into Disney's production of "Frozen" to report that this is a project that Walt himself had been tinkering with as far back as the 40s, disheartening because the result falls far short of spectacular. After all these years, after all this effort, what has come to the screen is a dull, lackluster and fairly canned story that Uncle Walt would have most certainly demanded be rewritten. What comes to the screen looks terrific. The animation is crisp and colorful. The ice-flows glisten in a magical way, but the story is disastrously underwritten. It plays like one of Disney's quickly-made DVD releases, or one of those classic fairy tales starring Barbie. Worse, it has musical numbers that are not only forgettable; they slow down the film's forward momentum. They're bad, and that ain't good. Loosely based on the Hans Christian Anderson 1845 tale "The Snow Queen", the story takes place in the Nordic kingdom of Arendelle where Elsa (Idina Menzel) is born with a superpower that she doesn't want: Everything she touches turns to ice. With this gift, her royal parents reasonably do what any Disney parent would do, by keeping her power a secret and locking her up in her bedroom for life. Who wouldn't? Elsa's cold-weather Midas Touch eventually gets her banished from the kingdom when a wintry temper tantrum leads to disaster. Cast out into the cold, she heads off into the mountains where she builds herself a lonely castle in which to stew in her misery. Meanwhile, the winter-wonderland that she has left in her wake is (unbeknownst to her) turning out to be permanent. That sets her sister Anna (Kristen Bell) off into the frozen wilderness to bring her disgraced sibling back. Her sidekicks include a hunky guide named Kristoff who runs an ice business, and a living, breathing snow man named Olaf (Josh Gad). Olaf would seem to be the film's chief selling point. He's a cute motor-mouth with a silly wish that, given his molecular configuration, might prove fatal - he's unaware that snow melts in summer. Olaf is not one of the great Disney sidekicks. Unlike Goofy or The Genie or Dug the Dog, Olaf just feels manufactured and underwritten. He's also pointless to the rest of the story. He shows up halfway through the movie, sings a song and then has nowhere to go. That's pretty much the problem with the entire movie. For everything right with the movie – the beautiful wintry landscapes – there is something that goes wrong – all the characters look like a line of Barbie dolls. The music is dull, the characters are ill-defined and, while small children may enjoy it, their parents will be checking their watches. If I sound a bit cold-hearted, it's only because I know that the quality of the Disney name deserves better. This is a professionally made, but lackluster musical fantasy that needed a better story, better characters and better music. After 70 years of toil and trouble, "Frozen" is all slush. ** (of four)

• Some People take things WAY too seriously!

  calgal842014-08-10

  This is really a lovely, enjoyable cartoon. And it's just that a lovely, enjoyable cartoon. And basically a fairy tale. One that moms and dads can feel happy to take their children too. Let it be that. Is there anything truly remarkable about it? Probably not. Are the songs particularly inventive or that much different from all the countless other Disney movies? No, not really, but they are catchy and pretty and fit the movie. And the "In Summer" song with the snow man in summer is pretty cute, if not a little jarringly placed! But, catchy. Having said that, some people on these reviews are taking this way too seriously. Why would you give it one star just because other people liked it enough to give it a 10? Is that too show how much smarter you are than everyone else? It really shows nothing but taking a carton movie too seriously instead of just going with the flow. It's not real. It's not a real story. It's a cartoon fairy tale. I give it an 8. It's not perfect but I enjoyed it.