Saturday 21 December 2013

Frozen (2013) - Newest Disney film

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Two sisters are emotionally separated when the elder has to keep her snowy powers hidden from the world. When these get unleashed her younger sister, with the help of a reindeer, snowman and dashing gentleman, has to try to sort out the situation. Sadly I think that watching this film after hearing so many positive things about it has dampened my enjoyment of it somewhat.

Firstly, the characters are incredibly good. They are believable and imperfect. With a lot of films now-a-days they are trying to portray an ultra-feminist ideal of women, this is creating one dimensional 'strong female characters'. In this film they don't mind about their female characters showing weakness but instead show them as having positives and negative. Furthermore the two male characters were interesting, and Kristoff was particularly loveable. The most clever thing they did was also have an animal who didn't talk, for the cynics, but a magical creature who did, for everyone else's enjoyment.

It was one of the most beautiful films that I've seen in a while. Generally snow can be used to great effect and they do that here. Furthermore they have created beautiful costumes and character faces. The Anna's freckles and flushed cheeks were adorably wonderful. A particularly lovely scene was during the song Let It Go, when Elsa created her ice palace. Both the scenery and the character looked brilliant during that scene, they obviously really wanted to highlight that sequence.

The songs were great. Let It Go and Do You Want To Build A Snowman were my particular favourites, however there were also some delightful short ones which added humour and wonder to the world. Idina Menzel, of course, gave a flawless vocal performance but I was really impressed with Kristen Bell because I didn't know her as a singer and she sang amazingly well.

There were a few random bits thrown in which seemed to just be padding. There was a Duke character who seemed fairly pointless. Similarly there were trolls who, although adorable and fun, were also just there as filler. When you have a magical snow Queen, I don't think that you need more magical elements, especially such incongruous ones as rock trolls.

It was a incredibly good Disney film, another one to be proud of and enjoy. It was cleverly and carefully made and the strength of the film is testament to that. Unfortunately I do feel as though it was missing something, I believe that that is because I was expecting it to be this perfect film that many critics seem to be presenting it as. It isn't perfect but Disney is getting closer to capturing its old magic.

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