Frozen is Disney at its finest

Paul Peterson

Here’s hoping everyone had a great holiday season and that 2014 is a great year for everyone associated with this column. People who don’t read it won’t be able to have a fully actualized year because they’ll be missing all the insight and witty comments. Ya, that’s a loss.
On with the review.
As a general rule of thumb I stopped reviewing animated features a few years back. It seemed like overkill. The only real question was whether or not the kids enjoyed it and that’s a paragraph not a column.
Once in a while, however, a film comes along that commands a little more than a couple of sentences and Frozen is exactly that. It’s Disney at its finest and I so enjoyed it, I felt compelled to write about it.

There’s a lot to love about this film. It starts with a very simple premise. Anna has secret powers. She can command ice and snow. Her and her little sister share a truly magical moment at the beginning of the film which quickly turns tragic as Anna almost gets killed by one of Elsa’s blasts.
It’s a magical kingdom in every way and Anna and Elsa’s parents are the King and Queen. They take their injured daughter to a tribe of odd looking winterbeasts/trolls who bring Anna back but wipe her memory of all magic.
Elsa withdraws into herself repressing her gifts and isolating herself from the rest of the world. She fears she is turning into a monster, and that no one can help her. What she doesn’t know is that her emotions trigger her powers and she has plunged the kingdom into perpetual winter.
Heavy stuff right?
Well,  luckily there are several people who want to help and they include Anna, an ice salesman named Kristoff his reindeer sidekick Sven and a very funny snowman named Olaf.
There are a lot of great messages here.
And great songs.

I could have lived without the songs and the cynical part of me believes that they’re included as the precursor to Frozen: The Musical.
Still, it’s a really beautiful film to watch and get lost in and I really did.
For that to happen with a cartoon is a nice surprise. I would absolutely watch it again and probably will. It really is remarkable the state of animation today. There’s an old Mickey Mouse cartoon at the beginning of the film. It’s a nice counterpoint. I found it unwatchable.
Frozen I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen.
Just saying…
Frozen is one for the whole family and judging from thebox office returns, everyone is watching it.
I suggest you do the same.
As always, other opinions are welcome, but wrong. That’s it for this week. The cheque’s in the mail and I’m outta here. Paul.