Quick Summary: A good movie, but not as good as the eight-year-old next door has led you to believe. In fact, there was at least one thing about it that I absolutely hated. This review does reveal a major plot twist - so consider yourself warned!

Title: Frozen
Release: 2013
Directors:
Chris Buck
Jennifer Lee
Starring:
Kristen Bell (Anna)
Idina Menzel (Elsa)

Before we go any further, I want you to know that I am about to give away a major plot twist – so if you don't want to know that kind of thing, you probably will want to stop reading now, okay?

There. Now then . . .

The hype around Disney's animated film Frozen has been massive. I understand that - there's a lot to like in this movie. The character design is sweet, the animation is richly detailed and lushly coloured, and in a genre where a lot of films are boy-centric, it gives little girls not one, but two heroines to admire. There's even an entertaining, tongue-in-cheek softshoe dance number done by a snowman. That said, Frozen is far from a perfect film – there are quite a few things that I thought were poorly done, and a plot twist that left a very sour taste in my mouth.

Frozen tells the story of two princesses, Elsa (Idina Menzel) and Anna (Kristen Bell). The sisters live in the pseudo-Scandinavian Kingdom of Arendelle. Elsa, the heir to the throne, has been born with strange powers. She can control winter weather, drawing down ice and snow on command. The problem is, the more excited or nervous Elsa gets, the less control she has over her powers. Therefore, the king and queen decide the best option is to instruct Elsa to hide her powers. The main story begins during Elsa's coronation as queen, when her powers are accidentally and dramatically revealed. She runs away into the mountains, and younger sister Anna goes in search of her.

The first thing I didn't like about this film was the very slow opening. The first 20 minutes or so are about Anna and Elsa's childhood. The viewer could be forgiven for believing that the movie was going to be about a pair of pre-teens, when in fact, the film is about a pair of young adults. Once we get to the coronation, the film begins to move along at a really quick, rewarding pace, but until then, well, you'd be forgiven if you fell asleep. Part of the problem with that first twenty minutes is the sheer stupidity of Anna and Elsa's parents. Rather than helping Elsa learn to control her powers, the king and queen instruct her to hide them. Although they do recognize that Elsa's powers are potentially dangerous, they don't notice how useful they can be. Elsa has the ability to manipulate weather. She can make snow and ice appear and disappear at will. This power could be used to prevent droughts, facilitate wintertime travel, extinguish fires, stop a flood by freezing the water in place . . . the possibilities are endless. Besides which, not teaching the girl how to control her abilities is like handing a child a book of matches but not telling them how to properly lay a fire; eventually, they're going to burn the house down. A wise character explicitly tells the king and queen that Elsa needs to learn to harness her powers. That character gets ignored. Sigh.

A related complaint has to do with the use of language in this film. No, I don't mean that the characters were swearing – this is a Disney movie, after all. I mean that there were some incredibly poor word choices that really should have been fixed in the first draft of the script. There are quite a few examples (note how this film and Disney's Enchanted contradict each other as to whether or not a particular phrase refers to eros or philia . . . Consistency, Disney, consistency!). The most egregious instance of poor phrasing is from the song Let it Go. Elsa sings this song just after she runs away from her disastrous coronation. The song expresses her frustration about how she is treated because of her powers, and the relief she feels now that she no longer has to hide them. In the lyrics, Elsa complains about being “the good girl . . . [she] . . . always had to be.” Here's the problem – Elsa hasn't been good. A good person uses her talents to help others. By hiding her powers and refusing to develop them, Elsa has been behaving badly. You may argue that she's just doing what her parents told her to do. Quite frankly, as a young adult, Elsa should already know not to conflate obedience, especially this blind, unthinking obedience, with goodness. It is disingenuous for the song lyrics to suggest otherwise.

Finally, there is a plot twist near the end of the movie that made me very angry. It almost ruined the film for me. The day of Elsa's coronation, Anna meets a foreign prince named Hans. The two hit it off immediately – by the end of the evening, they're engaged. When Anna goes to find Elsa, she leaves Hans in charge. He proves himself to be an effective and kind administrator. Elsa causes the entire kingdom to be plunged into eternal winter; Hans uses palace funds to ensure that the population have warm clothing and food. When the townspeople finally decide to march on Elsa's ice palace, Hans steps in several times to ensure that Elsa is taken alive and relatively unhurt. He then meets with Elsa in the dungeon, and tries to reason with her.

Then he suddenly reveals that he wants to assassinate both sisters and take over the kingdom.

That sound you hear? That's me. Cursing. They're curses about small things, things like “character consistency” and “logic”. Why does Hans go out of his way to save Elsa's life, in circumstances where nobody could possibly blame him for her death, if his goal is to murder her? It just doesn't make any sense. And foreshadowing? Apparently the writers of this film have never actually heard of the term “foreshadowing”. I'm not saying that having an evil prince isn't a great story idea. It is. I'm saying that the twist was handled so badly that it very nearly ruins the whole movie.

Okay, now that I've gotten that off my chest, I can say that, on the whole, the movie really is a lot of fun. Despite its flaws, I still think it's worth seeing. The animation is really quite wonderful, and I like how the relationship between the sisters changes and develops over the course of the movie. There are lots of amusing jokes, too. And finally, even if this film had nothing else to recommend it, that snowman softshoe number I mentioned above is side-burstingly brilliant. It's about the snowman's love for summer. I need not say more.