Having grown up on the classics like The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast, I'm used to the overall point of a film being romance, at least when you get to the heart of the matter. Sure, there's that thing about saving someone's life or making a perceptive change for the better, but really it's all about true love. In Frozen, that's really not the case - exactly. There's some serious sibling love, but there's really not a whole lot of "OMG I'M IN LURV." It's still a formulaic princess movie; we're talking Disney here, they can't completely throw the equation out the window.
From the trailers, I thought sisters Anna and Elsa, the princesses of Arendelle, would be much more adversarial. Instead the pair are essentially estranged. Elsa's got the unusual ability to turn anything she touches or gestures at to ice or snow (unfortunate I know) and as a result, they are shut into a castle to hide from the kingdom. On Elsa's coronation day, things go horribly awry and Elsa accidentally reveals her secret. She ends up running off, and Anna demands a horse and gallops after her sister. This is where the adventure begins as Anna hopes to convince her sister to unfreeze Arendelle, which has gone from being a beautiful idyllic place to a frozen tundra. Along the way, ice peddler Kristoff and his reindeer Sven are added to the mix, as is the magical snowman Olaf.
To me, the best part of Frozen, aside from the witty dialogue, is that the film focuses more on the idea of the girl saving herself rather than needing to be saved by her love interest. Much like Rapunzel in Tangled with her frying pan, Anna solves various situations herself, often to the consternation of Kristoff and Olaf, her sidekicks in various escapades.
My one complaint with the film is that the musical numbers felt a little too Broadway for the setting. A frozen tundra with up-tempo beats just felt a bit wrong, but I'll admit I'm nitpicking. Idina Menzel and Kristen Bell are the ones singing, so I can't exactly complain about the vocals, just the style. As is Disney's new usual, the animation style is heavy on the textures in an effort to imitate Pixar. Since the landscape is heavy on the frozen tundra, it makes for a lot of snow and ice, and compared to the Ice Age films, it's extremely well done.
Overall, Frozen is a cute family film that arrives just in time for the holidays. With strong voice performances from Idina Menzel and Kristen Bell, it's a film that sticks close to the Disney paradigm but doesn't really break any new ground in terms of shattering any glass ceilings for Disney's princesses. But I guess we have to keep taking baby steps, which is what Frozen most certainly does.
