Frozen: Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee

I take no pride in writing this article. Unlike many people, I was not clamoring for Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee’s FROZEN to fail. I love Disney animated films. They were essential parts of my childhood and in my development as a film-goer. I wanted to like FROZEN. But alas, I cannot.

FROZEN is bad. It is bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. It may be the worst Disney Princess film that I’ve ever seen. It fails as a film, as a story, as a musical, and as a work of animation. Allow me to explain why.

“Based” on Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale The Snow Queen, FROZEN follows two princesses named Anna and Elsa. Elsa has the power of cryokinesis and accidentally hurts Anna one night when they are children. Terrified of hurting Anna, she shuts herself away until her coronation as Queen at the age of 21. However, Anna accidentally goads Elsa into revealing her powers, sending her into a panic that results in her fleeing to a nearby mountain and accidentally dooming their kingdom to an eternal winter. So Anna, along with mountain man Kristoff, his reindeer Sven, and a living snowman named Olaf, set out to find Elsa, save her, and reverse the eternal winter. As you may have noticed, this isn’t the plot of The Snow Queen at all. Even producer Peter Del Vecho noted, ““Inspired by” means exactly that. There is snow and there is ice and there is a Queen, but other than that, we depart from it quite a bit.” But if we’re going to start holding Disney accountable for changing fairy tales, then we will get nowhere. What’s important is the question of whether or not FROZEN works as its own story.

In short, no, it doesn’t. There are three areas where FROZEN fails: story, scope, and atmosphere. When it comes to story, my complaints can be summarized with one simple question: why is this Anna’s story? No, really, why does this film follow Anna when Elsa is clearly the more interesting character with more interesting motivations? If Disney effectively did away with The Snow Queen’s plot, why did they have to keep the focus on the sister who isn’t burdened with powers she can’t control, responsibilities she never asked for, and a sister she is terrified of hurting? I don’t think there can be any debate that Elsa’s big musical number Let It Go where she assumes her position as Ice Queen is the best moment of the film. It’s the best song, the best sequence, and the most interesting scene from a character standpoint. I understand that Disney wanted FROZEN to be about the relationship between Anna and Elsa. But their goal is ruined by spending about 70% of the film focusing on Anna. Elsa is a supporting character in a film that was supposed to be about her!

Speaking of Let It Go, the other songs in the film are forgettable at best, terrible at worst. Remember how other Disney animated films opened with powerful, attention-grabbing numbers like Circle of Life, Arabian Nights, The Bells of Notre Dame? Well, FROZEN opens with a tired chant about ice that introduces a supporting character. Other songs like Do You Want to Build a Snowman? and Love is an Open Door are passable, but they begin and end too quickly and leave little impression. And then there’s In Summer, the worst song in the film which I talked about in this article.

So the story and songs are deficient. But the film could still work if it felt epic! As Del Vecho remarked, “There is a real feeling of Lawrence of Arabia scope and scale to this.” That, my friend, is a bald faced lie. Remember in the opening of THE LION KING we got a true sense of the scope of the Pride Lands? The hundreds of thousands of creatures who traveled countless miles to pay tribute to Simba’s birth? That scope is non-existent in FROZEN. Elsa’s kingdom seems unpopulated, the surrounding environs feel empty (even for a snowy landscape), and everything feels small. The most crowded the kingdom ever gets is during the ball at Elsa’s coronation. And even then there had to have been less than a hundred guests. It feels unfinished. I guess it must be really hard for 3-D animators to create giant crowd scenes. After all, as past interviews have proven, they had enough trouble trying to differentiate Anna and Elsa’s designs.

Finally, the film lacks atmosphere. Allow me to explain what I mean. Classic Disney films  have excelled at making simple stories feel like grand, operatic adventures. They run us through the whole gambit of emotions. Who didn’t weep at the death of Bambi’s mom or Mufasa? Who wasn’t scared shitless by Monstro’s attack, Cruella De Vil’s snowy car chase, Ursula transforming into a skyscraper-sized demon? That’s because these films managed to sell their respective atmospheres.

When Mufasa died, the music, Simba’s reaction, and the framing drove home the tragedy. In FROZEN, the parents are dispatched almost as an afterthought in a scene that actually made me burst out laughing. The only scene from FROZEN that came close to breaking my heart was when Elsa fled from the castle. And much of that came from Idina Menzel’s performance.

Scenes like Monstro’s attack were terrifying because the animators managed to build up suspense and make him seem like an actual monster. FROZEN never scared me. The scene where Elsa threw Anna and Kristoff from the North Mountain should have been terrifying. It should have been like the scene in ALADDIN where Jafar steals the Genie’s powers and uses them to destroy the palace. Remember that scene? The one where Aladdin and Abu are almost crushed by one of the towers? Remember how desperate they felt? How helpless the odds felt? In FROZEN, the aforementioned scene is performed like a semi-slapstick routine. That snow beast Elsa summoned should have been intimidating like the Tiger Head of the Cave of Wonders. But instead, it seemed like a poorly textured plastic action figure.

You know how FROZEN could have established a decent atmosphere? Well, remember in films like BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, THE SWORD AND THE STONE, and THE FOX AND THE HOUND they used really moody opening credits? Ominous, highly stylized art accompanying the credits which also occasionally filled the audience in with the film’s lore? Why couldn’t FROZEN have done that? Instead of its weak opening which seemed to shove 10 minutes worth of exposition down our throats, they could have gone the storybook route, giving us the cliff notes version of the story like in BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. The actual story would then start on Elsa’s coronation day with Anna getting up and signing her big What I Want Out Of Life number. It would have made the film seem like, y’know, a fairy tale.

5/10