FROZEN [2013]

I LET IT GO


2013, USA
Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee
5 // 10

Did we trade 2D scripts for the 3D graphics? Do we really, really need songs in films? What was all that stupid hype about? There's only one way to find out!

So, I've watched Frozen. Not that I was interested, to start with, but time has passed, the title matured, the positive opinions kept appearing. Guess might be one of those good 'uns, actually, I thought. You know, up there, with Up and WALL-E. After all, once in a while, even the 3D animation department churns out something properly worth watching. And for the first twenty minutes or so, I actually thought that Frozen would be one of those films. But it isn't. It's nowhere near.

That beginning filled me with hope, I admit. The opening, done in the best possible classic Disney style showed the old soul in the new body. I though, what a perfect combination of traditional and modern. How clever! Then the world building, again, spot on. The Norwegian setting, the story deeply rooted in folklore, serving us something new, something fresh and a bit more original than yet another Andersen/Grimm rework. So far, so good. Up to the, shall we call it, 'tragic event', as not to reveal too much of the plot... The bar has been set high, I kid you not. But then, the rest of the film did not even attempt a jump. It run, full pelt, underneath it, without attempting even as much, as skipping. The ideas run out, the courage run out, the plot just raced like a caffeinated rabbit to the end credits without casting a single glance behind its back. What a terrible, terrible shame! All the elements were there to start with. The setting, the story, some of the characters... Olaf is probably my favourite sidekick since Mushu and Oaken was great. But you can't build a whole film just on an opening sequence and a couple of support/episodic characters. It simply won't do when the rest of the film is just sloppy, rushed and has the emotional depth of an One Direction song. And since we're there, I honestly don't get the idea of singing in the film (basically, I pretty much hate musicals in all forms with the exception of Nightmare Before Christmas, where songs were the extension of the plot, not a distraction). Frozen does nothing to prove me wrong. The craze about Let It Go is one of the most puzzling phenomena of recent years to me. Bland, forgettable and annoying, absolutely no different from the rest of the soundtrack here. Maybe, just maybe, dear Disney, if you had the balls to cut the songs out for once, you'd have enough space to fill it with an actual film. Maybe a director's cut, or something, here's me hoping.

Still, I mightily enjoyed the beginning, the animation and snow effects are stunning (on a technical level), and I want to adopt Olaf. So, enjoyable to watch once, but nowhere near the mark the hype was suggesting. Unless you're five, of course, and then a set of different rules applies anyway.