Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Disney's Frozen Is Not At All What It Seems...

...And I'm so relieved.
When the first teaser came out for Frozen, I thought it looked... well, bad.

Then the trailer came up.

I really felt I couldn't get a solid grasp on what kind of movie this would be. So I wrote it off. And I honestly didn't care to research any further. Let me be clear, Disney did a piss poor job advertising this movie. But... they also made a really great animated feature.
First, let me appeal to all of the Disney fans out there... this is a musical. You hear that? The trailers somehow managed to snip and dodge any of the musical moments (which take up maybe 65% of the thing) and that's why they felt so all over the place. Now most of the songs were a bit too pop for my taste, but that didn't hinder my enjoyment. And while I was a big fan of Tangled, their last epic fairytale musical, I think Frozen is better. Why?
Well, it's just so damned refreshing to have two... count 'em... two real and relatable female leads. And a little bit of that Disney magic certainly doesn't hurt. In seeking story concepts from classic fairytale authors like Hans Christian Andersen, Disney is managing to stay true to their core fanbase. This is something I would have denied a few years back. But they are still managing to make movies that remind me of my childhood.

I think this movie is a success for Disney in a place where Pixar failed drastically. When Brave came out, I was excited but scared. After all, Cars 2 had just flumixed me into submission and suddenly I wasn't sure I could trust the studio anymore. Then Brave utterly destroyed my perception of Pixar as an unbeatable creative machine. It was just so incredibly flawed. The worst element being that this was supposed to be their mother-daughter story...??? So here comes Frozen a few years later with an actually compelling sister-sister relationship that not only drives the film, it is the film. Great Job Disney!
However, I could have done with less of that snowman.

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