Review of Frozen (2013) by Jose R — 21 Dec 2017

I was told going into this film "it's better than Tangled, it's so amazing!" ...and it wasn't. Now don't get me wrong, it's a perfectly serviceable little film and I didn't feel like I had wasted money seeing it but there were so MANY plot holes and inconsistencies to drag it down.

Why is the music tone all over the place and changing styles so often? Why does the world feel like normal Norway (+Elsa magic and the trolls?). The film would have benefitted from having more magical creatures added in order to illustrate what sort of world they live in (or, alternatively, NO magical creatures to make it clear Elsa is an outlier). The film also would have benefitted from consistent powers for Elsa, removal of rendeer guy's forced backstory of "I hate humans", removal of reindeer itself (who served no purpose), and making Olaf more of a core plot point. Yes yes, he's the comic relief and all but he also is a physical representation of the love the two sisters share. That could have been a tied in really well to the plot and was sadly underutilized!

The Prince--I actually don't mind! He's perfectly charming and likeable, and although his twist is a bit harshly phrased on his end it was still believable enough and served as a catalyst for many important plot points. I have way more problems with reindeer guy who was irrelevant to the plot almost entirely and only existed to give the audience the wrong idea of where the "love" thread was going. That's not a strong enough reason to have him there, in my opinion, and it would have been more interesting to have him gone and only deal with the Prince/Anna/Elsa issues.

But negatives aside, the main benefits Frozen has going for it is that Elsa is an interesting character and she has an amazing design and song. I can see why people remember the film so fondly when that song was SO memorable! (Disney was smart to recreate the "Defying Gravity" phenomenom by using not only the exact same singer but also same subject material as well). But in my opinion one great song and one interesting character does not make up for a plethora of very forgettable (or "bad" songs) and irrelevant characters. The film isn't horrible but it isn't great either, I found it kind of middle road "okay. Worth one viewing, at least.".