Review of Frozen (2013) by Jacob B — 09 Dec 2017

Frozen is NOT a bad movie. It's just overrated. In fact, legend has it if you search for examples of things that fall under the term "ubiquitous", you might find a Frozen-related picture.

I get that this was the second animated film in history to gross a billion dollars at the box office but Toy Story 3 knew its limits. Now Disney seems to be milking this franchise every chance they get.

A Frozen On Ice, a short film called Frozen Fever before the 2015 Cinderella remake, two generic video game tie-ins, one for phones and a side-scrolling adventure for the 3DS, a book called Frozen Heart, merchandising everywhere except on Facebook - an honour which goes to the Minions - and a 20-minute-long short, otherwise known as a featurette called "Olaf's Frozen Adventure" screened prior to Coco, following Pixar's tradition of releasing a short film before the actual movie.

I might watch that movie soon, I heard it's really good. Since it was longer than the average Pixar short and hardly anyone knew about it, everyone was so surprised that they thought they walked into the wrong screen.

I'm not American and I don't think they'll be screening the featurette if I go see Coco in cinemas marking the first post-Toy Story Pixar flick to have no short before the movie. Now, on with the actual movie, the animation is beautiful as is the case with most Disney movies, the songs, while overloaded with them, are good, Josh Gad steals the show as Olaf the snowman who has his moments despite his first impression suggesting he's only here to sell toys and it also defies our expectations a little.

This is most prominent in a certain scene in the third act regarding a certain character who I certainly won't spoil for first-timers. I know I didn't see it coming the first time I saw this movie.

Frozen is Disney's most overrated movie to date but I enjoyed it. And one thing we can agree on is that it's a worthy adversary to Rise of the Guardians, which I reviewed last year, with its fantastic ice and snow rendering.