Frozen (Chris Buck, 2013) USA

Reviewed by Linnea Nilsson at Santa Barbara International Film Festival 2014.

Frozen is by far one of the best animated movies I’ve seen the last couple of years, and I know I’m not the only one thinking that. With two Oscar nominations (Best Animated Feature and Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures, Original Song) and a big success at the Box Office, Frozen has taken the world with a big freezing storm.

Elsa and Ana are two princesses living in a beautiful castle in a town known as Arendelle. But Elsa is not a normal princess, she has magical icing powers. When they are up one night, having fun with her magic, Elsa accidentally struck Ana’s head, making her unconscious and cold. Their parents finds a way to save her, but the saving has a price – Ana can’t remember anything with Elsa having powers. Forced to keep her powers away from her sister, Elsa shuts Ana out, as she does to the rest of the world, so that she wont hurt anyone again. Growing up, Elsa’s powers only grows bigger and Ana never really understands why her sister wont see her anymore.

With a tragical accident of their parents, Elsa is now the new one to take over the throne. But the coronation doesn’t really go as planned and Elsa unintentionally reveals her power, forcing her to flee for her life. What she doesn’t know is that she puts Arendelle in deep snow while fleeing. Ana decides to go after her sister. During her path she meets a man named Kristoff and a snowman named Olaf that will help her find Elsa. But will they be happy with what they’ll find?

I never expected myself liking this movie as much as I do. It was really good. I understand why they have such a huge success worldwide. This is actually the first time we get to see two princesses that are not like the other Disney-princesses. Elsa is reasonable and smart while Ana is sort of clumsy, awkward and naive. Their personalities was something new and, actually, realistic. They were people you could relate to even though they are animated.

I think that this movie was very well-made too. The details were amazing, for example how the dresses moved while dancing – it almost looked real. Their facial expressions, movement and surrounding was as good as it could get. I think I will always be amazed of how they make animated movies. I liked the musical numbers too, especially the editing when “Do you wanna build a snowman”, they show how they are going from being small children to young adults, and all that is happening in between, in just a few minutes. But if I have to be honest, when they had two musical numbers almost right after each other, I said to the person next to me: “Another one? When will they stop singing?” But some of their songs are still stuck in my head, making my roommates angry at me for not being able to stop singing them.

Another thing I said to the person next to me was: “When will the funny snowman enter?” Seeing a lot of posters, trailers etc, of the movie, they had showed the snowman Olaf most of the times. I actually thought that he would enter in the beginning, but they don’t bring him in to the movie until we only have half of the movie left. That was the biggest disappointment for me. But I can understand why. He had a really big personality that took over the spotlight from the others, if they had him in the movie the entire time I actually think people would be bored of him. He is a bit too much. But he will still be my favorite character and he is one of the reason why Frozen is on my top three animated movies.

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Published:
02.13.14 / 10pm
Category:
Animation, Films, Santa Barbara Film Festival 2014