Ben Oliver

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Frozen

The cold never bothered me anyway.
28 March 2014

This is a film so formulaic in its nature it almost feels like satire. It’s old times. There’s a princess who’s locked away because of [insert curse here] and she has a sister who hasn’t seen her in years but really wants to. Parents die, rich men are bad, curses must be lifted so that everyone can continue doing what it is they were doing. There’s a quirky clumsy wisecracking sidekick, animals that do stuff, and a load of average songs.

Frozen is different because the princess doesn’t have a curse per se, it’s a superpower she must learn to control. While that can be of some interest in the X-Men franchise, in the Disney world it turns out there’s little difference between the two. It’s stilly to get picky about the plot of a disney film, of course they are all the same, but there’s little all else to talk about. The script isn’t funny (I hope the snowman suffers a painful death in Frozen 2), the voice-acting is only any good for the two leads, and the animation is run of the mill. The art direction is a success, mind you; this is a very good looking movie. In particular I really admired the set design on the ice palace.

It’s a struggle to see how this has been so successful, particularly at the Academy Awards. Sure, it’s great for kids but there are better examples of the same film all over the place. Clearly Frozen hasn’t thawed my cold, cold heart.