Review: Frozen

Release date: November 27, 2013

Running time: 85 minutes

Starring: Kristen Bell, Josh Gad, Idina Menzel, Alan Tudyk, Jonathan Groff
Who to see it with: Your cool friends.

David:

Frozen is a new animated movie from Walt Disney studios. It tells the tale of Elsa (Menzel), a princess with a unique power over ice. She loses control of her abilities and has to flee her village, forcing her sister (Bell) to embark on a quest to convince her to return. The story of Frozen is adequate, and does a good enough job of moving along the movie. It actually has a nice Icelandic feel to it, with some interesting language and imagery that is fun to experience. Since this is an animated movie, I'll let you know that the animation is gorgeous. It's not overly impressive at the start (though it has a really good opening scene involving a lot of ice), but once it gets into the winter scenes it's a thing of beauty. The snow particles are absolutely stunning and the ice is beautiful and accompanied by some really spectacular lighting effects. 

One of the most interesting (and surprisingly good) aspects of the movie is the music, particularly the songs. I had forgotten how the classic Disney animated movies had incorporated songs into their story and I also hadn't noticed how most animated movies these days don't have them. It was refreshing to see singing prominently featured in an animated film and done so well. Sure, some of the songs are a little cheesy, but so are many of the old Disney songs. And they're catchy, I found myself humming them the day after I saw the film. Probably because of Idina Menzel's pedigree, some of the songs have a cheesy Broadway feel. The rest of the cast is good, with Josh Gad being particularly enjoyable as Olaf, one of Elsa's sister's companions on her journey. I came into Frozen with fairly low expectations but was pleasantly surprised by the movie. It was very entertaining with a lot of wonderful aspects. The only negative is a pretty terrible plot twist towards the end of the film, and blemishing what would have been an almost perfect movie. But luckily, there is plenty of cool aspects to Frozen. 

Watch it.