My critique of the film:
I am a long time fan of Disney stories.
My absolute favorite growing up was The Little Mermaid. To this day, I can remember almost all of the dialogue and can do all of the male voices and a fairly convincing Ursula. I believe the Little Mermaid is the single greatest Disney movie, and one of my favorite films of all time.
I didn’t think anything else would even come close to the love I have for that film.
Having watched Frozen several times, I have become enamored with the film in much the same way that I did for TLM. Both Elsa and Anna are spectacular characters, and the animation which brought them to life visually as well as the voice acting in particular for both characters, are unparalleled.
This film has come the closest out of all other films in toppling Ariel from the throne of my childhood. In particular, the vivid and vibrant characters of Elsa and Anna make the story for me. The story itself is not a tale that I have heard over and over again in other movies, especially the denoument, which involved a highly un-Disney approach to the concept of love conquering all, which is basically a Disney trademark in and of itself.
The impressive and grown-up approach to love at first sight not being completely true and permanent caught my attention right away, that not everyone in the story viewed youthful love and a rush to immediate matrimony as a good thing was surprising to say the least, as one of the most unrealistic things about Disney love stories is the fact that any Disney love story is typically one of love at first sight that is perfect and unshakeable. Then when Anna’s first love interest is revealed to be hollow and untrue, it shattered the traditional Disney mold of the girl falling for the perfect man on the first try, or that hearts which love are never rejected by those they loved. I can’t recall a whole lot of Disney movies which led to this kind of conclusion.
Moreover, it seemed as though the story was leading inexorably to Kristoff being the “true love” and once again, the man riding in to save the woman’s life.
One thing I loved about The Little Mermaid is that the onus was on Ariel to save the man’s life (more than once) and that it was her quest to free herself and get her true love, rather than the man falling for her first and going on a quest to win her heart. Although Eric performs heroically on his own and indeed, ends up saving Ariel in the end, it was much more mutual. Ariel truly was the protagonist, and a strong, independent woman, with an adventurous spirit and intense curiosity about the world, not some cookiecutter damsel waiting for a man to whisk her away.
Frozen brought me that kind of female protagonist once again with Anna. This story is about her quest for love, and for her love to be returned, by someone she has been missing dearly for most of her life. It is a story about how far she is willing to go for love, and how fierce her loyalty to that love is, even in defiance of society, and friends who do not fully understand that loyalty, and even when she had been hurt unintentionally by this person, she refused to stop loving her, and never once stopped being loyal to her, all the way to the end.
And the story clearly establishes WHERE this love come from, which was a bond formed in her childhood with someone whom she confided in, and spent her time with, someone she admired, and who brought her years of delight and joy. The ending was not at all a hackneyed plot twist, because throughout the entirety of the story, Anna’s love and loyalty for Elsa is very clearly, profoundly, and convincingly established.
At the end, her decision to go to Elsa, above preserving herself and running toward Kristoff, was not a choice that felt tacked on for a false “heartwarming moment”, if you can excuse the unintended pun. It was the only way the story could have ended, in a way that made any sort of sense, to conclude the premise of the film which had at the very beginning established that the story was about the great lengths both sisters would go, what sacrifices they would make, what consequences they would endure, for one another.
In much the same way you could truly *feel *the weight of unimaginable loss in the sad eyes of Rapunzel’s father in Tangled, so many years after his daughter’s disappearance; with every expression, every uttered word, every action taken, every decision made, as the story unfolds the viewer is absolutely convinced of the strength and conviction of Anna’s adoration for her sister Elsa, and through the heart-wrenching isolation of Elsa and her pain at ever having caused harm to her beloved sister, and the lengths she goes to avoid ever causing harm to Anna again, it is quite clear that Elsa’s heart is just as dedicated to her love for Anna.
Some of the other characters were not as potent or memorable; I felt it was clever to have the snowman that the two sisters built together as children come to life, as a concept, but I did not have as much love for that character and I felt it was distracting to the overall plot. I felt the Weaselton character was one-dimensional, obvious, uninteresting, and ineffective as a villain. I felt that Hans was only marginally effective as a villain and under-developed, although the purpose he served in the story was important. That could have been done better.
I think the trolls could have been more effective if they had been more mysterious and serious, and less “cartoony”. The gravity of the situations where they are featured are undermined by the way they are depicted. However, that might just be my personal taste.
The only weak point of Frozen are these supporting characters.
Because The Little Mermaid’s supporting characters were richer and more memorable, my childhood favorite continues to carry the throne, in my mind.
But only by this slim margin. In many ways, Frozen outdoes The Little Mermaid, and the kind of love featured in this film felt 100% more genuine. Visually stunning, powerful, and full of heart, I rate Frozen as an irreplaceable and fantastic, thoroughly satisfying masterpiece.
