For all the good will that the Disney Princesses and their movies have generated over the decades, a closer inspection reveals something problematic. The formula for these seems to instill archaic qualities in the female characters, with so much emphasis placed on their being beautiful, and their stories so reliant on handsome princes coming to their rescue. The films of the last decade or so seem designed to try and remedy that situation, and it appears to culminate in Frozen, their very loose adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen. Though the film stretches a bit too far to hit its metaphor, it offers up some intriguing twists on the classic princess formula.
The film concerns sisters Anna and Elsa (Kristen Bell and Idina Menzel), princesses of the kingdom of Arandelle. Elsa has the magical power to create ice and snow, but a childhood accident involving Anna forces her to try and suppress these abilities. The king and queen advise her to hide, and close off the whole palace to the outside, much to the chagrin and confusion of the more outgoing Anna. But Elsa’s coronation forces her to come out of hiding, and she predictably loses control of her powers, inadvertently plunging the entire kingdom into eternal winter. She runs away to the mountains, leaving Anna to journey through the treacherous, icy landscape to try and find her and save the kingdom from winter.
The film’s connection to the original Snow Queen story is tangential at best. It’s been widely reported that Disney has been trying to adapt the fairy tale in one form or another since the 40s, and even with this movie, the best they can really do is employ some of its broader plot elements. The story might just be too dense for real adaptation, and even in this heavily altered and truncated form, the film has to rush through a lot of tricky exposition to set up much of the plot. The entire first act feels a little clunky because of it, the film unable to really establish its characters in the midst of all the table setting.
But the film takes a turn in its second act, the emotional stakes cued by a spectacular musical number performed by Elsa. The film slows down to linger on what the characters are feeling, and it starts to establish what will become a larger theme. The film employs elements of the established Disney formula, but twists them around in kind of interesting ways. It starts to comment on what passes for romance in films like these, and moves toward a genuinely sinister turn. And the film never lets itself be about princes saving the day. It is ultimately about the love that exists between the sisters.
It does this all with some panache. Songwriters Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez bring Broadway bombast to the film’s songs. The lyrics get a little obvious, but the sweeping sentiment behind them might carry audiences away. The animation is excellent, with each character given a distinct visual personality. Kristen Bell delivers a compelling lead performance, and Broadway vet Idina Menzel brings the thunder as the Snow Queen.
Frozen uses some weird narrative gymnastics in its attempt to connect to the original story, and this leads to a sometimes clunky plot that pushes too hard to deliver a particular message. But as a whole, Frozen is still pretty terrific. It provides worthy wrinkles to the classic princess formula, in the end crafting engaging characters that are worth connecting with. Frozen, despite being part of a decades-old tradition in animated film, kind of feels fresh and new. Perhaps the next step will be to leave the fairy tale behind completely.
My Rating:
