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Frozen (2013)

★★½ — Frozen (2013)

Frozen arrived in November 2013 as Walt Disney Animation Studios' 53rd feature, loosely adapted from Hans Christian Andersen's 1845 fairy tale The Snow Queen, a property the studio had been attempting to crack since the 1940s. Directors Chris Buck (who had previously helmed Surf's Up and Tarzan) and Jennifer Lee (who also wrote the screenplay, making her the first woman to direct a Disney animated feature) developed the film during a productive creative resurgence at the studio following the success of Tangled. Made on a reported $150 million budget, it went on to gross well over a billion dollars worldwide, winning two Academy Awards including Best Animated Feature, and became the highest-grossing traditionally distributed animated film of all time at that point.

Let It Go… Please. If I had a pound for every time I’ve seen Frozen, I’d be able to fund my own Disney sequel. My daughter adores it, which means I’ve endured, sorry, experienced, this film well over a hundred times I reckon. For its time, the animation is genuinely impressive, and the reworking of The Snow Queen is a solid twist on a classic tale. The songs are utterly inescapable. Let It Go alone has haunted my waking hours like a persistent spectre of parental suffering. But after the hundredth viewing, you start to notice things. The plot is fairly thin, the pacing wobbles a bit, and despite its praise for being subversive, it still lands firmly in standard Disney fare. It’s not bad. It’s just… enough. I respect its impact, I appreciate its craftsmanship, but if I never have to hear Do You Want to Build a Snowman? again, it’ll be too soon.

Rating: ★★½ | Year: 2013 | Watched: 2018-08-05

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