I was kind
of hesitant to see Frozen. Everyone
seemed to be raving about it, but certain rumors had reached my ears that
indicated it might not be the kind of thing I would enjoy. Now that I’ve seen
it, I’d say that my fears weren’t exactly confirmed, but I found it
disappointing all the same.
Since it’s
already won two Academy Awards, been a huge hit with audiences of all ages, and
practically entered the lexicon of Disney greats, let’s admit it has some very
real strengths: the animation is gorgeous, the female lead is adorable, the
comic-relief sidekicks are delightful, there are at least a couple good songs
(including one knock-out), I thought a final-act twist was a delightfully
devilish piece of writing, and the climactic moment of self-sacrifice was
beautifully done.
But these
are mixed in with serious flaws: it’s unfocused, it suffers from jarring tonal
shifts, the male lead is pretty much strictly comic relief, some of the songs
are just kind of lame, and it lacks any of the symbolic power that it ought to
have. It’s like a movie that doesn’t know what it wants to be when it grows up,
except that it knows it doesn’t want
to be Hans Christian Anderson’s The Snow
Queen or anything like it.
The film
opens with a haunting song about the power of the ice, sung by a baritone
chorus of icemen. The ice, the song says, is as beautiful as it is dangerous.
During the song we meet young Kristoff (voiced as adult by Jonathan Groff) and
his pet reindeer, Sven.
From there
we cut to two young princesses, one of whom, Elsa (Idina Menzel), is quiet and
shy, but has the power to make ice and snow with her fingertips, the other,
Anna (Kristen Bell), is energetic and carefree. Their playtime in the snow that
Elsa creates in the ballroom is cut short when an errant blast strikes Anna,
leaving her unconscious.
Frightened
by this close-call, their parents separate the two (after taking Anna to a
local troll for magical healing and memory modification to hide her knowledge
of her sister’s power), leading to years of confused, plaintive isolation for
both of them while Elsa’s powers grow swiftly harder and harder to control.
Then their
parents die at sea, Elsa has to assume the throne, and all hell breaks loose,
causing her to flee into the mountains and inadvertently leaving her kingdom in
a state of perpetual winter.
So, Anna,
leaving the visiting Prince Hans (Santino Fontana), her ostensible fiancée, in
charge, sets out to find Elsa and convince her to come back and take away the
winter. She’s aided in her quest by a now-grown-up Kristoff and they’re soon
joined by the talking snowman, Olaf (Josh Gad).
From there,
the film stumbles in a rather aimless way through Anna’s journey to reach her
sister, both physically and emotionally, which is levied by a number of crises
that feel less apiece with the story and more driven by the need to have something happen, including a curse with
a strict timeline, a betrayal, and a Beauty and the
Beast-like siege scene that isn’t remotely as exciting or inventive as its
inspiration.
That’s
really one of the chief problems with the movie; the story simply isn’t tight
enough. It wanders among its disparate elements and can’t seem to make up its
mind what it wants the story to be about: is it about sisterly love, about the
thawing of a frozen heart, a romance, a journey of discovery and growth, the
need for self-expression, what? There’s no clear goal present, just a vague notion of “find Elsa, shut down the winter, try not to die.” Everything presses and
jostles together, the tone shifts wildly (sometimes right in the middle of a
scene), and none of the various plots and subplots come to a really satisfying
conclusion.
For
instance, when Elsa runs away and builds herself a gorgeous ice palace while
singing the film’s best song – Let it Go
– it seems to be setting up for her to be a defiantly isolationist Snow
Queen…but she doesn’t really. She just acts exactly the same as she did before,
in a different outfit and location. Her self-made palace and proud declarations
of independence all come to nothing except an awkward interview with her sister
and a single tepid action sequence. There’s nothing triumphantly independent
about her once the song is over.
Where do
Elsa’s powers come from anyway? Are
they, like one character says, a curse? If so, who cursed her? Are they just
somehow natural to her? Has anyone else in the kingdom ever had them? Being
able to build ice palaces and sentient snowmen with your mind really seems like
something demanding an explanation. But the film isn’t interested in this;
Elsa’s powers drive the story, but the story itself is oddly blasé about them,
to the point that she can’t even use them effectively or consistently. When the
bad guys are storming her icy fortress, why doesn’t she just whip up a few more
icy minions to fight them off? The one snow-golem she makes is pretty
effective, maybe she could make more? It doesn’t seem to cost her anything.
Maybe she could freeze the doors shut, or pile up snow and ice to make a
barricade or…well, a lot of things. Having given its heroine ill-defined, but
clearly overwhelming power, the film then clumsily tries to put her in danger from
obviously inadequate foes (seriously; she built an entire palace with a thought
and creates abominable snowmen with a wave of her hand, but has trouble taking
on two guys with crossbows?).
In a way,
Elsa’s character arc reminded me of Wicked
(lonely and different girl with powers she doesn’t understand, forced to hide
and bottle them up before bursting free in a completely awesome song that the
subsequent story doesn’t really deliver on, played by Idina Menzel), which
might be fine, except it also makes Wicked’s
mistake of leaving its heroine too much of a light-weight for the role she’s
supposed to be playing. Elsa’s not my idea of a Snow Queen; she doesn’t have
the force of personality, let alone the icy demeanor that such a role should
call for. At best, she’s a Snow Teenager.
Anna, the
other sister and main protagonist, is a much better character; sweet,
endearingly optimistic, naïve, and courageous, she’s a worthy heroine by any
stretch. Most of the film is seen through her eyes, and she’s a large part of
why the film works to the extent that it does. The moment you meet her, you just
want to cuddle her up in a warm blanket and make her a nice mug of hot
chocolate.
Rare for
this kind of movie, there are two male leads, just as there are two female
leads, though this doesn’t factor in the way you might expect. Only one of the
guys is playing the role he seems to be, while the other assumes a different
character later in the story, one that I thought worked pretty well, though it’s
jarringly at odds with how he’s behaved up to that point. I don’t just mean
that he seemed different, I mean that
his whole manner and actions seemed contrary to what is ultimately revealed
about him to a distracting extent, less like he was putting on an act and more
like he was just doing what the script told him to do. In particular, his
actions in a key moment of crisis are the opposite of what, in retrospect, he
ought to have done. I mean, his whole scheme would have succeeded if he had
just ‘not noticed’ something for one more second: why would he sabotage himself
like that (except to fool the audience for a few more scenes)?
The other
male lead is a decent enough sort, though he’s more or less extraneous to the
story and is almost entirely relegated to comic relief. Unlike most Disney
films, this one isn’t primarily a romance but a story of sisterly love. Still,
the fact that the love interest is almost entirely a source of humor and never
gets to affect the story appreciably or really do anything heroic means that
what romantic element it does have falls flat. He’s just another element that
is set up, but never pays off in an interesting way.
(Hmm, this
may count as a spoiler, but I would like to note that in a film that at
least broaches the possibility of a romance between a princess and an iceman,
no one ever so much as points out the social gap between the two. I guess in
today’s world nobody cares, but A). the movie isn’t set in today’s world, B). you’d think said iceman would at least comment on hanging out with a princess
at some point, or the fact that they had a secret encounter as children that
she doesn’t know about, and C). this robs the relationship of a lot of its
potential fun, since half the joy of a fairy tale romance is precisely that
it’s so uneven: peasant and princess, maid and prince. The fact that no one
even seems aware of the difference makes the characters seem disinterested in their own relationship, and if they don’t care about it, why
should we?).
Then
there’s the snowman, Olaf. I’m a little torn on him. On the one hand, he seems
to have wandered in from another movie entirely and his existence is never
adequately explained (so, Elsa can create life?
How does that work?). On the other
hand, whatever movie he wandered in from was a very funny and endearing one, so
I’m glad he’s here all the same. The movie gets a lot of mileage from his
piecemeal body and loveable innocence, making for a weird, but effective
combination of dark humor (as his body parts go flying and he eagerly longs to
know what ‘heat’ feels like) and real sweetness.
The humor
here works, for the most part. Olaf’s hilarious and charming, and Kristoff the
iceman gets a lot of good jokes, both himself and in connection with his
reindeer, Sven (with whom he holds hilarious one-man, two-sided conversations).
Anna is likewise as charming as you please, and she and Kristoff play off
each other well. I thought an early dance scene with a visiting bigwig was both
a cute sisterly moment (one of the few they get) and one of the funniest bits
in the film (“let me know if you’re about to swoon!”). Another great bit is a
scene set in a local trading post (“I sell ice!” “Oh, wow; that’s about the worst job you could have right now.”).
As for the
songs, I found really only two to be at all memorable: the opening Ice number, and, of course Let It Go (although I thought the
latter ended on an almost comically weak note compared with the
rest of the song. Like as if, say, The
Imperial March ended with an extra couple notes on triangle). The rest
range from forgettable to lame, though some of this might be the fact that, for
the most part, they’re bizarrely at odds with the larger dramatic context,
almost as if they wrote the songs separately and then shoved them into the
plot. The worst of these is when they stop to have a
comedic/romantic number while the heroine
is dying of a curse. Granted, the characters at least make a few efforts to
bring this fact up, but from the audience point of view it’s the film’s biggest
“what the hell were they thinking?”
moment. It’d be like Aladdin putting A Friend Like Me in the scene where
Jaffar gets control of the Genie.
There are a
lot of potentially interesting themes here: the birth of the Snow Queen, the love between
diametrically opposite sisters, a romantic triangle of prince, princess, and iceman,
the dangers of moving too quickly in relationships, love melting an icy heart,
and so on, but almost none of them are played out. The film hits one and moves
on to the next without doing anything with the idea.
About the only one of these themes
I’d say the film really does anything with is the dangers of quick romances,
but even with that I’m not sure the events of the film really jell: as noted
above, the bad guy acts too heroically for the first three-quarters of the
film, making the twist when it comes feel like a last-ditch effort to give the
film a little extra drama. I like the twist itself, I just think it could have been better integrated into the story (I can’t resist: contrast this with Wreck-It Ralph, where the ‘hidden bad
guy’ steadily became more and more overtly villainous, while a
seemingly-unrelated element is quietly set up elsewhere, only to bring the two
together in a genuinely unexpected revelation that not only makes
sense, but which is in perfect synch with the film’s central theme).
Sisterly love also fairs comparatively
well, though the structure of the film means it mostly plays out in a single
spectacular moment. Before then, we only have the opening (adorable) scene of
them playing in the snow and a few strained conversations scattered through the
rest of the film. It’s more about Anna’s desire
to have a relationship with her sister than it is about the actual
relationship. You certainly could make a film about that, but to really spark
interest it would need something more than what we have here: a greater sense
of real (as opposed to imposed) distance between the two sisters, a more
serious obstacle to reconciliation than just “I haven’t figured out my
superpowers yet.”
Part of the
problem, I think, is the fact that there’s no real disorder present in the main plot; just a series of
misunderstandings with tragic consequences. There’s nothing for the heroines to
push up against, no evil power that needs to be overcome. There’s just one
heroine’s out-of-control powers that she can’t shut down and another heroine’s
attempts to…have her shut them down. The whole plot basically hinges on an
issue of proper handling with a few related complications, which makes it feel
oddly aimless and impersonal. The whole thing could be straightened up in five
minutes if just one character had any
kind of solid information, and that doesn’t really make for gripping drama
(oddly enough, there is a character who seems have that kind of information
available, but no one bothers to ask him
about it: “hey, Mr. Troll, you seemed pretty knowledgeable about my ice
powers when I was a kid, do you have any suggestions how I might control them
better?”).
You might think that prejudice or unreasoning
fear would be the antagonizing force, but it really isn’t. That sort of thing
is set up as a threat, but basically
limited to a few completely-reasonable terrified reactions on the part of the
citizenry and the actions of a minor bad guy, while the chief villain’s evil
scheme is only tenuously related to the main plot at all.
I really
think the film would have benefited from making Elsa an honest-to-goodness villainess; someone who finally turned
against the people who imprisoned and feared her, and coldly sees their
sufferings as just punishment for what she herself suffered at their hands. It
might have been more difficult to pull off maintaining sympathy with her
(though I’m not so sure; no one has trouble sympathizing with the Phantom of
the Opera for instance), but I think it would have made for a much stronger and
more satisfying film, as well as being closer in spirit to the original fairy
tale (and how cool would it be to have a Disney villain that is redeemed at the end of the film? I don’t
think we’ve ever seen that).
Which
brings me to the fact that the symbolism here is all wrong; there’s no ‘icy
heart’ that needs melting, except in a bluntly literal sense. Elsa isn’t cold;
she’s just scared. Anna is the very reverse of cold. They might have had some
interesting winter/summer symbolism here between the two sisters, but I
couldn’t detect any except superficially (since Elsa isn’t being herself for
most of the film, so we don’t get much sense of her real character). There is a
genuinely ‘cold heart’ present, but it never gets melted. The symbolic power of
the original fairy tale of love thawing a frozen heart is completely gone: the
climactic act of love might as well be healing a heart murmur.
Actually, this
revised version could be said to be conveying a very nasty message: that really
cold hearts can’t be thawed, and that
only a heart that was never frozen to begin with can be melted by an act of
love. The truly cold-hearted are simply bad and worthless: a kind of
Calvinistic/Gnostic predetermination, or in other words, the exact opposite of Anderson’s theme. I doubt
very much that this is what the filmmakers were going for, but there’s nothing
here to contradict such an interpretation.
On the
other hand, the film’s climax, even shorn of the tale’s symbolic power, is unexpected,
extremely moving, and a beautiful vision of selfless love that gives all for
the beloved. That’s the moment the whole film is structured around, and it’s
almost glorious enough to make the film worth seeing just for that moment.
In summary,
Frozen has all it needs to be a great
film, but it just doesn’t come together. A lack of focus squanders its
potential and it ends up being merely okay where it might have been superb.
Final Rating: 3/5: Gorgeous visuals, endearing characters,
and some strong material are wasted by a tepid, unfocused storyline that
largely fails to live up to its potential.
