- 102 minutes. Rated PG.
Some people are worth melting for.
I’m not going to make you wait until the end of this review to tell you this: I loved this movie. In fact, about one-quarter of the way through, I actually said out loud, “I think I love this movie.” Yes, it was that kind of good.
The movie starts with two very young princesses of Arendelle, Elsa (Idina Menzel) and Anna (Kristen Bell), playing together in the palace in the middle of the night. Elsa has a magical power, the ability to both freeze things and create a frozen landscape out of thin air. As the pair have fun together, an accident occurs where Anna gets hurt. Her parents rush her to the rock trolls, who are able to heal Anna, but warn that Elsa must get her powers under control.
Anna’s memories of Elsa’s powers are erased during the healing, so only her parents are aware of her magic. Elsa shuts out Anna as she struggles to gain control over her growing issues and the entire castle is also on lockdown. Many years pass and the girls grow up, but nothing changes. Then when the king and queen are lost at sea, suddenly Elsa is forced to accept the crown as queen and to go through a coronation.
Anna is beside herself with glee as the castle is opened up. Visiting dignitaries arrive and she finds herself able to talk to her sister at last, at least a little bit. She also is quite literally swept off her feet by Hans (Santino Fontana), the youngest of thirteen sons and a prince of a neighboring country. When he proposes as they cavort to a classic frivolous Disney musical number, Anna says yes (while admitting it is crazy). But it is true love!
Trouble begins when Anna announces her intentions to marry to Elsa and asks for her blessing. Elsa says no (as she should!) and when the sisters begin to argue, Elsa loses control of her tightly held powers. Suddenly, everyone can see what she’s been hiding and they are scared and some are horrified. Elsa does the only thing she believes she can do–she runs away, spreading a deep winter behind her as she flees into the mountains and builds herself an ice castle. Free to finally use her powers, she revels in what she can do (and hey, the cold never bothered her anyway, she sings).
Anna, finally knowing her sister’s secret, rides after her, hoping to reverse the frozen spell (which has stranded everyone in Arendelle and erased summer). She leaves Prince Hans in charge and he is dutifully helpful to the citizens. Meanwhile, Anna recruits ice dealer Kristoff (Jonathan Groff) and his reindeer Sven to find and confront her sister. Levity and a true friend appears in the snowman Olaf (Josh Gad), a remnant of the snowman Elsa and Anna created as children.
Now, you may guess that the rest of the plot focuses on trying to get Elsa to come around to believing she can be good and to get her off the mountain and back to Arendelle. Well, yes, that DOES happen. However, the storyline is so much deeper than that. It includes unintended harm, betrayal, acts of true love, sacrifice, ice castles and icy dungeons. There were some excellent twists to the plot that I didn’t guess would happen.
The characters are also well done, with the writers doing a great job of building them up to be more complex than many a normal animated film will bother to. Elsa was wonderfully conflicted and Anna was fun, feisty and yet, far too trusting. When Kristoff kept mentioning his “friends,” in any other plot, we would have guessed he was covering for the fact he didn’t have any. But that was just one more surprise.
I decided I loved the movie when Elsa fled the castle and the animation panned out to view the town and the ocean surrounding it freezing over. Snow and ice offer up a truly fantastic landscape for the animators to work with and the result is breathtaking. If you have been watching computer animation for as long as I have, you may have also marveled at how realistic the scenes can be. The heaving ocean, the tree icicles, the ice palace on the mountain; all of it comes together in a setting that is both familiar and fantastical at the same time.
The voice actors are perfect. I was somewhat put off by how big the eyes of the two girls were (reminded me too much of the horrible Bratz dolls), but otherwise, the Nordic characters and settings were terrific. During the musical scenes, I was completely drawn in and found the music pleasant, if mainly unremarkable. Elsa’s “Let It Go” is what would be the show stopper on stage.
Overall, I dare anyone to find this film to be unlikable. It had a strong plot filled with surprises, good musical numbers, comic relief, love, loss and a happy ending. Enough for everyone in the family to enjoy it, even if animation isn’t normally your genre. In short, go see it.
