Frozen (2013)

Rating: 90%
At last we have the 53rd theatrical animated film from Disney: Frozen. It's about time.

Plot: The film is set in the kingdom of Arendelle where we have two princesses who are sisters named Anna and Elsa. Elsa has the ability to create snow and ice, but after a childhood incident is forced to be shunned from Anna as they're growing up. But then they meet again when Elsa is crowned queen and they get into an argument that causes Elsa's powers to get out of hand and so she runs into hiding while also triggering a magical, eternal winter that freezes the entire kingdom. So Anna leaves trying to find her to bring her back and save their kingdom.

If this film doesn't succeed where Wreck-it Ralph didn't when it comes to winning best animated feature against Pixar, there's something very, very wrong with the people in the academy...well even more wrong then there already is with not letting Wreck-it Ralph win. When it comes to the fantasy and/or the princess films from Disney, this film goes even smarter and bigger then The Princess and the Frog and Tangled. The animation is gorgeous. The landscapes, scenery, even the dresses that Anna and Elsa wear have such a wonderful design to them that is really wonderful to look at. And much like Tangled, it sets us with a very clever story - though sadly the origin of the powers are never explained - and it does the princess thing much more differently then the Disney princess films in the past. I mean to start off, we have two princess and they're siblings. We've never had a Disney film where there's more then one princess or any of them having siblings (I'm not really counting Merida and her little brothers in Brave). Anyway, the characters themselves where very good. Neither princesses (yeah I know Elsa's a queen but she's a princess turned to a queen.) were bland or unlikeable. Anna especially was very funny, independent but also has her human side. The supporting characters were also very fun...even Olaf...as hard as that kind of is to say. When I say that, I didn't have high hopes for this character, and the general concept of who he was and how he sounded just kind of spelled annoying comedy relief to me...but at the same time he was funny. I mean I want to say that he's super annoying and forgettable because that's what I expected as a whole from him from the first couple of minutes that he appeared...but he actually was funny. Some of the comedy was more for the children and their parents in the theater I was in to laugh at, but the rest of the time, he actually had some smart and clever jokes that I just did not expect from him. It's screwed up to me because I expected him to be the most negative thing about this film, that unless you were a little kid, this guy was going to fall flat, and fall flat hard. But while he would fall flat on occasion on a whole he really was actually funny. So props to the the makers of the film to prove me wrong like that. And it wouldn't be much of a review about a Disney princess movie if I didn't talk about the songs. So how were they? Well while I cant' say all of them we're extremely original by Disney Renaissance standards, they were still very enjoyable. "Do You Want to Build a Snowman" was very nice, "For The First Time in Forever" was very fun, but easily the one that will probably go down in Disney history and maybe even become nominated for an Oscar is "Let it Go." It doesn't completely matter that it sounds so familiar to "Defying Gravity" from Wicked (especially with Idina Menzel singing it) It was grand, it was powerful, it was emotional, it's just a song that's worth remembering.

And that's my review for Frozen. I would probably have to watch it again or something to see if I'm as on board as a lot of people seen to be, to call this film that declares it as the return of Disney as it should be, but it still does a terrific job in going even deeper then Tangled or Wreck-it Ralph with it's animation, songs, characters, and all around story that makes Frozen a great film to be added into the Disney collection and is worth checking out if you haven't seen it yet.