Cold snap

We finally got the movie Frozen last week. We watched it over the weekend (a bunch of my daughter's friends came over for an Easter Egg hunt), and she (very predictably) loved it.

One weird side effect came out of that, though, which was that I missed the first forty minutes or so.

So I saw the last half, and didn't see the first half until a couple of days later (when we watched it again, just the two of us).

I must say, it was very good; I was impressed.  The music, especially early on, was truly excellent.  The story was pretty good too, and I liked how they got the resolution they did (with one minor caveat).

To get slightly more specific with the music, it opened with music strongly reminiscent of Lion King's "Circle of Life" (despite me generally not liking The Lion King, that's not a dig.  I did love the soundtrack for LK, even if I thought the story was terrible and animation so-so.  And that's not getting into the general part of it being a rip-off of the japanese Simba).

Then it went directly into a song (nearly a sea shanty, if sung much more cleanly) about the wonder and dangers of ice.

After that, we finally meet our heroine and her sister (Anna and Elsa, respectively), as Anna wakes Elsa to go build a snowman.  When they do that inside, we find out that Elsa has magic powers to control and create ice and snow.  Unfortunately, Elsa accidentally hurts Anna in their playing.

That leads to one of the two things I didn't like about the movie.  They see trolls, who are able to heal Anna, and warn Elsa about fear and controlling her powers.  My problem came when they got home, and their parents encouraged Elsa to be controlled by those fears.  Part of that was separating the girls; Anna had her memories of the powers removed by the trolls, and they didn't want her to find out again.  But it was generally amazingly stupid treatment by their parents.

So then we had, I think, my favorite song, where Anna sings "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?" to Elsa's bedroom door over the course of several years.

Next comes the passing away of parents, followed by Elsa's coronation.  At the coronation, the sisters do some bonding, until Anna meets Prince Hans.  At that point, things go south, Elsa runs away, freezing the entire region in the process.

Once she gets to North Mountain, Elsa sets up an ice palace to live in, and sings the excellent (and best known) song, "Let It Go", to celebrate her no longer needing to hide her powers.

The rest of the movie details everyone trying to get Elsa to unfreeze the country, through various means.

What I liked most about the resolution was that 'True Love's Kiss' did not solve everything (a first, I think, for a Disney princess movie.  Well, unless you want to count Brave, I guess).  They did even reference that, directly, which had me thinking of Enchanted.

What I didn't like was that Hans' actions came out of nowhere.  As mentioned, I watched the second half before the first, so when I saw the beginning, I was specifically looking for clues, and I didn't see anything.

He also mentioned nobody getting anywhere (wooing) Elsa, which was certainly true, but no evidence was shown of anyone even trying.  For sure, he never put himself in a position to try.  That's a minor detail, of course.

One other, fairly minor, point was that the songs after 'Let It Be' seemed a bit... forced, maybe?  They just didn't seem to flow naturally, as they did earlier in the film.

But the most important point is that my kids (my daughter and my son) both loved the movie.  In fact, my daughter is nearly obsessed with it.  And I enjoyed it too, warts and all.  I especially liked several of the songs.

Several people online mentioned really disliking Olaf.  I didn't think much of his song, but he didn't bother me much (other than occasionally reminding me of the very annoying character he voiced in the Ice Age movies).  And my son really likes him.

So, yeah, thumbs up, overall.