Frozen Movie Review

Nothing like a bit of Disney to put you in a festive mood. Here is my review of the new animated Disney musical film Frozen...

Frozen is directed by Chris Buck and stars the voice talents of Kristen Bell and Idina Menzel. With Frozen, Disney returns back to its roots with a musical movie which follows the story of 2 sisters, Anna and Elsa, who both happen to be princesses. One of the sisters Elsa is cursed with the powers of ice and is able to generate frost and snow at her command. However, when her powers are exposed at her coronation in front of the entire kingdom, it is up to Anna to find her sister and stop the eternal winter that covers the land.

Now 2013 has been ok for animations. Monsters University is my current favourite plus movies such as Epic, Turbo and The Croods (movies I haven't reviewed) would all earn C, C+ and B- grades respectively. As for Frozen, it is one of the best animated movies I've seen all year.

Disney proved last year with smash-hit Wreck-it Ralph that they still got it when it comes to creating likeable characters and having a good handle on story-telling. Frozen, as mentioned previously, is a return to musical animations for Disney and I'm glad they made that choice because I enjoyed Frozen a fair amount.

Being a kid's movie, it ultimately does suffer from the "animation syndrome". Frozen is probably the absolute perfect film for children but as a (fairly) grown-up viewer I have to mention the things that did bother me. An animation has to have fantastic characters and an unpredictable plot for it to impress me. Frozen, as you would expect, does suffer from having predictable plot twists and a story that sees characters follow every single cliché in the book, plus character development and relationships that feel rushed beyond belief.

I can't help but notice these things but they do take me out of the film when I do notice them, which in Frozen was quite a lot. But I knew this going in, so I wasn't too disappointed when it did happen. However when I started to block out those things I had a great time with Frozen.

Frozen utilises some excellent, distinctive voice talents and places them in some really good characters. I really liked both Anna (Bell) and Else (Menzel), plus I thought their relationship and their dynamic was handled very well indeed. There are a few other characters who are pretty cool but trust me when I say none of them compare to the scene-stealer; the snowman Olaf.

When watching the trailers I thought that he was going to be cheesy and incessantly irritating. I was fortunately proved wrong. Olaf had such a great screen presence and every time I saw him I smiled, just because he was so light-hearted and so funny, much like the tone of the entire movie.

Admittedly, Frozen does have very basic dialogue when 2 people are simply talking but it does showcase some great writing through the musical numbers. The songs are well sung, plus are actually pretty entertaining because some actual heart went into writing them.

As for the visual look of Frozen, this is the 21st Century and animation nowadays should always be gorgeous. And gorgeous Frozen is. The colours, particularly blue and white, are so colourful and so vibrant that they leap out at you on screen. Voice synchronisation and character actions are both seamless and flow beautifully well with the fast-paced plot of the movie. Also, when Elsa generates the ice from her hands creating the ice bolts, that was awesome!

To summarise, I have to say that Frozen is the best animation of the year. That being said, kids will adore this film to pieces and adults will enjoy it to. It's a real win-win situation:


Rating - B+


1 sentence summary - A movie that kids will love to bits, with some beautiful animation and some fantastic characters.


Feeling Christmassy yet? You should be!

Thanks for reading,
Matt