2013, dir. Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee, Idina Menzel, Kristin Bell:
IMDb /
allmovie
The new queen flees from her coronation, plunges the country into
winter, and disappears; her sister goes to find her.
What this could have been is the story of two sisters working
out their complex relationship. But that's never explored quite as
much as it might be; it's used more as a standardised frame on which
to hang the story. The story in turn is a frame for the songs and some
set-piece animations, and the songs are mostly frames for more
animation (with
the one stunning exception,
which everyone's already seen and which won the Academy Award). I can
easily see this film growing out of storyboards for the visuals;
everything else ends up being in service to them. This isn't Pixar, of
course, but neither is Pixar any more.
Indeed, the break in the relationship between the sisters is
essentially an arbitrary one: as young children, the older one (with
powers of ice magic) accidentally injures the younger, and for reasons
never explained her memory of her sister's powers is removed as part
of the process of healing her. This just made no sense to me, except
insofar as it was setup for the rest of the story. Hey ho.
There's a bit too much comic relief for my taste. Sven the reindeer
(actually his build is more that of a moose) is excellent and
non-verbal, but Olaf the snowman with his constant line of patter
feels as though he belongs in a completely different film. Still, at
least there are no fart jokes or "comical" crotch injuries.
Really, the impressive thing here is not that it's done well – it's
done pretty well, don't get me wrong – but that it's done at all, and
done by Disney. Yeah, the parents die, because some Disney traditions
are just too strong to get away from. But both sisters get more to do
than just sitting around until the prince rescues them. They solve
their own problems, and they rescue other people. There is a
handsome prince, sure, but this really isn't his story.
Disney does something feminist. It's as unexpected as the Fox network
showing Cosmos.
Comments on this post are now closed. If you have particular grounds for adding a late comment, comment on a more recent post quoting the URL of this one.