{"id":3956,"date":"2013-12-20T00:21:43","date_gmt":"2013-12-20T05:21:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/smugfilm.com\/?p=3956"},"modified":"2013-12-23T05:17:46","modified_gmt":"2013-12-23T10:17:46","slug":"frozen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/frozen\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s Okay To Like Disney Princesses Again: A Review of \u2018Frozen\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"frozen2\"
\n

\nFrozen<\/a> (2013)<\/b>
\nDirected by Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck
\nWritten by Jennifer Lee, Chris Buck, and Shane Morris
\n102 min.<\/p>\n

Spoiler-free.<\/i><\/p>\n

When I reviewed How To Train Your Dragon<\/a>, I drew a line in some imaginary sand separating it from the cynically produced schlock that gets dumped on the kid demographic these days. As much as I love that movie though, I have to admit that it only seems so great because everything else is so bad. For a long time, CG movies were too annoying to even endure, Pixar\u2019s output aside. But now Pixar sucks too. Go ahead, admit it. They haven\u2019t made a great movie since Wall-E<\/a>, and everything since has been worse than what came before it\u2014Monsters University<\/a> in particular is downright abysmal.<\/p>\n

Strangely enough, as Pixar has declined, Disney Animation has experienced a resurgence. Bolt<\/a> was way better than anyone expected, and, for the most part, Tangled<\/a> feels about as effortless as any Disney 90\u2019s hit did. Wreck-It Ralph<\/a> was terrible, and The Princess and the Frog<\/a> was a bit too paint-by-numbers, but whatever\u2014all upward trends have their occasional dips. Now we have Frozen<\/a>, which, despite its stupid title, is without a doubt the peak of this new renaissance. I have a feeling this all has something to do with Pixar legend John Lasseter\u2019s appointment as Chief Creative Officer of Walt Disney Animation Studios following Disney\u2019s buyout of Pixar in 2006, but I\u2019ll leave that speculation for someone more informed and just get back to Frozen.
\n
\nFirst off\u2014fuck<\/i> this movie\u2019s marketing. Like everyone else who saw that grating promotional teaser\u2014the one with the snowman and reindeer faffing about on a frozen lake\u2014I immediately wrote the movie off, as any sane adult would do. Only after post-release hype started building was my interest piqued. I\u2019m always looking for the next hidden gem amidst the ocean of incorrigible slime that is kids’ movies, so I gave it a fair chance. And daymn<\/i>. Frozen is doing for kids’ movies this year what HTTYD did for them in 2010\u2014reminding us that they can be good<\/i>. Damned near transcendent, even.<\/p>\n

Frozen checks all the boxes that HTTYD did, or rather, both movies refuse to check off the boxes that basically all other kids’ movies do. There are no Billboard Top 40 shitpop hits breaking the fourth wall; the story doesn\u2019t condescend to its target audience with watered down, obvious themes; there are no useless, intrusive, comic relief characters. How, you might ask, could a movie whose entire pre-release advertising campaign rested on obnoxious, distracting comic relief characters not suffer from the presence of said obnoxious, distracting comic relief characters? Well, shockingly (for a modern kids’ movie) the comic relief in Frozen functions as just that, and doesn\u2019t overstep its bounds nor overstay its welcome.<\/p>\n

Near the beginning of Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs<\/a>, some characters are talking about something I don\u2019t remember, and I don\u2019t remember it because there\u2019s some stupid monkey dancing around the shoulders of the main character, making stupid faces or something. He\u2019s there because the filmmakers were afraid that their dialogue and characters would be too boring for kids to endure, and so they inserted a \u2018funny\u2019 distraction into the scene. This is cynical and lazy move that almost all kids’ movies make.<\/p>\n

However, in Frozen, the snowman, Olaf, and the reindeer, Sven, aren\u2019t there to distract you. When the movie eventually bares its teeth (and trust me, it has teeth) it bares them distraction-free. Sven and Olaf\u2019s bits do punctuate some of the heavier moments, but they never saturate them.<\/i> And the characters are actually pretty funny. Their animation is sharp, the writing is sharp, the timing is sharp, and Olaf\u2019s voicing is especially sharp. The laughs they give come at precisely calculated moments, as all comic relief should.<\/p>\n

The comic relief works largely due to the story having a much wider emotional range than most kids’ movies. Its dark moments aren\u2019t fill-in-the-blank plot beats, observed hastily, solely to give the impression of story progression, and left behind just as quickly in order to get on with the hijinks. No, Frozen means business<\/i>\u2014there are real lows and highs, and the lows can be biting and its highs can be soaring. Thanks to the phenomenal direction and immaculate production values, the movie\u2019s tonal dynamism is so graceful and assured that you\u2019ll be grinning one second and gasping the next. If you can\u2019t remember the last time a kids’ movie actually made you feel something<\/i>, Frozen should thaw you.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m hesitant to go into too much detail about its story, and what\u2019s so great about it, because I don\u2019t want to ruin your chance of going into the movie blind. And it\u2019s certainly worth seeing blind, so if that\u2019s what you want to do, don\u2019t read on. I\u2019m not going to give away specific plot points in the paragraphs to come, but I\u2019m going to give a reading of the movie that might affect your own, so you\u2019ve been forewarned.<\/p>\n

Slight spoilerishness ahead.<\/i><\/p>\n

Frozen is one of the few Disney Princess movies to tackle the historically sexually regressive Disney Princess movie formula. Does that mean it\u2019ll please feminists? Possibly. I\u2019m a feminist, and it certainly pleased me. It’s an important movie in several ways\u2014and they are different ways than you might expect, given Disney\u2019s previous attempts at toying with feminist ideas.<\/p>\n

In Mulan<\/a> and Brave<\/a>,\u00a0the heroines subvert patriarchy by explicitly attacking traditional gender roles.\u00a0By placing the stories in near-ancient settings, and making the female protagonists anachronistically willful, Disney played the female empowerment card in the easiest and laziest ways possible. (None of Disney’s market is really going to be alienated by the attacking of the idea of arranged marriages.)\u00a0That is to say, neither movies are properly activist<\/i> in their ambitions\u2014they do not address sexism here and now. I wouldn\u2019t call Mulan and Brave total cop-outs, though. I think both are positive steps for Disney, but neither come close to being radical. Frozen does, in some small but important ways.<\/p>\n

Frozen goes out of its way to consistently subvert your expectations of what ought to happen in a Disney Princess movie. My favorite example of this is the absence of a clear moral dichotomy. When shit hits the fan, it\u2019s not because some generic evil sorceress does what generic evil sorceresses tend to do in movies like this\u2014it\u2019s because of mysterious forces outside the characters\u2019 understanding and control. The Snow Queen Elsa\u2019s ice magic has been with her since birth, she can barely contain it, it just about freezes the world, and nobody knows why any of this is the case. The magic in Frozen\u2019s world is deep and dangerous and curious\u2014just the way I like magic. It drives the plot in such a way that bland \u201cgood vs. evil\u201d machinations aren’t necessary, and it\u2019s just plain good fantasy world-building\u2014something Disney\u2019s never really bothered with before (unlike, say, Disney\u2019s Japanese counterpart, Ghibli).<\/p>\n

There are far more important subversions going on too, though. At first glance, the heroines\u2014particularly Anna the redhead\u2014look almost too<\/i> much like classic Disney Princesses. But that is the point. Anna is<\/i> the quintessential Disney Princess. She\u2019s wide-eyed (literally), spunky, vivacious, desperate for love, and above all, hopelessly na\u00efve in that desperation. Unlike classic Disney though, Frozen calls Anna\u2019s naivet\u00e9 for what it is. It nucleates the movie\u2019s thematic core, and plot beats large and small are woven around it, and make a game of it\u2014eventually, eviscerating it whole.<\/p>\n

For the first act, this isn\u2019t apparent. We take the well-worn conventions at face value. Anna is trapped in her parent\u2019s castle, locked away from the world because of her sister\u2019s dark secret. When her sister inherits the crown, the castle is opened for the first time in years, and Anna\u2019s first thought is of the prospect of finding true love. Yawn.<\/i> She bumps into a storybook-handsome prince charming, Hans of the Southern Isles, and immediately falls for him. H<\/em>ere we go again<\/i>. Shortly thereafter, they\u2019re singing a duet that had me literally shifting in my seat. It was just too much. Too saccharine, too old-fashioned.<\/p>\n

But then the movie pulled the rug out from beneath me (and them) and basically laughed in their faces. And did this again, and again, each time cutting deeper than the last. There\u2019s even a plot twist, one that might seem cheap at first glance, but in light of Anna\u2019s character arc, it not only makes sense, it\u2019s brilliant, and serves as a well-earned knife in the gut of the Disney-perfected, true-love-at-first-sight trope. And man do I fucking hate that trope. It\u2019s misogynistic bollocks, and cheap storytelling to boot. Frozen agrees, and teaches you that love isn\u2019t something that falls in your lap, given out of the blue. True love is something you build cooperatively, over time, with another human.<\/p>\n

It might sound like I\u2019m giving the movie too much credit, but Frozen wasn\u2019t made in a vacuum. It has the entire Disney Princess legacy behind it, a legacy chock full of clueless female leads falling in deep love at the drop of a hat for no good reason, simply because, in the Disney-verse, that\u2019s just what happens when a young woman sees a handsome man. And by potently and unequivocally burying this clich\u00e9, Disney is basically nullifying a decades-old storytelling device they themselves popularized. By revealing this version of love as a childish illusion, Disney appears to be making fun of their own previous characters, from The Lady and the Tramp<\/a>\u2019s Lady to The Princess and the Frog\u2019s Tiana. I can\u2019t help but see this move as a conscious act of atonement for past crimes. (Okay, maybe that\u2019s giving too much credit, but props where props are due.)<\/p>\n

Props also must be given to a much subtler subtext which Disney seems to have snuck into the movie. The Snow Queen Elsa\u2019s own arc appears to have queer-positive undertones<\/a>, which I didn\u2019t catch on my first watch but now seem totally obvious in retrospect. Her first big musical number is basically a metaphor for queer-sexual self-realization. If that seems like a stretch, just read the lyrics<\/a>. A lot of feminist and LGBT bloggers want to go as far as to call her a lesbian, but I don\u2019t think that\u2019s necessary. The beauty of the scene, and her character, lies in the ambiguity\u2014her ‘coming out’ could function as a coming out for any kind of secret that might require coming out from.<\/p>\n

So yes, Frozen is a must-see, and quite a bit more complex than your average kid flick. There\u2019s irony and subtle thematic weaving around every corner, and repeat viewings will reveal new layers of interplay between the subtexts and the plot. I\u2019m about to see it for a third time, and I expect it to be my richest viewing yet. It accomplishes a lot in its runtime, and that it attempts to accomplish anything at all <\/i>sets it far above the sludge that passes for kids’ movies. And it does this while still also packing in witty humor, badass ice magic action, real dramatic tension, and great musical numbers. See the damned thing to remind yourself why you actually like this genre at one point, and also, to see what new ground can be broken within it.<\/p>\n

4 1\/2 out of 5 thawed hearts.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"frozen2\"
\n

\nFrozen<\/a> (2013)<\/b>
\nDirected by Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck
\nWritten by Jennifer Lee, Chris Buck, and Shane Morris
\n102 min.<\/p>\n

Spoiler-free.<\/i><\/p>\n

When I reviewed How To Train Your Dragon<\/a>, I drew a line in some imaginary sand separating it from the cynically produced schlock that gets dumped on the kid demographic these days. As much as I love that movie though, I have to admit that it only seems so great because everything else is so bad. For a long time, CG movies were too annoying to even endure, Pixar\u2019s output aside. But now Pixar sucks too. Go ahead, admit it. They haven\u2019t made a great movie since Wall-E<\/a>, and everything since has been worse than what came before it\u2014Monsters University<\/a> in particular is downright abysmal.<\/p>\n

Strangely enough, as Pixar has declined, Disney Animation has experienced a resurgence. Bolt<\/a> was way better than anyone expected, and, for the most part, Tangled<\/a> feels about as effortless as any Disney 90\u2019s hit did. Wreck-It Ralph<\/a> was terrible, and The Princess and the Frog<\/a> was a bit too paint-by-numbers, but whatever\u2014all upward trends have their occasional dips. Now we have Frozen<\/a>, which, despite its stupid title, is without a doubt the peak of this new renaissance. I have a feeling this all has something to do with Pixar legend John Lasseter\u2019s appointment as Chief Creative Officer of Walt Disney Animation Studios following Disney\u2019s buyout of Pixar in 2006, but I\u2019ll leave that speculation for someone more informed and just get back to Frozen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,25],"tags":[46,3406,3409,3397,3407,3394,3393,3417,3415,3418,3392,3395,3416,3410,107,3396,3402,3412,3400,3408,3399,3405,3398,104,185,3414,3413,1380,3401,3411,3404,1871,3403],"class_list":["post-3956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alexsreviews","category-allposts","tag-alex-hiatt","tag-bolt","tag-brave","tag-chris-buck","tag-cloudy-with-a-chance-of-meatballs","tag-frozen","tag-frozen-disney","tag-frozen-feminist","tag-frozen-lesbian","tag-frozen-lgbt","tag-frozen-movie","tag-frozen-movie-review","tag-frozen-queer","tag-ghibli","tag-how-to-train-your-dragon","tag-jennifer-lee","tag-john-lasseter","tag-lady-and-the-tramp","tag-monsters-university","tag-mulan","tag-pixar","tag-princess-and-the-frog","tag-shane-morris","tag-smug-film-2","tag-smugfilm","tag-snow-queen-elsa-lesbian","tag-snow-queen-elsa-queer","tag-studio-ghibli","tag-tangled","tag-the-lady-and-the-tramp","tag-the-princess-and-the-frog","tag-wall-e","tag-wreck-it-ralph"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3956"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3968,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3956\/revisions\/3968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}