Frozen (2013)

Earning almost $1.3 billion dollars at the box office worldwide, Frozen is the highest grossing animated film of all time by quite a significant margin. Before I saw it, I'd only heard good things about it.

When I did watch it, I was left with a feeling of indifference. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't amazing either. What's the big deal about this movie? I couldn't really get emotionally invested in Elsa, the irritating ice bitch. She was deceptively marketed as the main character, but the film wasn't really about her. It was much more about her sister. Not only that, but I didn't laugh like I usually do at these kind of movies. In fact, at least one of the jokes was totally ripped off. The "we finish each other's... sandwiches" gag has been done before in both The Simpsons and Arrested Development. Probably elsewhere as well, come to think of it. That's just a minor thing, but it's still a testament to how unoriginal this film is, which I'll talk about a bit further down.

From L to R, "Dog-Horse-Reindeer", "Will they? Won't they? Romantic interest", "Annoying comic relief", "Ice witch bitch", "The more likeable sister", "Surprise surprise, I'm actually a villain".

Before I go any further, I will say that it was an interesting angle to have the whole "act of true love" being the love between two sisters, rather than a token handsome prince coming to save the day. Additionally, with Elsa running off and refusing to be a "perfect girl", there was some cool feminist vibes in Frozen, which is good for the millions of young girls who do love this movie. However, it was a bit heavy-handed with the girl-power message, which made it a little bit cringeworthy. Disney's Tangled (2010) is a much, much better version of this movie. It had a very likeable female lead. Anna felt like a cheap imitation of Rapunzel, and Elsa is just a miserable, self-centered bitch for most of Frozen. I really didn't care what happened to her. Not only that, but the feminist message was a lot less ham-fisted in Tangled. It showed how Rapunzel and Flynn were equals who worked well as a team, and their relationship came about very naturally in the setting of the story. Frozen's message is pretty much, "like this if you're a strong independent ice queen who don't need no man", and the story seemed to be secondary to this statement.

Frozen really is just a lazy copy of the vastly superior Tangled.

For me, Frozen is worth less than the sum of its parts. It's incredibly derivative. It felt as if the producers had a checklist of kid's movie cliches to fill out this film.

• Goofy comic relief sidekick
• Horse (or in this case, reindeer) which acts kind of like a person and kind of like a dog
• Romantic subplot
• Shut-in princess
• Quirky magical creatures
• Parent-less main character(s)
• Prophecy of some kind of looming danger
• Random outbursts into song

Despite managing to squeeze all of this in to make a film with the oh-so-familiar Disney style, there still wasn't enough to produce anything more than a generic, cookie-cutter kids film that we've seen a hundred times before. I would also add that these cliches were poorly executed in this movie. For example, Olaf was purely annoying, as were the stupid little troll things. They were blatant attempts at marketing some cute little characters to sell merchandise.

Not only that, but I found that barely any of the songs were in any way memorable. Most of them sounded like terrible show-tunes, rather than the catchy music Disney has made in the past. I will admit that Let It Go is the one catchy song in the entire film. I'd hoped for a reprise of it at some point later in the movie, but it never returned. We just got more of the boring songs. Don't ask me how any of them go, because I don't have a clue.

"It's just a kid's movie. You need to lower your expectations."

This is the defence I hear most often when I complain about the film and, in my opinion, it's an infuriatingly weak one. There are so many animated kid's movies which I adore, both old and new. I actually spent a while listing them all, but ended up changing my mind, because the list went on forever and was really boring to read. Just know this: there were a truck load. Frozen just didn't live up to any of its predecessors. There are a load of kids films which are a lot more entertaining. In fact, the main thing Frozen has going for it (the feminist icons for young girls), has been done even better in previous films (Mulan, Brave, and, of course, Tangled are great for this). This film felt like it was made due to a load of executive marketing calculations, rather than a passion to tell a particular story.

Overall, I rate Frozen 4/10.

A below average score for a below average movie. It got the job done, but it didn't excel in anything whatsoever. It has no rewatchability.