Review: “Frozen,” starring Idina Menzel, Kristen Bell, and Josh Gad

Disney is reaching deep into fairytale history with “Frozen,” their adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen,” and maybe that’s why so much of the film feels like filler. A sideplot involving trolls! A villainous neighbor who dances like a buffoon and has a ridiculous comb-over hairdo! Magical powers that are never explained! Personalities for main characters that are never developed! The movie feels slighter than most Disney offerings, and that’s saying something. Sure, “Frozen” looks pretty and it has nice songs and the humor, I’m sure parents will appreciate, is not just of the bathroom variety. But this is not a Disney classic.

“Frozen” focuses on sisters Elsa (voiced by Idina Menzel) and Anna (voiced by Kristen Bell), princesses of the kingdom Arendelle. When they were young, they were inseparable, reveling in Elsa’s power to create snow and ice with her bare hands. But when she accidentally hurts Anna during one play session, her parents decide to separate the two sisters, isolating Elsa so she can better control her powers and wiping Anna’s memory of her sister’s ability. “Control it, don’t feel it,” her father says to Elsa, driving a wedge between the two sisters that lasts for years, even after their parents die at sea.

Every day, Anna asks Elsa, “Do you want to build a snowman?”—she remembers their closeness as children, but doesn’t understand why Elsa won’t give her the time of day now. Sure, they’re locked up in a palace together, but they’re not friends. Instead, as Elsa hides her powers, Anna suffers, too, separated from the outside world in practically every way.

Until it’s time for Elsa’s coronation ceremony, and they open the palace gates, and the kingdom comes to see Elsa become queen, and Anna falls in love with the first guy she sees, Hans (voiced by Santino Fontana), and Elsa is so stressed out by the idea of their super-hasty engagement that she accidentally unleashes her powers. Snow and ice fly everywhere, shocking everyone and causing them to brand Elsa a witch, but she doesn’t help matters by running away and plunging Arendelle into eternal winter. It’s up to Anna to find her and bring her back, a journey she undertakes with ice-seller Kristoff (voiced by Jonathan Groff) and his reindeer best friend, as well as Olaf (voiced by Josh Gad), a snowman Elsa has accidentally brought to life with her powers.

And during the quest they run into those aforementioned trolls, that snow monster, bad guys sent by that comb-over-wielding villain, and the new-and-improved Elsa, who demonstrates her independence by making herself an icy Fortress of Solitude and dressing in a more revealing, slim-fitting dress. Because she is a strong woman and she will show as much of her thighs as she likes, dammit! (I’m being sarcastic, if that wasn’t clear; I think it’s weird that directors Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee, the latter of whom also wrote the film's screenplay, decide that Elsa has to change her outfit into something skimpier to demonstrate her new life. Really? We’re going with the sexualization of a character as her only development here? Mmkay.)

The Snow Queen” story is pretty skimpy, so Buck and Lee had to fill it in somehow, and it’s not that the trolls/snow monster/so forth are bad, per se. They’re just clearly pitstops in the overall plot, ways to jam in another song because there wasn’t anything else to do, like, you know, give either sister a believable personality. If Anna has spent her entire life cooped up in the palace, how is she resourceful enough to save herself and Kristoff from a wolf attack, or from falling off a cliff and dying? Not saying girls can’t be smart, but maybe show her reading a book beforehand or something? Similarly stunted is the presentation of Elsa, who is immediately branded a witch but then, you know, manages to somehow control her powers for good without ever working at it. Things happen in “Frozen” but you don’t see the why or how behind them; you’re just expected to nod along to the spunky songs and be happy about it.

Nevertheless, Menzel has a fantastic voice; the animation is quite beautiful, especially all that glittering snow and ice; and Gad will win you over as the loveable snowman Olaf, who loves warm hugs but doesn’t understand the melting effect such a sign of affection would have on him. The songs aren’t good enough to stick in your head and the characters aren’t good enough to be iconic, but “Frozen” is pleasant enough. May it have a long life on ABC Family, clogging up your weekend TV holiday schedule for years to come.

Review: 3 out of 5 Guttenbergs