I started blogging on my birthday a long, long time ago, but as is the case with anything I'm involved in, things got a little befuddled (/befuddling? See what I mean?) Anyway, here's what I wanted to announce: this blog is exactly three years old today! Good thing too, or I'd have put off this post until goodness knows when.
That being said, let the name-calling continue!
Funny, I don't remember Bill Gates having a different background colour. Oh well.
I liked Frozen. I really did. But it didn't quite live up to my expectations considering the way I'd built it up in my head after watching the trailers. It felt incomplete, somehow, and wasn't believable enough for me. It's fine that the movie is very different from The Snow Queen. This isn't a problem with the magic either. Magic is beautiful. Coincidence in films is expected. And it's Disney, so naturally, the characters have American accents no matter where they're from. My problems are a little different . . .
What up with the princesses being under house arrest?
Elsa has her gloves. All she needs to do is keep them on all the time, which must be a pain but has to be more convenient than staying shut up alone for years. It's not even like she takes them off when she's alone, right?
As for Anna, what did she ever do to deserve the "kingdom of isolation"? Yes, she's flighty and wants to marry the first guy she meets after running out the gates, but hey, that may not have happened if she'd been allowed to go out every once in a while.
Hans's plan to take over
Wouldn't it have been so much easier for him to kill Elsa when they captured her instead of bringing her back? Okay, so he thought she could bring back summer, but what about after he found she couldn't?
He could've finished off Anna quite easily too, had he risen to the occasion. But then he never seemed like a very smart guy.
Olaf
Absolutely adorable, but the movie could have done fine without him. You'd think they would focus a little more on someone's ability to bring snow to life than on her ability to turn water to ice. Any semi-functioning refrigerator can do that. Maybe they were worried Mother Nature would be upset at the undermining of her abilities and the implication that she was inferior to some princess/queen.
On a slightly different note, Idina Menzel is awesome! I blame the weirdness of the Oscar performance on the accelerated speed of the song. And on John Travolta. Like everyone else, I'm still wondering what on earth he was smoking.
Olaf had his moments, though, one of my favourites being this part of In Summer:
And of course, the "aww!" moment of the film:
You know what? I like to criticize, but Olaf is cute enough for me to let it gooo . . .
Anna jumping in to save her sister
That's quite some selflessness for a sister you've hardly seen during the last few years. Lucky for her that the magic worked at the right time, but who thinks of running up in front of the guy, turning around, and stopping a sword with her bare hand instead of just tripping up the swordsman from behind or something?
Oh well, the drama's good sometimes.
Weaselton anticlimax
With the way they introduced the Duke of Weselton, you'd think he would be an important character with a sneaky plan to rip the kingdom to pieces. I was terribly disappointed that he didn't have a fantastic evil plan after all. In fact, he did absolutely nothing!
Jonathan Groff
So they got this incredibly marvellous singer to do Kristoff's voice and didn't even give him a song?! Even douchey Hans got one! And no, the reindeer song does not count. Especially when you have someone of that calibre. Come on, people, he's a Broadway performer! He's also the guy who sang both these songs in his first episode of Glee.
There's a lot more wonderful music by him, and I'd love to put up every song here, but unfortunately he's not the primary focus of this post.
All in all, another cute Disney movie with good songs and a plot that could have been quite exceptional but somewhat missed the mark. You know who didn't miss the mark? Merida from Brave. Coolest princess (and princess movie) from recent times.
Brave > Frozen > Tangled
P. S. - Hans, Kristoff, Anna, Sven . . . Hans Christian Anderson. Coincidence? Or am I just trying too hard to make a connection?
