HUB Movie Review: Frozen

Story posted March 19, 2014 in CommRadio by Sofia Westin

Get ready because “For the first time in forever” (or ever, for that matter), not one, but two Disney princesses will appear in one movie: sisters Elsa and Anna. But don’t worry; they’re not trying to kill each other to get the throne like male brothers do a la The Lion King and Game of Thrones.

Frozen is about these two sisters, one of whom has ice powers. This ice princess Elsa is very scared of her powers, because she cannot control them (until she needs to build herself a huge, gorgeous ice castle). So what does she decide to do? She “accidentally” casts an ice age on her kingdom and runs away to the mountains. Now, it is up to her sister, Anna, to make her remove the snow and bring back summer.

By Anna’s side: an ice-picking man, a reindeer and a talking snowman. Let’s do this.

As this is Disney, you can expect lots of singing and drama and magic and plot twists and things that go unexplained, women with tiny waists and über-manly men with nice hair. This is Disney.

Oh, and once you watch this movie, you will finally understand where “Do you want to build a snowman?” comes from because your friends keep singing it to you (I’ve been there).

This movie was the biggest thing since Avatar. It was released in November and it is still in theaters. Avatar was in theaters for 34 weeks, Frozen has been in theaters 16, so it’s basically halfway there.

The movie was hailed and adjectives like “heartwarming” (that’s too bad for Olaf) and “fantastic” were used. IMDb users gave it 8.0, Metacritic 74, and RottenTomatoes top critics gave it 87. It won two Oscars: one for best original song “Let it Go” (sung by Adele Dazeem, uh I mean Idina Menzel) and best animated picture.

On the Penn State Scale...
1—when Penn State loses a game,
2—an 8 a.m class (which are awful),
3—a canceled 8 a.m class,
4— free textbooks,
and 5—free Creamery ice cream for a whole year,

Based on others reviews, I would give it a 4, but because I am basing it on my view, I give it a 2. Sure, it was beautiful and cute. But for me, none of the songs really stuck with me, none of the characters stuck with me, there was no real villain, and too many things went unexplained (I’m sorry, I can’t just go with the flow).

My film-major friend actually made a point which I agree with. She said something like this: the movie is confused about who the protagonist is. The protagonist is the character who undergoes the most change. You see the movie from that character’s point of view. Elsa changes the most, but the movie is from Anna’s perspective.

Fail.

I’m going to trust the film major on this one.

I was, however, very happy with the message that was directed towards women and girls in general. And Olaf just melted my heart. Some will hate him, some will love him. You choose!

For those of you who have seen Frozen already and want an honest trailer about the movie, check out this hilarious video from Screen Junkies. And yes, everything is true, honest. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zb5IH57SorQ

Sofia Westin is a freshman majoring in broadcast journalism. To contact her, email sgw5090@psu.edu.