Out of all the animation studios out there, the only studio that can make perfect fairy tale movie is Walt Disney Animation Studios. Ever since making "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" in 1937, they have crafted fantastic movies with some great songs, beautiful animation, and memorable characters. Every other studio out there, including former Disney animator Don Blush, has tried to copy Disney's style and all have been very unsuccessful. If you want proof that Disney is the only studio that can do fairy tales well, then you should definitely watch "Frozen". Inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's famous tale "The Snow Queen", "Frozen" embodies its material with a very good story, gorgeous animation, funny characters, and songs so memorable that you might have a very hard time trying to get them out of your head. Here's why I think the film works, mainly because the story is really easy to explain.
Two princesses, Anna (Kristen Bell) and Elsa (Idina Menzel) live in a Scandinavian kingdom known as Arendelle. Elsa possesses the power to make snow and ice though is unable to control it which forces the kingdom to close its gates to the outside world and keep it a secret from Anna. Years pass and Elsa is crowned Queen of Arendelle and is forced to open the gates to the outside world. However, after an incident with Anna, Elsa accidentally turns Arendelle's summer into a cold winter with her powers and isolates herself on top of a mountain. Hoping to bring her sister back, Anna entrusts the help of an ice maker named Kristoff (Jonathan Groff), his reindeer Sven and a magic snowman made by Elsa named Olaf (Josh Gad).
I really loved how the film decided to take a new approach to the Snow Queen story rather than actually attempting to do a full-on adaptation. Disney has attempted to do an adaptation of the story for decades and most attempts have failed to materialize. It's a very simple story and like I mentioned before it's very easy to explain. Writer Jennifer Lee, who also wrote "Wreck-It Ralph", knew how to write the characters perfectly without making them feel weak or sexist. As for the animation, it's possibly some of Disney's best computer animation. The designs of the snow and ice are beautiful which lead to the film having some breathtaking backgrounds and eye-popping colors. The characters are also a lot of fun. Anna's bubbly personality is perfectly matched with Kristen Bell's voice and I'm actually very surprised how well she can sing. I also really liked how they didn't make Elsa the villain of the story which could have been a lazily written character and pretty cliche. They even managed to give Olaf a few laughs without making him annoying or irritating. And now, let's talk about the songs. They could easily rank as some of Disney's best due to how memorable they are. The songwriters who also worked the musical "The Book of Mormon" have easily produced some of Disney's best songs in years. They might be up there with the songs written by Alan Menken. As far as flaws, the film could have been a lot funnier. I remember laughing a lot during "Tangled", but not a lot during this. Don't get me wrong, it had some good laughs, but I feel there could have been more. Also, some of the song numbers could be cut out. There was this one number where I kept thinking to myself "what was the point of this?" However, there are just nitpicks.
"Frozen" is really a lot of fun with a really good story, breathtaking animation, funny characters, and songs that I can easily consider them an earworm. I feel that Disney is really starting to come back and is capturing the magic they had back in the '90s. I hope they can continue to do so because if there's something that this movie proves, it's that Disney is still the best animation studio in the world.
