Frozen (2013)Hans Christian Andersen (Danish) wrote
168 stories!!!
By any account, that is impressive!
Based on my recollection, these have been made into animation, some form or other,
Little Tiny or Thumbelina (
Warner Bros),
The Little Mermaid (Countless +
Disney), The Emperor’s New Suit (I believe this inspired
Disney's Emperor's New Groove), The Brave Tin Soldier (Part of
Disney's Fantasia 2000).
Frozen is based on his
The Snow Queen.
I'm
NOT familiar with the original tale.
I know Disney took alot of pain when advertising this movie. It is part of Disney's Princess line, and desperate for money after the
The Lone Ranger (2013) debacle, they did not want a loss the lucrative market segment (boys), so frankly when I first saw the trailer for this, I went, huh!!??!!
So is this movie any good?
First of all, after
The Princess and the Frog (2009), I'm not sure why Disney had yet release another hand drawn animation!
Don't get me wrong, their CGI animation had improved leaps and bound after Disney and Pixar merger, I still enjoy and do miss, their hand drawn animations...
Tangled (2010) was great and this is good too!
Before I go on, I would like to go into
The Little Mermaid (1989), a renaissance for Disney so to speak.
In 1988, Disney was seriously thinking about leaving the animation business. Most of their animation release after Walt Disney passed away, made less and less money (Sample of movies during this period are thing like
The Black Cauldron (1985),
The Great Mouse Detective (1986),
Oliver & Company (1988)). Interestingly, the animation team
DID NOT HAVE A SCRIPT for any of those animation features, because that was how they did it, when Walt was around... What they failed to understand was, they did had a script when Walt was around, and the script was in Walt and he over saw the projects...
The Little Mermaid was the Feature Animation departments last hurrah, so to speak, to see if Disney could still make a blockbuster animation, with all of Disney's resource behind it, with a proviso, a physical script had to be develop (the then Disney CEO
Michael Eisner insisted). Apart for that crucial detail that made the movie a HUGE success, another very important ingredient that made that movie successful is the music team
Howard Ashman (lyricist) &
Alan Menken (Music Composer). Both of them are from the musical theater background, and Howard Ashman actually pounded into the Feature Animation team, the music has to carry the story forward and not stop the movie so a song can be done (I'm looking at you Warner [Quest for Camelot (1998)]). I really REALLY thank him for that.
Tangle has an amazing soundtrack and the music is even more interesting in Frozen.
Musically speaking this will probably do for animation soundtrack what
Beauty and the Beast (1991) did for all subsequent animation.
Music team for Frozen is Robert Lopez & Kristen Anderson-Lopez. I don't think many people in Malaysia is familiar with their work. I kind know them because I've actually heard the original soundtrack for the musical theater
Avenue Q!!
Their music can be interpreted from many angle
» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «
There are two princesses in the Castle, and when they are all grown, one of them run all over the castle while singing and part of lyric she sang was "why do we have a ballroom when we don't even have balls..."). I assure you the music team CONSCIOUSLY did this...
This movie actually reminds me of a joke
» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «
Once upon a time, a little bird planned his flight to the south for winter, poorly. Before his reached his southern destination, he was frozen solid and crashed onto a snowed over farmland. A cow notice the frozen bird, walked over to him, gave him a sniffed, turned around and crapped all over the frozen bird. As unpleasant as the cow's crap was, it was warm and it thawed the frozen bird, who was soon warm and happy. Because it was warm and happy, it started to sing, which attracted the attention of a cat. The cat walk over, dug the bird out of the crap and ate it. The moral of the story, people who give you crap, is not necessary your enemy, people who dig you out of crap, is not necessary your friend. And when you are warm and happy... keep you mouth shut...
So, good animation
Sorry for the long review
Enjoy the movie
My Two Sen
This post has been edited by Mov_freak: Dec 4 2013, 11:16 PM