No, he didn't like it

We went off to see Frozen yesterday, and I for one came away completely underwhelmed.

The last couple of the so-called Disney "princess"movies - The Princess and the Frog and Tangled - were great in all respects.  In Tangled in particular, the combination of the beauty of the animation and music in a key scene nearly brought me to tears; but both movies made a real effort in the slapstick-y style of the humour to appeal to boys as well as girls.

Frozen is a fizzle is any way you care to compare it.   The music is a mess in all respects - it starts off sounding awfully like something from the Lion King (for no discernible reason), then has an all male chorus song with lyrics I couldn't decipher, and the "hit"tune is of the pretty generic Broadway pop-ish style that is quite forgettable (it reminded me of the style of a couple of the songs I have heard from Wicked.)  

The computer animation has received lots of praise, but I have to say that when you get to this level of photo realism, the characters start to look at bit distractingly like actual toys:  it's as if you were watching Ken and Barbie come to life, which is OK in a Toy Story movie, but not so much in one where they are meant to be people.   I have noticed this a bit before in other computer animated movies, but it bothered me particularly in this one for some reason.

The biggest problem is with the story and characters - the title character is pretty resolutely annoying throughout the whole thing; the sympathetic male lead is underwritten; and it really is (to my mind) the most relentlessly girl oriented Disney film since (probably) the Little Mermaid, but without the fantastically catchy hit song.   And, it's just not very funny or witty. 

So why has it been a substantially bigger box office success than Tangled?   (Box Office Mojo shows US box office of $300 million already; Tangled had only $200 million.)  I have absolutely no idea.  

Both movies seem to have the same high scores on Rotten Tomatoes, and I was surprised to see that Anthony Lane from the New Yorker was listed as liking Frozen.   But this is an example of the sometimes dubious tallying of Rotten Tomatoes, as when you go read his actual review he hardly gave it a strong endorsement:

In short, where is our villain? Idina Menzel, who voices Elsa, played the green-faced lead in “Wicked,” on Broadway, so everything is set for vengeance and spite, but nothing happens. True, Elsa starts waltzing around in a long skirt slashed to the thigh, which is hot stuff for Disney, but, still, Cruella de Vil would skin her alive.

The other sister is Anna (Kristen Bell), who follows on from Belle, in “Beauty and the Beast,” and Rapunzel, in “Tangled,” being spunky and reckless, with a hint of tomboy, though retaining her capacity to swoon if anything princely shows up. Most of the men, by contrast, look milky and mild, with a hint of tomgirl, and, once a chatting snowman is introduced, presumably to keep your toddlers satisfied, much of the movie turns to slush. Disney has thus arrived at a mirror image of its earlier self: the seriously bad guys and the top-grade sidekicks—the Shere Khans and the Baloos—are now a melting memory, while the chronic simperers, like Cinderella, have been superseded by tough dames. As Anna sings, “For years I’ve roamed these empty halls, / Why have a ballroom with no balls?” Go get ’em, sister. 

 He's still the wittiest reviewer around (and that also explains the reminder of Wicked from the songs.)

My negative reaction to the movie caused some interesting family revelations - both my wife and daughter rated it as better than Tangled or Princess and the Frog - my wife saying she particularly didn't like the latter.  I only recalled her saying she quite liked the music from it,  and in fact I bought her the CD.   (My daughter and son both like the Randy Newman jazzy style of the music, actually.)  I kept wanting to explain last night why I thought this movie was crook - the family kept telling me to stop going on about it, but fortunately there is always this outlet, which I can always imagine someone has read to this point, even if no one actually got past the first line. 

The other big, intensely girl orientated animation by Disney/Pixar, Brave, was also a dud.   It seems to me someone at Disney has suddenly forgotten how to make them.