"FROZEN" : Gave me Hypothermia

This review comes more than 2 months after Frozen was released to suspiciously overeffusive critical acclaim and box office records.

Usually when a movie garners too much extreme attention, I let things simmer down so that I can have the most objective and positive experience as possible. Such was the case with Frozen.

Supposedly, the story was all about "girl-power". I suppose it's pointless to ask why a demographic of 5-10 year olds need a feminist heroine, but I digress. Speaking of gender imbalance, Disney has portrayed surprisingly few male heroes with their own titles-exceptions being "Hercules". But again, I digress.

The story seemed simple enough from the trailers.

Once upon a time a beautiful ice princess lived in a beautiful castle. One day a handsome prince arrived and...happily ever after. Unfortunately, Disney chose a discombobulated, circuitous route of getting to the "happily ever after" that's not actually that happy. The ice princess never actually experiences romantic love. She's sort of a spinster. She actually kills two men. And she's not that good looking either and doesn't have a particularly catching trademark Disney song. But her sister (yea, there's a sister and she's not evil or very interesting) gets the guy, who's not a prince. Well, her first engagement was to a prince, but it didn't work out (he was evil) but her second relationship did! I kid you not,  this is the real story. It reads more like an animated version of "When Harry Met Sally" than a movie appropriate for families.

The girl was not supposed to use her powers (not sure why). She was the only one in the royal family with powers. After making a cool ice and snow playground for herself and her sister she accidentally pierced her sister's mind with snow. The king and queen (later conveniently killed off at sea) took her to the stone/troll people where a troll witchdoctor helped out. It was an accident for crying out loud!

The story was broken from the first scene and continued splintering for the rest of the movie. How a critic could ignore the most basic element of a movie or even praise a movie despite a confusing and poorly written story does a tremendous disservice to the movie going public and encourages studios that sociopathic feminist driven dramas are acceptable. They are not, especially for $12/ticket.

There are a string of open-ended storylines as if the writers wanted to empower the audience to make up our own stories, which is what the major theme of the movie was. It's actually not that empowering or fun to pay to see an animated movie and then leave it feeling unresolved.


As a girl, I loved Cinderella and Snow White. I thought it would be cool to be able to use magic to make my own clothes. I never believed the prince hindered or domesticized the dreams of the heroine. Cinderella's relatives ended up poor and the Wicked Queen in Snow White got killed-what could be more just than that?

I had thought the movie was going to be about an ice princess saving the world, not about her feeling awkward and being sort of indifferent and cruel. She didn't really use her ice power for anything really cool (like Frozo in The Incredibles) except to build herself an isolating ice fortress and transform her elegant queen's gown into a slutty evening gown with a thigh high split. Oh yeah, and she killed those two guys with ice and sent a raging Abominable Snowman after her own sister.


I won't say anymore because that weird feeling- the one that comes when you gulp a scoop of ice cream too fast and your entire tongue, trachea, and esophagus feel stunned- is starting to settle in again.

If Frozen's point was to make me feel stronger as a woman it failed. It only made me feel....cold.