My husband convinced me to go see the new Walt Disney film with him yesterday. It helped that my granddaughter gave it two thumbs up. I knew to get her approval it had to have beautiful princesses and romance, and some cuddly character. She is eight. She will go to see about any hideous movie, but those enhancements make her enthusiastic. "Brave" is not her cup of tea. She prefers the true love in "Tangled" or even "How to Train Your Dragon". "Frozen" is back to the basics in some obvious ways. There are two princesses and therefore two possible romances, a cuddly reindeer, bouncing trolls, a snowman and lots of beautiful ball dresses, a la "Beauty and the Beast". The animation is spectacular, with all the ice and snow and transparency. Loosely based on "The Snow Queen", there is drama, humor and of course the parents die. Classic fairytale stuff. But the writer, Jennifer Lee, is shrewd. There are better messages than usual: don't rush into a relationship with someone who is virtually a stranger, learning about love requires some mistakes and missteps, and true love can be between sisters. These twists help make the movie more acceptable to a mother's modern sensibilities.
The songs are gorgeous in a popsong, Taylor Swift kind of way, sung with passion by Kirsten Bell and Idina Mendel. And embedded in those songs is a theme of loving yourself and finding your own way in a sometimes confusing world.
More radical still: the prince is a bad guy. Whoa! News flash. And the finale kiss that breaks the spell is between sisters. For a child, these changes may go unnoticed, as the lowly iceman ends up with the younger princess, Anna. For them the romance is intact. But the beautiful queen, Elsa, is alone at the end, and happy about learning to control her emotions and keep her heart and kingdom warmed up. She still has her power, the icy one, but she is balanced and comfortable with both sides of herself. Very Jungian and mature.
This film is probably outdoing itself with merchandise sales, and the Disney team is congratulating itself on it's messages and feminist sensibility. It's cynical, but the sheer beauty of the film leaves me enchanted while being annoyed by the obvious manipulation. And the reindeer Sven melted my heart. Not Olaf, the snowman or the trolls, but they had me at the reindeer.
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