Well, I finally saw Frozen.
After . . .
“Frozen is the most Christian movie Disney has ever made! Anna IS Jesus. Get it?”
No, wait.
I had to see for myself. Annnnnnd . . .
It’s neither.
It’s not obviously promoting a gay lifestyle, nor is it a Christian allegory. It’s just not a particularly good movie.
Mostly, it’s just not very well written. Flipping a charming, caring character from good to evil like the flip of a switch with zero foreshadowing or motivation isn’t “a twist” it’s “bad writing.”
And Elsa’s big musical number is VERY Jessica Simpson-esque somehow. It weirded me out.
I’ve heard people praising it for championing sisterly love over romantic love. Sure, I guess it does that. But it does it within the context of a movie that doesn’t live up to its potential. (And has exactly nothing to do with The Snow Queen, by the way. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Not even reminiscent of Hans Christian Andersen’s story, which DOES have Christian themes.)
Frozen bugged me because it didn’t know what kind of movie it was. It felt like it was written as a screenwriting class group project, and they just shuffled everyone’s pages together and shot the thing. The subject matter is very somber, but then, every so often, someone bursts into a very peppy musical number.
It feels very derivative of Tangled, which I really enjoyed. Right down to the dog-horse. Only this time it’s a dog-reindeer.
That said, it’s a very pretty movie, and the snowman is funny. His big musical number is brilliant. Of the seven instances that post claims makes Frozen so very progressive, I’d say they’re all either quite a stretch, or not actually particularly progressive. I don’t know if the filmmakers intended the shopkeeper to be gay, but he’s a minor character and that sauna shot is literally a second. If they meant it to be a commentary they were huge wusses about it.
Bottom line for me: confused, not well written, too much hip action and hair flipping in musical numbers, a flawed understanding of human nature, but not unacceptable for viewing.
And don’t even get me started on the “You can’t marry a man you just met” thing. Oops, too late, I wrote a whole post about it.
