Frozen

Disney's newest animation, Frozen, is a wonderful snowy delight, filled with brilliant musical numbers, fantastic voice acting and a refreshingly new storyline with entertaining characters. Frozen describes two sisters (Elsa and Anna), in which Elsa encompasses the power of ice -and although is warned about its dangerous powers - accidentally sets an eternal winter on the kingdom's land. The story then shifts towards Anna's journey towards convincing her sister to free the land from this 'winter'.

From the opening chanting number, there was no doubt that this film would have just utterly great musical numbers. With songs written by Book of Mormon's Bobby Lopez, Disney has brought back the musical animations that we all grew up with. The songs, stemming from 'Do you want to build a snowman?' to 'Let it Go', are memorable, catchy and just fantastic all-round numbers. It had a very Broadway feel to it, and I absolutely adored that. I found myself looking forward to more songs and wishing for more by the end - the harmonies were beautiful and made the film a whole notch more entertaining. Moreover, the voice acting is very impressive - with fantastic singing (necessary for the musical numbers). Frozen has certainly benefited from the the more Broadway/theatre community actors from Idina Menzel (Elsa), Josh Gad (Olaf), Jonathan Groff (Kristoff) and Santino Fontana (Hans), with the biggest name within the cast being of Veronica Mars' Kristen Bell.

The animation is just gorgeously and visually stunning; something I found myself admiring was just the intricacy and detail of the snow being whistled and driven by the wind. Incredibly simple, but it's the small things. The new direction Disney has taken, elevating the power of female relationships - is also just fantastic to see. From the solitary power of mother and daughter relationship explored in Pixar/Disney's Brave, to the well-handled sisterhood in this year's Frozen - this time, with a satiric twist of the traditional 'love' concept -- it marks a something of a truly refreshing achievement. Although it disappointedly falls for a predictable conclusion, the story arc is so good with characters that are well developed, from the antagonist of the story (The 'Ice Queen') to the lovable and comical Olaf the snowman - that it becomes easy to ignore Disney's sugar-coated repetitive message of 'true love conquers all'.

Frozen is a cracking, marvelous combination of comedic moments, catchy musical numbers, and heartfelt moments - adjoining to form what is a magically entertaining and unforgettable Disney film.

Rating: 4.5/5