So, I finally watched Frozen.
I know. I know. Everyone else watched it last year. And the year before. And they knew the words to “Let It Go” a long time before I even knew who Olaf was. But the thing is, last year, when Frozen was out in the theaters, we did not go see it because we didn’t really have a lot of money at the time, and when I took my oldest son to the movies that winter, he wanted to see The Lego Movie, and not Frozen. So we did not see Frozen.
But.
The peer pressure mounted. All of my friends had seen Frozen. There were multiple discussions about why I hadn’t seen it yet. And then one day, my friend Crystal was like, “OMG ANNA IS TOTALLY ANABEL.”
And I had to respond with, “Um…I haven’t seen Frozen.”
So then it became an inevitability, because I was curious as to how a Disney Princess could be like my heroine.
Also, I noticed that a lot of my friends had been driven crazy by this movie. Behold the artwork of my dear friend (and the cover artist of Anabel Divided) Chad Thomas Johnston:
This year I started a new tradition with my boys: On December 1, they got gifts. They were given a box with Christmas pajamas, an Advent Calendar, and a movie apiece. The oldest got A Muppet Christmas Carol, Middle Boy got Frozen, and the Baby got Mickey’s Christmas DVDs. I waited for a morning where we weren’t doing anything, and we all wore pajamas and watched Frozen.
And.
I liked the movie. I mean, I enjoyed it. The music especially was catchy, and I finally got to see the glory that was Adele Dazeem singing “Let It Go.” I have also started annoying my husband by singing, “Do You Wanna Get Chipotle?” to him.
But there were a few things that I really didn’t like.
For instance..
- One of the things that Disney movies in particular do that makes me really mad is the way they portray Parent/Child relationships. They decided to conceal Elsa’s powers from Anna, a situation that could have very well caused Anna to die. Elsa was told to “conceal, don’t feel”, meaning that she could not be her true self. THIS BOTHERS ME ON SO MANY LEVELS. I feel like Disney movies are one of the main reasons why children feel like they can’t go to their parents with issues. The way Elsa and Anna’s parents dealt with Elsa’s powers was totally inappropriate. They made their daughter feel like a freak and neglected to provide her with any coping strategies. They endangered the life of their other daughter by using a troll to erase her memory so she wouldn’t remember that time Elsa almost killed her. I mean. Come on.
- THE PLOT HOLES. I mean, there were so many that I could hardly keep up with them. Are we really expected to believe that Elsa just sat in her room for YEARS? While that would explain her lack of freckles, it seems implausible to me. Also, if Elsa was just chillin’ in her crib (pun intended), who ran the kingdom for the three years between the death of their parents and the coronation? Also, Elsa was born with her snow powers curse. How had she not frozen them all when she was a toddler and really couldn’t control her powers? You know that girl must have had some wicked tantrums.
- I sort of thought that Elsa was going to be more of a main character. The movie was really about Anna. And that was cool, I loved Anna. I thought she was awesome. But I felt like Elsa was kind of flat, and I realize that Disney movies don’t give you a lot of time to develop everyone, but…maybe the real problem was there were too many characters. Hans, Kristoff, Elsa–heck, I felt Olaf was more well-developed than Elsa.
But all of my reservations aside, I enjoyed the movie. I thought Olaf was adorable (my boys wound up getting a stuffed Olaf for Christmas) and I was pleased to see that Middle Boy had found a movie he enjoyed that wasn’t Cars. Because I can recite that one line by line. Also, I liked the music, and I am glad we decided to add it to our collection.
So I guess I’ll just have to get past my beef and, ahem, let it go.