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quarter_to_fiveSaw Frozen with my sister, who is an animator and so a particular mix of extremely tolerant and incredibly nitpicky when it comes to animated movies. We did not love it much at all. It's not terrible, but it's quite messy, somewhat lazy and awfully oddly paced.
I quite like the idea of the story, but the execution felt pretty off. The writing and dialogue was far too transparent and on the nose about the characters issues, but they also stayed kind of limp-wristed and incoherent at the same time. Big emotional moments came when they weren't called for and hadn't been setup, stuff that should have been significant kind of rolled by the by.
Like, why is Elsa running off to ice castle to liberate herself? We understand that she's been all locked up and repressed, but how is freedom building another castle to hang out at all alone? We just hadn't spent enough time with Elsa up to that point to see why that would be liberating to her. There's no sense that she's just been dying to use her powers (her never explained, never wondered at, powers) or anything. And why is a sexy ice-dress and makeup a thing? There's no sense that that kind of expression of femininity is a vector of her repression. None of it is wrong, per se, it just doesn't add up into anything coherent.
And what was with the songs? They seemed stuck in all the wrong spots, talking about all the less important, less interesting things. Oh, and none of them were catchy. The resolution at the end was way too easy, and some things that should have been either convincing or moreclearly parodic (like Anna's romance with Hans) just felt like lazy writing. (To the movie's, and my sister's, everlasting credit, we kept wondering why the hell Hans was in charge. Were there literally no other people in the kingdom save a dude the queens sister had been on one date with? Then sis said "You know, if George RR Martin was writing this, it would all be a clever coup on Hans' part.")
Also, the snowman was heartbreaking. I guess the humor there was supposed to be how goofy a snowman who dreams about tropical beach vacations is, but we kept laughing in uncomfortable horror at how incredibly cruel and inappropriate this was. He kept having these hilarious - but totally bizarre - existential crisis moments. Just...I can't even...some kind of cat GIF is the only thing that can express how I feel about that.
Finally visuals were just blah. The designs, the compositions, the level of detail - none of it was particularly appealing (I think we agreed we liked the sweater on the guy with the sweater.) Compared to how striking and beautiful the landscapes in, say, Brave were, this looked like the background in a particularly generic video game, and from a few years ago at that.
I mean, I didn't hate it, but it seemed poorly put together and I don't think I would have gotten to the end of it without someone there to snark at it with me. Oh well.
I quite like the idea of the story, but the execution felt pretty off. The writing and dialogue was far too transparent and on the nose about the characters issues, but they also stayed kind of limp-wristed and incoherent at the same time. Big emotional moments came when they weren't called for and hadn't been setup, stuff that should have been significant kind of rolled by the by.
Like, why is Elsa running off to ice castle to liberate herself? We understand that she's been all locked up and repressed, but how is freedom building another castle to hang out at all alone? We just hadn't spent enough time with Elsa up to that point to see why that would be liberating to her. There's no sense that she's just been dying to use her powers (her never explained, never wondered at, powers) or anything. And why is a sexy ice-dress and makeup a thing? There's no sense that that kind of expression of femininity is a vector of her repression. None of it is wrong, per se, it just doesn't add up into anything coherent.
And what was with the songs? They seemed stuck in all the wrong spots, talking about all the less important, less interesting things. Oh, and none of them were catchy. The resolution at the end was way too easy, and some things that should have been either convincing or moreclearly parodic (like Anna's romance with Hans) just felt like lazy writing. (To the movie's, and my sister's, everlasting credit, we kept wondering why the hell Hans was in charge. Were there literally no other people in the kingdom save a dude the queens sister had been on one date with? Then sis said "You know, if George RR Martin was writing this, it would all be a clever coup on Hans' part.")
Also, the snowman was heartbreaking. I guess the humor there was supposed to be how goofy a snowman who dreams about tropical beach vacations is, but we kept laughing in uncomfortable horror at how incredibly cruel and inappropriate this was. He kept having these hilarious - but totally bizarre - existential crisis moments. Just...I can't even...some kind of cat GIF is the only thing that can express how I feel about that.
Finally visuals were just blah. The designs, the compositions, the level of detail - none of it was particularly appealing (I think we agreed we liked the sweater on the guy with the sweater.) Compared to how striking and beautiful the landscapes in, say, Brave were, this looked like the background in a particularly generic video game, and from a few years ago at that.
I mean, I didn't hate it, but it seemed poorly put together and I don't think I would have gotten to the end of it without someone there to snark at it with me. Oh well.
