Blu-ray Review: Disney's Frozen (2013) - Collector's Edition

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Walt Disney Animation Studio’s best post-Pixar feature film, Frozen employs the same musical theater or pop operatic structure on display in two of their finest female-centric Disney Renaissance era pictures (namely The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast) to craft one of the House of Mouse’s most exquisite animated masterpieces so far.

Written by Wreck It Ralph co-writer Jennifer Lee and directed by Lee alongside Surf’s Up and Tarzan helmer Chris Buck, Frozen is elegantly simple in its bare bones adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen.

While Frozen does incorporate a few of the requisite character archetypes and plot points straight out of Disney’s playbook of choice in the form of Christopher Vogler’s distillation of Joseph Campbell’s mythical hero’s journey, Lee does so carefully.

Breathing new life into the three act quest paradigm, Lee rejects everything we’ve seen too many times before in the Disney filmography to create something that's as reassuringly familiar as it is refreshingly original, which is no small feat indeed.

And it’s precisely this attitude to gamble on something different and modern rather than falling back on more of the same formulaic fare (that didn’t quite work in the recent past) that makes Frozen the studio’s riskiest and most game-changing endeavor to date.

Months before Cate Blanchett’s Oscar winning speech championed more cinematic girl power, the smash success of Frozen reminded studio heads around the world of the old Field of Dreams adage that “if you build it, they will come,” meaning if you provide empowering, quality entertainment for girls and women, they will support it in droves.

Daring to present us with a more realistic approach of the Disneyfied belief in love at first sight, Frozen took its role influencing young girls seriously.

Challenging the fairy tale notion of fireworks in favor of using your head as well as your heart, Frozen advises falling in love with a whole human being rather than a picture-perfect image of a handsome prince.

Additionally, Frozen avoids taking the easy way out by allowing the not one but two strong female (sister) heroines an opportunity to save themselves and each other when push comes to shove.

Arguing that true love is more than merely romantic, throughout the film the women learn that their own loving relationship with each other as sisters and friends is a far greater bond than they ever could have imagined.

While initially plans were made to follow Disney tradition in making only one of the two beautiful princesses good as Idina Menzel’s Elsa, who has the involuntary ability to turn objects into ice based on a strong emotional response, was slated to be the movie’s villain, wisely Lee and the three other scribes with whom she collaborated on the film’s overall plotline changed their mind.

Recognizing the fact that Elsa’s “curse” makes her an allegorical outsider with whom anyone and everyone can instantly relate (from minorities and disabled individuals to anyone who has struggled with being different), suddenly her rallying cry to “Let It Go” in the film’s Oscar winning Best Original Song turns into a musical mantra for all viewers who have ever felt ostracized.

Giving audience members the ability to vicariously let go of failures, mistakes or embarrassments (particularly in this era of social media and lives lived in the cyber bullying public eye) reminds filmgoers how powerfully cathartic and life-changing cinema can be.

Stunning viewers not only with Menzel’s trademark vocal belt that fires through all of your home speakers in this subwoofer rocking Blu-ray but also the surprisingly musically gifted singing debut by Veronica Mars actress Kristen Bell, the film’s songwriters give the pair as well as the rest of the ensemble cast plenty of chances to shine in what has now become a bestselling soundtrack.

A fast-paced and gorgeously produced work which garnered a Best Animated Film Oscar for its talented directors, now with its release on disc and digital download, Frozen takes its rightful place alongside studio greats from Snow White all the way up through Beauty and the Beast.

Boasting a preview of the upcoming Blu-ray Diamond Edition of Sleeping Beauty, Frozen winds up showing feminists just how far the studio has come from churning out high quality yet fully man made animated classics wherein our heroine spoke roughly fifteen lines of dialogue before succumbing to a deep sleep to a picture written and co-directed by a woman with two female leads who are continually in control.

Therefore it’s no wonder that, according to Entertainment Weekly, since its November 2013 release, Princesses Anna and Elsa have become the most popular destinations in the Disney parks.

Drawing bigger crowds than Space Mountain and/or the Matterhorn, tourists regularly wait in line for over two hours simply to meet the women whose animated alter egos may help a new generation of girls “let it go,” as well as encourage them to stand up for themselves and each other instead of simply hoping that someday their prince will come. 

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The Tollbooth

Director: Debra Kirschner

You may want to dub this one Feminist on the Roof but there’s no telling what Fiddler’s Tevye would have made of Sarabeth Cohen (Marla Sokoloff), the young art school graduate struggling against her parent’s adherence to Jewish tradition as she tries to navigate through The Tollbooth.

While Norman Jewison’s landmark musical Fiddler on the Roof served as Tollbooth’s primary inspiration in offering audiences a modern tale of three sisters who “attempt to redefine the parameters of their culture,” as writer/director/producer Debra Kirschner explains on the film’s official website (thetollboothmovie.com), her story is uniquely contemporary and tinged with the filmmaker’s feminist sensibility.

After returning to her Brooklyn nest following college graduation before artistic differences and Sarabeth’s anger towards parental censorship of her politically charged artwork prompts her escape, twenty-two year old self-described “feminist artist” and activist Sarabeth moves in with her medical student sister Becky (Liz Stauber) to weigh her options. While her loyal boyfriend Simon (Rob McElhenney) seems all too willing to compromise his art and settle down in his native Pennsylvania working a regular nine to five job, Sarabeth rails against conformity. Accepting part time work as a cater waitress, she decides to spend more time painting and pounding the gallery pavement, receiving one very memorable critique that while feminist anger is out, cynicism-- as long as one keeps with the times-- never goes out of style.

Meanwhile Sarabeth, who questions, “What is the point of being chosen when you have no choices?” gets frustrated by the old fashioned traditions kept up by her mother Ruthie (Tovah Feldshuh) who seems all too ready to take a submissive attitude towards women’s work, and her quote happy father Isaac (a terrific Ronald Guttman). In keeping with her belief that New York is the capital of attitude, Sarabeth has more than enough attitude to go around and it’s precisely this bratty, unattractive sense-of-entitlement worsened by her obliviousness to respecting the fact that her relatives both paid for her education and our housing her all the while having to put up with her absence of gratitude that made her, in my opinion, the least likable character in the bunch.

Far more fascinating are the two older sisters in the film, namely model daughter Becky who is as devout as her parents but trying to meld her religious upbringing with her newfound realization that she is a lesbian as well as the talented Idina Menzel who plays the married, pregnant Raquel, who seems to be an intriguing blend of her two parents.

Unfortunately, as Sarabeth’s story gets the most screen time, it bogs down Kirschner’s clever set-up by way of the film’s ultimately clichéd coming-of-age paradigm, making it an average success bolstered only by the expert supporting turns. Although it took four years to make its DVD premiere, Kirschner’s high definition video labor of love was a modest success in the east coast film festival circuit, debuting at the Hamptons International Film Festival following its 2004 production.

Enchanted

Director:
Kevin Lima

Forget the Roomba. When it comes to cleaning apartments, would-be fairy tale princess Giselle (Amy Adams) sings the Oscar nominated “Happy Working Song” and her mellifluously melodic voice attracts animal friends from all around who help her wash dishes, scrub floors and make everything zestfully clean in two minutes flat. Although I confess it’s strange, in the films from Walt Disney Studios, the presence of animals that speak, dance, sew and make up a lovely young woman’s entourage is nothing new but it’s a sight mostly found in their beloved feature-length animated works like Cinderella, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and The Little Mermaid. It’s a different proposition altogether when we see live action vermin and mosquitoes flee from New York City’s Central Park only to appear in the posh apartment of divorce attorney Robert Philip (Patrick Dempsey) yet that’s just one of many scenes of inventive hilarity in Disney’s best “princess” film in ages, director Kevin Lima’s Enchanted.

Beginning with a full ten minute animated sequence, the viewer is thrust into familiar territory as we meet the fair animated maiden Giselle (still voiced by Adams) who, on the day of her wedding to Prince Edward (James Marsden) is tricked by Edward’s evil mother, Queen Narissa (Susan Sarandon) into banishment as she plummets from the kingdom of Andalasia only to find herself climbing up from the sewer into modern day Time Square. Convinced that it’s only a matter of time before her prince will come, Giselle sets off looking for help and finds unlikely and mostly unwilling assistance in the form of handsome Robert Philip, who, about to venture into an unromantic engagement with the kind but bland Nancy Tremaine (Idina Menzel) is prodded into rescuing Giselle by his daughter Morgan (Rachel Covey).

Filled with lots of Dinsey in-jokes and references to the history of the animated division of the studio along with giving three actresses who voiced princesses in the past cameos in the film (Jodi Benson’s Ariel, Paige O’Hara’s Belle, and Judy Kuhn’s Pocahontas), the delightful and surprisingly engaging Enchanted managed to hook me soon after the live action sequence began, thanks to the creative script from Bill Kelly who wrote the similarly themed Blast from the Past. However, most of the film's charm comes from the unceasingly talented Adams who, with her variety of excellent performances in the past two years, has the makings of becoming one of our top leading ladies. The film’s soundtrack featuring lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and music by Alan Menken received two additional nominations for original song for the tracks “So Close” and “That’s How You Know” and Enchanted also earned recognition by the Phoenix Film Critics Society Awards as the Best Live Action Family Film of last year.