 |
| A north-american rock chick |
Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen" is here transmogrified to a tale of two sisters, one fun-loving and feisty (Anna) and the elder (Elsa) a possessor of dangerous powers: frightened, introverted and closed up. Elsa, at her coronation as queen, is scared into lashing out and the kingdom freezes. The new queen flees into the arctic wilderness where she magicks up an ice palace: free at last! Feisty Anna follows to persuade her to .. well, unfreeze stuff.
Interspersed we have a dubious prince, a brave-hearted lunk and a cutesy magic snowman (the lunk has a lunky reindeer - see below). The gags are good, the songs fun and the 3D CGI scenery awesome.
So lots of fun for children of all ages, as they say, and my only criticism is that the bad guy should have been subtly telegraphed as such from the very beginning. You can't have leading characters suddenly changing their character without warning or indication - it confuses the children.
 |
| A wise reindeer |
 |
| Princess and ice queen |
I was particularly impressed by the near-reality of the animation. I haven't been keeping track so I guess the trend is entirely obvious to most film-goers, but (banal thought) this stuff is going to be indistinguishable from real actors pretty soon.
Both Clare and myself noticed that as the 3D big freeze spread like a nuclear shockwave on the screen, we felt visceral shivers in the cinema. This stuff really works!
