Forget the eight forgettable tunes, and Disney’s “Frozen” finds a pleasant home in the ranks of Disney’s animated “princess” musicals. The songs may place it closer to “Tangled” than “The Little Mermaid,” but there’s wit and whimsy in this 53rd Disney cartoon, a distant cousin of Hans Christian Andersen’s classic fairytale “The Snow Queen.”
Broadway star Idina Menzel voices Elsa, the girl with the gift of ice about her, cursed with an X-Men-like ability to freeze things. It’s great for entertaining her baby sister.
“Do the magic, do the magic!” little Anna insists. Until it all goes wrong.
Which is why Elsa can’t play with Anna anymore, even after Anna grows up to have the voice of Kristen Bell.
Elsa’s powers reach the point where she’s a danger to their kingdom of Arendel. But fleeing to the North Mountain won’t help, and Anna sets her mind to venturing out to find this Snow Queen, bringing her home and lifting the curse. Because “only an act of true love can lift the curse.”
Bell plays Anna as a girl who blurts, giving every line reading a cute teenage-girl/Christopher Walken cadence, especially “Wait, WHAT?” Bell also sings, for those who don’t know her background, and more than holds her own with the formidable Menzel (“Wicked,” “Enchanted”).
A moving montage early in the film shows Anna’s enduring connection to Elsa, even after they’re separated because of Elsa’s dangerous powers. It’s set as a duet, “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?”
Josh Gad is an enchanted, chatty snowman named Olaf who “loves warm hugs” and who sings an ode to a season he’ll never know, “In Summer.”
“Forgettable” may be too harsh a label to slap on the tunes by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez (“Winnie the Pooh,” with “Avenue Q” and “Book of Mormon” connections), though it’ll take the entire Disney indoctrination machine to make even the best songs — “For the First Time in Forever,” “Let it Go” — stick in the Disney songbook.
But the co-directors, “Surf’s Up” vet Chris Buck and “Wreck-It Ralph” writer Jennifer Lee, make sure the sight gags work and the jokes — cracks about yellow snow and the like — land laughs.
And the magical 3-D production design will make you forget all about those earlier movies about the prehistoric squirrel and his woolly mammoth pals.
