My ringette-playin' daughter and I
found ourselves with seven hours' time to kill between tournament
games last weekend, so we hoofed it to a movieplex to see what we
could see. Pickings were slim, as you are probably aware, made all
the moreso by some necessary preconditions: my daughter had to stay
in a competitive frame of mind, so no downers; also, nothing so
intense as to distract from the day at hand; funny is good,
especially if it accompanies uplift.
The only movie to meet these criteria,
of course, was Disney's Fozen.
I
didn't hold out much hope for the experience — we'd seen Brave
and were underwhelmed. But I glanced at the 16-year-old beside me and
realized that my days of seeing anything like this with her, prior to
her introducing children of her own to the world, were just about at
a close. So I squared my shoulders, swiped the plastic and marched
into the theatre.
I
liked it — we
liked it. But, against all odds, I
liked
it.
John
Lasseter's name
came up early, which did nothing to inspire confidence. Considering
what a paint-by-numbers outfit Pixar has become, it struck me as
unlikely that Lasseter had anything left up his Hawaiian
shirt-sleeves to reinvigorate Disney.
The
introductory Mickey Mouse short set me straight, pretty quickly. It
hits all the surreal notes that the Steamboat
Willy-era
rodent did, with exactly the right wacky digital flourishes to bring
it all into the here-and-now. It's fun, and it's funny — for fun's
sake — with none of the moral freight that's come with the recent
Pixar shorts.
Plenty
of time for moral freight in the feature, of course. It's Disney, so
Lessons Must Be Learned, hopefully with a lot of goofy (sic) sugar to
help the medicine go down.
Frozen
delivers
as expected, catching me off-guard at many of its most common
signature flourishes. Music, for instance — the movie is lousy with
it, clearly setting itself up for the stages of Broadway and your
local elementary school. Every time the strings swept in to signify
another belt-busting number, my heart sank a little, only to get
roused up to the base of my throat, making swallowing difficult. So
cheesy. So spot-on.
It
helps that I'm the father of daughters, of course. Watching two
sisters struggle with expressing the fierceness of their love for
each other, without raising undue expectations, well . . . you've got
me choking up just typing that cheap summary statement.
But
I think the real brilliance in this film is the way Disney/Lasseter
acknowledge both the stupidity and even perniciousness of the usual
Disney Animation Tropes, before finally committing to their
undeniable appeal. “True Love At First Sight” — what a crock!
What a caper! What fun!
Throw
in an enchanted snowman who likes warm hugs and can't wait to see his
first summer, and you've got a movie I don't in the least begrudge
seeing more than once.
From
Disney. And Lasseter. Whodathunkit?
(Oh,
and we won the game.)
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