Frozen Review

There are few film presences better known in the world than Disney.  For most of us Disney’s films are our first exposure to the movies and many of the conventions that make a Disney film become ingrained in us from the hardcore cinephile to the casual movie goer.  However, they also are aware of the criticism Disney has faced over the years, in particular not having the most progressive idea of women.  Even in many of their great films, the women were often damsels in distress who needed to be rescued by men.  Their Pixar division also received complaints for not having a female lead until Brave.   Certainly these issues are at the forefront of Disney’s latest feature Frozen, a loose musical retelling of the Snow Queen fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen.  Frozen confronts many of the clichés that have made Disney films a cultural force, while being a worthy addition to their canon.

In this version, future Snow Queen Elsa (voiced as an adult by Idina Menzel) isolates herself from her younger sister Anna (voiced as an adult by Kristen Bell) after a childhood accident involving Elsa’s powers.  This isolation lasts until Elsa’s coronation, where her powers emerge and get out of control, plunging their kingdom in a perpetual winter.  She heads into the woods in exile while Anna heads out to find her, encountering some help via outdoorsman Kristoff (voiced by Jonathan Groff), his reindeer and a snowman Elsa creates named Olaf (voiced by Josh Gad).

The film deserves a lot of praise for how they treat the female characters.  This is the first feature film from Disney to have a woman (Jennifer Lee, who also scripted) credited as a director.  Anna and Elsa aren’t defined by love interests, but rather the complicated relationship between themselves, which is so much more interesting.  Elsa and her parents fear her power and hide herself away from the rest of the world because they think that they won’t understand, and Anna finds the reclusive nature of being the Snow Queen’s sister lonely and is desperate for attention and to be a part of her sister’s life or anyone else’s for that matter.  It’s another in the very welcome post-Twilight trend of seeing more strong female characters to younger audiences who need to see them.  We’re going to need a whole lot to undo the damage Bella did.

Like the well-developed characters, you can definitely see Disney Animation CCO John Lasseter bringing the Pixar touch to elevate the regular Disney movies.  Along with last year’s Wreck-It Ralph, the quality of these films is comparable to their Pixar counterparts and in some cases, surpasses them.  The visuals look superb, and the 3D actually adds something to the film.  It is basically a computer animated answer to a lot of the Disney renaissance films from the late 80s/early 90s.

They also make the smart decision of casting actors with musical theater experience, but as a musical, the film wavers a little.  The songs are loaded more in the first two acts, and there’s a good chunk toward the end where they don’t sing at all.  Certainly it’s okay to forgo singing in favor of the action going on screen, but it feels like the songs were on the lower list of priorities, resulting in some songs that are simply okay.  There are exceptions: Olaf’s “In Summer” is a nice silly break and of course Elsa’s “Let It Go” is the big powerful song Idina Menzel will no doubt be belting at next year’s Oscar ceremony.

On the surface, Frozen appears like many typical Disney films based on fairy tales, especially the musical ones.  The filmmakers are certainly aware of those clichés and they question and have fun with them in a way that isn’t contemptuous of the material.  Instead, it revitalizes this type of storytelling for the next generation of film fans and reenergized the seasoned viewers who want to see something new.  That type of storytelling is what has kept Disney relevant all these years, and will certainly aid in keeping it that way for years to come.

As much as I enjoyed the film, the short that played before was the best part.  Get a Horse! begins like an old Mickey Mouse short (down to using archived recordings for some of the dialogue), but quickly expands into some Sherlock Jr.-esque breaking of the fourth wall and playing with the conventions of filmmaking, fully utilizing the 3D for seven dazzling minutes.  Like the people behind the technical side of Gravity, the producers of this short should get their Oscar speeches ready.

Frozen Grade: B+

Get a Horse! Grade: A

Miscellaneous notes:

-Man, the trailers for this, while I appreciate them not giving much away, gave off an Ice Age vibe I was going to avoid had all the good reviews not convinced me to give it a chance.

-There must have been more with Kristoff’s backstory that got cut, right?  They got the first song of the film but aside from him and Sven we never see the other Ice farmers again.

-Also thought the initial set up of the story, especially how the trolls connected to it, could’ve used a little more development.

-Between his work here and in Wreck-It Ralph, is it too early to call Alan Tudyk the John Ratzenberger of Disney Studios films?

(HERE BE SPOILERS)

-I liked how they called out Anna for getting engaged to Prince Hans the day they met.  Having characters fall in love that quickly is usually a problem with these kinds of movies, although it is motivated by Anna’s desire for human connection and Hans’ duplicity.

-Yeah, I fell for Hans being a good guy and seeing it twice I feel like it’s a twist they earned.  It also played off making the obvious villain the Duke of Weaselton just a shady character and not someone outright evil.

-I love that it was the true love between sisters that saved Anna.  It was true to the story and a refreshing twist on it always being some guy’s love that breaks these curses.  Don’t get me wrong, Kristoff is a nice guy and he and Anna are a good couple, but the story is about Anna and Elsa first.

6 Things I Learned Doing Nanowrimo

I was one of 315,904 participants in National Novel Writing Month or Nanowrimo.  The basic goal of the month is to generate a first draft of a story consisting of 50,000 words or more (roughly 1667 words a day).  It can be a grueling marathon, one that drains your mental facilities as you try to figure out what to do next with your work.  I have done it the last two years and somehow come out victorious both times.  It’s not easy, so here are a few things I’ve learned that hopefully aspiring writers can consider getting ready during the next 11 months.

1.       You Will Exhaust Your Initial Ideas Early, and That’s Okay.

Going in you may think you have all of the ideas for your novel knocking around in your head and all you have to do is put it to paper.  When I did Nanowrimo last year I had been thinking of my story idea for the prior two and a half years.  Before I sound like I was super prepared, I didn’t get that far.  In fact I hit the wall hard sometime around the end of week two both years.  That’s okay.  Even a 200-300 page novel is going to have more than you can keep going in your brain at the same time.

Don’t let that discourage you.  Getting those ideas out is good because it will make room for new ideas.  After you write everything you can think of think about what happens next and how to connect them all, and it’ll help strengthen your writing.  No writer has every single idea ready to go on the outset.  Some ideas will only come out during the writing process.

2.       Embrace Your Inner Swooper

When I try to write, it’s hard not to feel a little like Nicolas Cage’s Charlie Kaufman in the movie Adaptation.  There are so many options with writing a story it can be easy to get overwhelmed and constantly criticizing yourself for not writing the great American novel.  Countless stories never get told because the writer can’t get beyond these insecurities.  Following the Kurt Vonnegut model of swoopers (those who write prolifically and edit later) and bashers (those who write and scrutinize all the way), I’m a basher through and through, and I have to imagine a lot of Nanowrimo participants are bashers as well.  But to win Nanowrimo, I had to try to think like a swooper.

So it makes sense that one of the things Nanowrimo encourages is to allow its participants to give themselves permission to write crap.  This may seem counterintuitive: why bother putting in all this effort into a subpar product?  However, letting the bad ideas flow allows all ideas to flow.  Nanowrimo is all about getting in motion all the people who keep saying they’re going to write, but never get around to putting those ideas out because they get hung up on it not being a complete novel the first time out.  With editing, no one has to know about the cheesy dialogue, scenes that go nowhere and characters who don’t add anything.  How I got to the ideas isn’t necessarily important to the reader.

3.       Having a Plan Is Helpful, but Always Leave Room for Improvisation

During Nanowrimo I met someone.  Her name is Charlotte.  She’s about my age, British with long black hair.  She knows how to use a sword and is a little hyperactive.  She also was barely in any of my outlines for my story up until I started writing this year’s Nanowrimo.  One of the joys of writing is discovery; stumbling upon some idea that you never would have thought of before you started writing.  George R.R. Martin has a quote attributed to him classifying writers as being either architects (ones who intricately plan every small detail) or gardeners (ones who plant a seed and see what happens).  It’s similar to the “swoopers and bashers”.  Of course a good novel will need structure with its story, character arcs and plot progression, but as I wrote I needed to allow myself the freedom to explore and take risks because I could find something better than what I originally set out to do.

4.       Being Open to New Sources Helps

It’s a logical conclusion to want to avoid consuming other stories during Nanowrimo out of fear of being too influenced by whatever you’re reading.  Certainly spending more time writing will limit the amount of time you have to read, watch TV and consume stories anyway, but writing in a vacuum is generally a bad idea.  Aside from maybe ancient cave paintings, art is influenced somehow by other art.  The best way to combat being too influenced by other work is to consume a lot of different types of work.  Read high fantasy, true life stories, beach read murder mysteries, classics, graphic novels and read with an eye as to how things function in the work and how you can figure out what works in your writing.  To be honest I didn’t read a whole lot going into last year’s Nanowrimo.  However in 2013 I vowed to be different and I’ve read a lot, from several Vonnegut novels to Neil Gaiman to graphic novels like Fables.  All writers read and it’ll make your work richer the more you can fit in.

5.       Writing 50,000 Words and Being a Winner Are Not Mutually Exclusive

Technically speaking, if you write 50,000 words you won NaNoWriMo.  It is a huge achievement to generate that much over only a month.  However, sometimes people take shortcuts to get to that magical number that may cheapen the victory.  There is a thread in the Nanowrimo forum all about tricks and cheats participants can use to boost their word counts.  To be fair, there are tips that can be helpful, like writing in a character’s backstory or writing out your thought process as you work out elements in your story.  Then you get tricks like not using contractions, always referring to characters by their full names or having characters repeat things for characters who are, for no practical reason in the story, hard of hearing.  For those who use these tricks I have to ask: what are you really getting out of it?  Are these things making your writing or your work ethic regarding writing any better?  These tricks will be the first things cut from any revision you make, so why even bother putting it in in the first place?  Sure, there are instances where it makes sense not to use contractions or have characters repeat themselves, but if you have unnatural sounding dialogue spoken by a bunch of Jimmy Two Times, who is going to want to bother slogging through that?  Unless you’re doing it for a school assignment, these cheats can’t be truly helpful.

It’s a bit like Rocky (or for a more contemporary version, the Late Night trilogy episodes of Louie).  Where (SPOILER) both Rocky and Louie don’t get what they want, yet both end on notes of triumph because they gave it everything they had, and really, doing everything you can is the only way to combat regret.

6.       The End of November Is Just the Beginning

Some people hate Nanowrimo.  Like really hate it.  I can see why, with publishers complaining about December submissions clogging up their inboxes written by at best naïve and at worst delusional would be authors.  For some, once Nanowrimo’s done they think they can just throw in the raw word file out to a publisher and think that JK Rowling money is going to roll in.  For people who claim that they love writing, they aren’t really applying themselves.

As much as Nanowrimo emphasizes revising and editing, it’s hard to ignore that some of the sponsors of Nanowrimo are enabling the idea that what you wrote in November is a final draft and is ready to go on December 1^st, not to mention Novel Writing is in the full title (I guess “National First Draft Writing Month” isn’t as snappy).  It’s not that easy.  I’ve participated in Nano the last two years and you know how many people I’ve had look at my two drafts: nobody.  It’s not even close to being ready for anyone but me.  There’s still characters and story points that need clarifying and it needs to be put together into some cohesive whole.  There’s a lot of work ahead of me, but I think I’m closer to it than I was before Nanowrimo 2012.

Yes, there have been novels started in Nanowrimo that have been best sellers like Water for Elephants, but those writers no doubt put in the hours making them coherent novels before they were ever published.  You may be that one genius out of a million who can churn out a novel fully formed, but odds are you are not.  That type of writer is generally a creation of the movies (written by people who know better).  If you want to work as a writer, you have to respect and obey the work ethic of a writer.  That means reading a lot and writing a lot.  If you want to work as a writer, you need to treat writing like work.