Frozen

Frozen was a tease of a movie.
I mean the 2013 Disney-Animated-Studios ‘Frozen’.

It seemed to me that the film had cynical undertones.

The characters introduced are all deeply established by their loneliness and solitude.
Ice-Princess is alienated from everyone for fear of hurting them with her magic. (She goes on to protect people from her magic by using her magic to hurt them. Good move there).
Ice-Princess’s sister, Ana, is apparently without any form of friendship after Ice-Princess ditches her. She seems to take growing up like that surprisingly well, though.
Blonde-Dude … apparently grows up with a family, and makes his living conducting trade, so he can’t be a lonely fella. But his character is introduced to Ana literally with an ice-cold appearance, and Ana starts her friendship with him just after we see Blonde-Dude having a conversation by-himself, pretending it’s with his companion, a Disney-horse-dog-like moose called Sven.
Ana’s fiancé introduces himself as an isolated figure, growing up with 12 brothers and having been ignored by some of those.

Having lonely characters like that isn’t exactly cynical.
But one repeated line is in all these isolated characters saying to one another “You don’t know what Love is.”; and so Disney gotta step up and say what it thinks Love is.
– I feel it’s slightly cynical, though, in that when these characters do exclaim and sing about the hopes they have for Love and such, it’s juxtaposed with the snowman singing his hope for what it would be like to enjoy a summer on the scorching sand of a beach.
If that’s not cynical, it’s at least gotta be a strike at the naïve hopes and thoughts of those who yearn for Love like the characters do.

None of that strikes me as bad, by the way.
Perhaps not explicitly the tone Disney was after, but interesting enough anyway.

I call it a tease, though, because I don’t think the poet then does anything interesting with the thus-far-narrative it establishes.

Uhh. Spoiler warning. (But really, Disney spoiled it more than I could. - Kidding. Frozen is an alright movie).

Ana’s fiancé out-of-nowhere becomes the villain of the story.
With the budding Disney-romance between Ana and blonde-dude, it would at least strike the question of “Which will she choose? Which guy is the better one for her?”. Nope, the poet says. Fiancé is a jerk. Conflict solved.
– perhaps the villainy comes from “I’m so lonely, that’s why I became the villain” characterization, which would be interesting to contrast with the other lonely characters.. it’s thrown in by the poet as more of a justification for the rapid change of heart.
(I reckon it would’ve been more interesting if fiancé ended up with Ice-Princess, but anyway..).

Blonde-dude more/less seems to stay the convenient hero, but off to the side since the poet cares more for the other characters. (Meta-loneliness?).
Perhaps in some kind of progressive effort to increase the number of female heroines in movies these days, the poet decided that the guy who serves as the solidly heroic figure throughout the narrative should, at the climax of the story, … not be useful in any kindof way.
Ah, well.

Ana.. seems to gain her sister (Ice-Princess) as a friend by the end of the story.
(Which might suck a bit if her sister, being Queen, then is unable to maintain the friendship for being too busy with royal duties…).

Ice-Princess seems to resolve her problems damn quickly.
Not quite as quick as Ana’s-fiancé’s about-face, but quick enough that the adventuring through the snow seems mostly in vain..

For all the above whining,
Frozen isn’t so bad.
But perhaps with animated-movies, since there are so many excellent ones out there, the expectation is always going to be pretty high.