Seasons in the Sun

Number 2 - Frozen

This was the biggest surprise I've had in the theaters in a long time.

Somehow or another, I wandered across this article discussing Frozen. I say that because I really have no idea why I clicked on it. I had no interest whatsoever in seeing the movie.

I saw one trailer. In my memory, I seem to remember a moose chasing a carrot across ice. Hijinks ensued. It wasn't funny. It wasn't entertaining. It also wasn't a moose.

I don't even remember paying enough attention to the trailer enough to notice that is was Disney. I'm pretty sure that all I thought at the time was that this movie was trying to cash in on the Ice Age bonanza, and that seemed really, really lame. I was reminded of that trailer with the squirrel and his frozen nuts.

And then look at the poster. More of the same. I'm sure I had to assume that it's about a silly snowman who lost his carrot nose. Or something.

And if you didn't read it, that's the point of the article. Disney wasn't marketing this movie to me. It was marketing it to dumb kids so that they would drag their unsuspecting parents into the movie.

After glancing through the article, which I didn't carefully read until after seeing the movie, the idea stuck in the back of my head. I checked out the rottentomatoes score - currently at 89%. But because of that first trailer, I also checked the score for Ice Age. It's at 77%.

As I've mentioned Ice Age a couple times now, I should point out that I didn't hate it or anything. There just wasn't anything special or even interesting to me about it.

So why did I see it? The next time I was planning to go see a movie, I was going to get to the theater a bit too late to see what I really wanted to see. I might have only missed trailers, but I don't like showing up after its dark and tripping over people and blocking their view. Frozen was showing about twenty minutes later. High rottentomatoes score? Free pass? What the heck.

Frozen is not Ice Age.

It's a fantastic story. It has great characters. It has two strong female leads. It's funny. The music is fun and memorable (why yes - I do, in fact, want to build a snowman). And most importantly, it's smart.

The interaction between Anna,  voiced by Veronica Mars Kristen Bell, and Prince Hans seems to be typical. The villain seems obvious. It all turns around later in the story in a way that not only works, was surprising, but was cool.

I went into Frozen with absolutely no idea what it was about or what was going to happen. The only things I remembered that I didn't know from the article is that there was a female lead and that there were songs.

The biggest problem I've had with this is that in conversations with actual adult people is that I've mentioned that it was great and I've gotten some sideways glances. My credibility is questioned. I'm sure the same has happened with many of you. But Frozen is a damn fine movie, and almost my favorite of the year.