Rant of the Month (May 2014): Frozen is NOT The Lion King...

Do not get me wrong when I post this.  Frozen was by far the best Disney film since The Hunchback of Notre Dame and it deserves to be talked about in the highest regards among some of the finest animated films ever made.  The songs are great, the story solid, and the characters are lovable.

That being said...

FROZEN is not the "be all and end all" of ANIMATION!!!!!!!

It is indeed the first film Disney has put out in a long time.  We haven't had a film this entertaining in a long time.  But this film will never be as good as the films that preceded it.  Of course, I'm talking about The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and of course, The Lion King.  The absolute craze that has been going on throughout the world is extremely tempting and intoxicating to behold.  I myself was on the Frozen for Best Picture bandwagon for quite some time.  But when the craze dies down (If the craze dies down...), we as an audience have to step back and look at the big picture.  Was this film really as good as we made it out to be?  I will admit some of my review was in fact a bit impartial due to me being deeply enveloped in the Frozen craze.  I have listened to "Let It Go" at least half as much as I've listened to either "Circle of Life" or "Friend Like Me".  But we need to let the film take it's time and slowly enshrine itself in the halls of Disney's Finest, like The Lion King.  We cannot let Disney milk this cow completely dry, or else people will not want to even look at this movie again.

1. Frozen was not the first MODERN Disney Fairy Tale


When everybody says that "Frozen was the first film that did this" or whatever, I can quickly go over to my phone and look up a film that did something similar to it prior.  For instance, one girl I had a date with said that "Frozen is the first really modern Disney Fairy Tale."  Have people forgotten the film that premiered on Blu Ray just last Fall?  The Little Mermaid also had it's own craze surrounding it when it came out in 1989.  But when we let the film really go away and rest for a while, we were able to really see how good the film was.  We could see that Ariel was the first really proactive Disney Princess they'd ever had, and we could get behind her dreams because she was so likable.  She had dreams beyond just getting married or whatever.  She wanted to experience a world beyond her reach and take her steps into adulthood.  Did she take missteps?  Of course, but that is what teenagers do.  We make mistakes.

But by no means was Frozen the first MODERN Disney Fairy Tale.  Even Tangled beat this film to the punch.

2. Frozen is the funniest Disney Film...


I found the humor in Frozen to be quite refreshing.  The jokes didn't feel like they were pandering to us as an audience, and that we didn't need that many pop cultural references to make a movie.  But in no ways is this film as remotely funny as Aladdin.  Aladdin was the first true blue Disney Comedy, that paved the way for the films like Ice Age and Shrek.  Josh Gad is in NO WAY Robin Williams.  Shame on people for forgetting this movie!

3. Frozen was the first Disney Film that treated me like an adult...

Yes, I've even heard this one.  While again, Frozen was a film that took a step forward in character development, what was it's comparisons?  Chicken Little?  Meet the Robinsons?  Those were films being released several years before Frozen.  Please note, too, that this is the same girl I went out with from #1.

I could go on with how groundbreakingly adult The Lion King was, but I'm going to try to keep it as short as possible.  People do not deal with death in this movie.  Simba has to literally grieve at his father's corpse as a child no less.  People seem to forget this, too.  Unlike Anna and Elsa's parents, who we don't get to know all too well and our only memory of them is their failed attempts to control Elsa's powers, Mufasa was a parent we all got to know about.  He was a proud king and was fair to most of the subjects in his kingdom.  When he was killed by Scar, we all felt for Simba, not only because we could imagine ourselves in his situation, but also because we knew how strong Simba's relationship to his father was.

In Short...

Frozen needs to go away for awhile so that we can fully appreciate it's majesty.  But since Disney is the ultimate masters at overusing things, I'm willing to bet this isn't going away for a while...