Frozen

Kristen Bell voices and sings the part of Anna, the younger sister of Elsa, wonderfully sung by the great Adele Mazim. (Oh, wait, that was actually Idina Menzel. Oh, John Travolta, is your face red!) Both are princesses, with Elsa the older. Elsa is also afflicted with the magical, or paranormal, power to freeze things. Whatever it is, it’s a big nuisance, because she can’t control it. She ends up freezing the whole kingdom, and has to flee to an ice palace she constructs herself. Elsa sets out to find her and persuade her to come back, accompanied by Kristoff, a seller of ice (who is now out of a job) and his reindeer, Sven. They are later joined by a snowman named Olaf.

It’s all top-notch stuff. The music is great, the Oscar-winning song “Let It Go” is worthy, the acting and the animation all quite good. It all has a Nordic flavor, and opens with a great song by a chorus of Sámi singers. These are the people we used to call Lapps, or Laplanders. I was surprised to hear how much it sounded like the African music at the beginning of The Lion King. I wasn’t really enchanted by Olaf, though his habit of falling apart and reassembling himself in odd configurations was cute.

I’m betting feminists (of which I am one, but not a militant pain-in-the-ass) are upset because from this film we get not one, but two more Disney Princesses to join the eleven already crowned. (Their coronations have not happened yet, but it’s officially in the pipeline.) It seems a wee bit greedy on the part of the Disney company. Me, I don’t get too upset that little girls like to play dress-up. I get it that they also need more powerful role models, but they’re getting a lot of them these days with athletes, writers, and women in government and business. And if you wanted to be a princess, you could do worse than these two, who are as strong and assertive as Merida from Brave. I would actually like to see Esmeralda, the Gypsy princess (okay, we’re supposed to say Roma, but what’s wrong with Gypsy? Or Lapplander?) from The Hunchback of Notre Dame joining her sisters at Disneyland.