TUGAS REVIEW FILM

BAHASA INGGRIS

NAMA : YESISKA SISILIA PAKAINONI

KELAS : XII MIPA
SEKOLAH : SMA NEGERI 12 KOTA KUPANG

TAHUN AJARAN
2022/2023
 FROZEN MOVIE
Lest you forget amid all the noise made by Marvel Studios and Star
Wars rumors, Walt Disney Pictures still does big business in princesses,
and they’re aiming to prove it with their mammoth new holiday season
release Frozen. Very, very loosely adapted from Hans Christian Andersen’s
fairy tale, it’s the story of a vaguely Nordic kingdom and the two orphaned
sisters, Elsa (Idina Menzel) and Anna (Kristen Bell), charged with running
it. The spunky heroine and lonely castle hearken back to recent hit Tangled;
the sisterly conflict feels like The Little Mermaid; the knowing fairy tales
riffs are pure Enchanted. This is rigorous Disney hit-making at its finest,
but with enough charm to get away with it.
Even before Elsa’s powers of shooting ice and snow from her fingertips run
rampant, the animation guided by directors Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee is
stunning– Elsa and Anna’s parents perish in a single shot of a howling
storm at sea, and the stony cliffs surrounding the village of Arrendel are
dramatic even before coated in ice. Elsa revels in her powers as a little girl,
but after a close call with Anna and a poorly aimed bolt of ice, she’s
convinced to hide her strengths and retreat from their tight sisterly bond.
The death of the king and queen means Elsa must take over, but the stress
of her coronation (and Anna’s dumb-cluck decision to get engaged to a
hunky prince she just met) makes her lose control. Elsa storms up into the
mountains, leaving ice castles and blizzards in her wake and belting the
power ballad “Let It Go.” Especially as sung by Menzel it’s a shameless riff
on Wicked‘s “Defying Gravity”; that hasn’t kept it from sticking in my head
for weeks now, and good luck shaking it out of yours.
Anna’s heroic journey is, refreshingly, not about a boy or even about
herself– she travels into the mountains to convince Elsa to return, and
teams up with rugged ice salesman Kristof (Jonathan Groff) to get there.
Kristof and Anna are going to fall for each other eventually, of course, and
she’ll ditch that princely fiancé Hans (Santino Fontana), but the focus
remains firmly on Anna and Elsa, as Lee’s screenplay repeatedly subverts
fairy tale tropes to make them about sisterly, not romantic, love. The beats
of the story and the catchy songs can feel a bit factory-produced– funny
sidekicks in the form of mountain trolls show up at the exact right time for
a laugh, and the old man villains are shipped directly from Gaston’s mob
in Beauty and the Beast. But Frozen has all the right modern touches too,
without falling into winky-wink Shrek territory.
It also pulls off a miracle in Olaf, the buck-toothed snowman you’ve seen in
every ad and voiced by Book of Mormon‘s Josh Gad. The goofy sidekick is
usually an exasperating pander to younger kids who might get restless after
too much story, and even in the brilliant Mormon Gad tended to overplay
his schlubby goofball hand. But Olaf is consistently, actually funny, and
even has the film’s best song in “In Summer,” dreaming of how great a
snowman’s life will be in warmer times (Anna and Kristof don’t have the
heart to tell him the truth). Even Olaf’s origin story helps highlight the
relationship between the sisters– Frozen‘s story may sometimes feel
machine-made perfect, but there’s satisfaction in watching a production
this big stay so resolutely on point.
Debuting her serious pipes after making her name on television, Kristen
Bell is a righteously spunky and funny heroine, while Menzel ably shoulders
the film’s heaviest drama (and by far the best princess dresses, to be seen
on Halloween racks everywhere next fall). Both girls are heroines on the
level of Belle, Jasmine or Ariel, and do them one better by choosing family
over more conventional romance– a nice contrast to, say, Bella of Twilight.
Big animated movies are under crazy pressure to teach kids the “right”
lessons, but Frozen wears that pressure lightly, putting much more focus on
its gorgeous animation, its insanely catchy songs and its well-earned
emotional highs. Especially as Disney turns toward revamping older
princesses like Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella for live-action dramas, it’s a
pleasure to see the studio go back to what they’ve always done well and
prove they’ve still got it.