Friday, April 18, 2014

Fairy Tale Fridays - Frozen

Disney's latest blockbuster, "Frozen," is the most recent fairy tale adaptation to make it big. And by "adaptation," I mean "loosely based on." "Frozen" takes Hans Christian Andersen's "Snow Queen" as its source material and, I suppose, any chance for people to discover new fairy tales is a good thing. "The Snow Queen" was first published in 1845 and is considered by many to be Andersen's best story. It's also his longest, so I'm not going to share it with you here but I highly recommend you read it. At it's heart "Snow Queen" is a tale of redemption and, despite all of the other changes made to the story for the movie, so is "Frozen."

Disney being Disney, every thing's a bit softer in their adaptation...and cuter. You can be sure there are never talking, comic sidekicks that are animals in fairy tales. And the title character in the source material is evil, whereas her movie descendant is merely frightened and confused. But this particular adaptation has some things going for it that other adaptations didn't - it doesn't take the love of a man to save the girl, it takes the love of a sister.

Speaking of "Frozen' and adaptations, have you finally been able to get the song "Let It Go" unstuck from your brain? Good - here's an adaptation of another "Frozen" song, "Love's An Open Door." If this doesn't make you smile, your heart just might be frozen!


By the way, moms and dads, I don't know if this is good news or not but a sequel to "Frozen" is in the talking phase. Given that it's now become the most successful animated movie ever, you've got to think it's going to happen. From a lover a fairy tales, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for even more material from the original tale to make its way onto the big screen.

6 comments:

  1. I don't even know if I should watch this one. I generally enjoy animated movies, but for some reason, I haven't really been feeling up to watching this.

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  2. I loved the sister switch for redemption instead of a handsome prince!

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  3. We are watching frozen right now for the second time. Today. For the second time today. It's not even noon.

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  4. We haven't seen it yet though I have finally gotten the Tornado intrigued with the talking snowman idea. Before I showed him a clip with that he was a solid "no" on watching it. I'm DYING to see it! I hadn't realized it was a Disney telling of the Snow Queen. I'll have to keep that in mind when I'm (finally) watching it!

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  5. We took my daughter to see Frozen in the theater. She liked it and gets excited every time she sees Elsa. Let it Go wasn't the song that stuck with her though--it was Olaf's song. We hear a variation of that every now and then. :-) It's funny though because every time I ask Mouse if she wants to see the movie again (we have the DVD), she always says no, she's already seen it and once was enough. Haha!

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  6. That is a very sweet video. I loved the movie Frozen--interesting to hear it that it's "the most successful animated movie ever" - it has a lot of competition, but it was great. My daughters went to see it together before we went as a family, and they were thrilled to report the love magic was between sisters, for a change.

    Few sequels work, so I'm not holding my breath. One of the things that made Frozen work was the freshness of the idea...same goes for Shrek, Finding Nemo, and Cars.

    I never liked the Anderson story--I always felt like the Snow Queen shouldn't be evil, and I like the idea that frustration and confusion and anger can be mistaken for evil. I know evil does exist in the world, but I think a lot of it doesn't have to be.

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