Image © Disney.

I hadn’t planned on seeing this in a theater, hadn’t read anything about it, but we’re visiting Ellen’s sister Ann’s family, and they invited us to go see it. I went in with no expectations, except that it’s a Disney animated feature, and I enjoyed the film a lot. Despite the Disney name, like “Brave” it feels more Pixar than Disney, perhaps at least in part because of Pixar’s John Lassiter directing. The story is only vaguely familiar, being “inspired” by the story “The Snow Queen” by Hans Christian Anderson. All they’ve really taken is the idea of a powerful and heartless queen of ice and snow. The rest of the film is new, and while it is a familiar Disney approach with two princess sisters, two handsome young men, a loveable animal companion (above) and comic figure (also above), there are enough new twists and turns to make it seem fresh. The animation is wonderful, my only complaint is that the young women have the extremely large eyes of manga characters, much larger than the men, something I found tended to distract me from the storytelling. There is magnificent animation and artwork based around snow and ice, lots of action (perhaps a little too much at times, but that’s the way films are these days), a good dose of humor, and fine characters that “act” convincingly. All well done, and the film is preceded by a new Mickey Mouse cartoon short that is truly an amazing blend of the oldest Mickey cartoons and new digital animation. I won’t spoil it by explaining.

Recommended.