Why Disney's Frozen Will Make You Want to Build Ice Castles With Idina Menzel (even if you hate snow)

As much as I love Disney movies, they rarely surprise me and I don't expect them to.

After all, the Walt Disney Company has been operating for the better part of a century under the same principles. Wishes can come true, dreams are worth dreaming, the good guys always win, the bad guys always lose, the prince rescues the princess, and immediately after the climactic battle sequence, it starts to rain.

It's not rocket science. Disney movies are so formulaic that they are basically their own genre. So, I went into Frozen thinking that I had it all figured out. An icy, Norwegian version of Tangled with an extra princess and a creepy snowman character? Okay. Sounds good enough.

This is weird, but I guess I'm into it. 

Ice ice baby!

So imagine my great shock when Frozen veered off-course into quirky and unpredictable territory! Because, ladies and gentlemen, Disney has finally made a modern fairy tale and it is unspeakably lovely. 

It starts off as generic princess fodder. Anna (the perpetually charming, even as a voice actor, Kristen Bell) is the spunky younger sister of soon to be Queen Elsa. What Anna doesn't know is that Queen Elsa (who is also Queen of Broadway and Queen of my Heart, Idina Menzel) actually has this little, presumably sorcery-related issue where she turns things into ice cubes when she gets upset. The night of Elsa's coronation, Anna (which is pronounced Ah-nah, which is how I will forever pronounce Anna from here on out) meets a studly ginger prince and decides to go off and marry him immediately. This, of course, upsets Elsa (because marrying someone you just met? How Snow White of you!) which plunges the kingdom into eternal winter. Anna insists on going out to find her sister and talk to her? Change her mind? End winter? She's not really sure what she's going to do, actually, but she knows she has to be the one to do it. And along the way, we meet a guy who was raised by trolls and has an unhealthy obsession with reindeer and a talking snowman who was built by Elsa and has an unhealthy obsession with summer.

Idina Menzel playing a misunderstood witch who is exiled from her society and forced to live in solitude... where have I heard this one before?

If all of that sounds kind of nothing like what you were expecting, just wait until you get into the third act. 

For years, Disney has been trying to make a modern classic without losing touch with its fairy tale tradition. They came close on a few occasions (most notably Enchanted and The Princess and the Frog), but they never seemed to get it quite right. Frozen is that modern classic. Of course, there are show-stopping musical numbers. There are songs that will not leave your head for days. The animation is breathtaking and even reminiscent of Disney's greatest artistic achievements, like Cinderella and Peter Pan. But there is also a contemporary twist. This is the first princess movie where the central story arc hasn't been a romantic relationship. There is no big, sweeping ballad that the two main characters sing to each other. The closest thing that we get to a ballroom is a scene where Elsa literally transforms into the Snow Queen, building herself a brand new castle and a gown that the other Disney princesses would probably kill for. And at its core, Frozen is a story about the relationship between two sisters. After nearly a century of expecting something else, that is refreshing. 

Something's... not right.

Ermegerd, hugzzzz!