Disney's Frozen - Blu-ray 3D

There's an old fairy tale: in a poor little town, in a poor little house, lived a poor little girl who'd been best friends with her neighbor for her entire life. They were closer than brother and sister and were always playing together. One day this little boy was cursed so everything appeared ugly and mean to his eyes and every feeling he had was made just as ugly. He quickly grew distant from his family, and while making mischief in town he wound up abducted by the queen of winter, a magical monarch as beautiful as she was cold, and as lonely as one could be. Not willing to believe her friend had died, the little girl set out on her own to find him and bring him home, beginning a long journey through numerous perils with nothing to depend on but the strength of her heart, until she finally reached the queens castle and through the warmth and strength of her love was finally able to break the curse and free her friend. This is the tale of the Snow Queen, one of Hans Christian Andersen's greatest works and a story that Walt Disney himself sincerely wanted to make into a movie. He chose to abandon the project because at that point war and other troubles had made the people too cynical to accept fairy tales in his opinion. So the story sat untouched for decades. This movie started as an attempt to adapt the story at last and is still said to be inspired by it. Does something sound off here? This story has exactly four things in common with the Snow Queen: it has a "snow queen" in it, it has a female lead on a quest, it has a "frozen heart", and it happens in a northern country. Besides the fact that it has these few spots with at best faint resemblance, it is nothing like it. From what I've read about the making of this work, it seems that the problem that led to this was that the villain was pretty and female. They claimed that a lonely queen whose kingdom was by its nature desolate not being relatable enough for audiences, even though many popular villains in the Disney Renaissance were far less relatable. But for some reason these authors felt that the villain had to be more and more sympathetic, until she could no longer be a villain. They thus changed it more and more, until they finally seem to have decided to throw the original story out the window and declare that they could do better. They talk about this like it's another of Disney's fairy tale stories, but unlike all fairy tales that have been done up to this point there seems to be absolutely no respect or interest in the original story, which for a fan of the story makes it quite insulting. As for the movie itself, it's good enough to go past "OK", but not really the masterpiece it was hyped up to be. The things that are called "original" don't look all that new to me, at most a simple reference and satire of the old motif. Making fun of the old tropes doesn't necessarily make things new and fresh. With a few exceptions the songs seemed to just come out of nowhere, with the characters just suddenly singing for no reason. Sure, characters always burst into song in Disney movies, but here several of the song sequences seemed absolutely unnecessary or even detrimental. Note that I said "several" not "all". Some of the biggest song sequences were done well, it's just that a number of them were completely useless. Overall, this is better than some Disney movies, but I wouldn't put it on par with the best of the Disney renaissance. In closing, this is a good movie, though it could be better, and thus as a movie itself it would deserve 4 stars. But due to the fact that it is something of a slap in the face to Hans Christian Andersen, connecting his best work to a piece that while good cannot be compared, I simply cannot give it that rating.