Film Reviews
Frozen Soundtrack Review
Disney Classics are back this year with their adaptation of The Snow Queen, re-titled Frozen (akin to their re-titling of Rapunzel a few years back that they titled Tangled). As you can expect all songs are, true to Disney fashion, full of hooks.
Frozen Heart opens in a strong Celtic vibe as a male chorus introduces a thematic piece. For the first time in Forever (not sure about the logic of that title) is a prime example of them going for a big memorable number. This you can pretty much guess is the “wide-eyed, hungry for discovery” song from your lead character as they start out on their adventure type of tune. It’s upbeat, its full of hope and wonder, and pretty much does the same job that Just Around The River Bend did for Pocahontas or Hercules’ Going the Distance or whatever Rapunzel sang about when she made it out into the open world in Tangled. The latter of these examples is perhaps the perfect mirror to hold up as that was full of acoustic happy Mandy Moore songs – Kristen Bell’s style of singing and the happy bouncy upbeat songs are not too far away from that previous score. Which works of course for younger audiences as it is easy to create pop hooks (see Love Is An Open Door), but it does hamper Disney giving us something original and new if they are merely relying on what has worked before.
There was once a time when Disney would pick a style of music and run with it through a film (See Hercules’ gospel choir, or the jazz of The Princess and the Frog). Frozen had the interesting idea here with the Celtic Folk open which is then unceremoniously dropped. An entire score in that style might be an idea for them worth pursuing in the future instead of simply appealing to the young female teenage market.
Taking Frozen for what it is, it is a well produced pantomime ready for a young audience. If there are issues it is perhaps the occasional heavy accent in the vocal work. Do You Want to Build a Snowman is a very pretty piece, but is perhaps affected slightly by the heavy American accents that thickly cover the words. But there is no denying the fact that the music is powerful and in the tradition of some of these best blockbusting ventures. And as for any typical Oscar glory prediction – Let It Go pretty much holds the film’s best shot.
Often studios will release a score soundtrack on disc and a separate soundtrack that contains songs. With Frozen you get both. 32 tracks of songs and music cues from Disney latest animated classic to come to the screen.
Steven Hurst
‘FROZEN’ The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack is available from 2nd December from Walt Disney Records