nightroses
This movie is based on "The Snow Queen" traditional fairytale by Hans Christian Andersen. The original story is quite depressing and I didn't like "Snow Queen" as a child, it was cold and quite dreary. The book didn't appeal to me. This film is a lot more colourful than the original fairytale. Gerda looks for her missing boyfriend, and traces him across the seasons, meeting various sisters of the four seasons who each want to keep her as their prisoner. It's only the Snow Queen who doesn't want Gerda, the only season who has no interest in her. The snow queen wants boys and has frozen a lot of them. She turned a man into a polar bear and forced Kai to fix a broken mirror puzzle. The main theme is that Snow Queen is actually Winter itself and threatens the world with an Ice Age. It was Gerda's magical broach that protected her from the Snow Queen. The costumes, the flying snow car, scenery, flowers and theme of seasonal sisters is delightful and appeals to kids mainly and some adults who enjoy watching family fantasy. Oh and the reindeer was cool but a shame he wasn't in it that much.
Lanklamenyn
"Snow Queen" is based, of course, on the fairy tale of the same name, collected in (at least) Andersen's Fairy Tales - and, unlike many other recent productions based on other fairy tales, this one retains the spirit of Faerie, an accomplishment not easy and not well understood by many, especially among Americans. Talking animals, arbitrary prohibitions, appearances of goblins, dragons, and demons, are not to be questioned in a fairy tale; they are as natural an element of Faerie as, say, gravity is in the scientific world, and the reason or explanation for them is completely beside the point of the story. Nor is the story bound by modern Hollywood rules of composition: direct, often to the point of being grotesquely linear in lesser works, and obvious (in retrospect, at least).With this defence against the common criticisms of those who do not understand fairy tales, "Snow Queen" is a delightful movie with wonderful visual effects, skillful acting, and great sentiment. The only flaw in the movie was, I think, not that it was too fantastical but that certain parts of the dialogue were too glaringly modern in slang and expression, a mar on its otherwise timeless nature.
lothy
Warning: I may include some spoilers in this review.I remember hearing the story of the Snow Queen as a child, and being terrified. The first part of this movie captured that atmosphere entirely as Kai begins to change, but after he is taken and Gerda goes off on her adventures, the tension is mostly lost.Bridget Fonda completely looks the role of the Snow Queen, and is generally pretty good too, especially in what is probably her main line: 'Let the whole world be as I am.' Kai is bland, and Gerda starts the same although as the movie progresses that changes.Some things in the movie just seem to be completely ignored or forgotten. Who is this polar-bear-changed-into-man? Why did the Snow Queen kill Gerda's mother? Why is Autumn a robber? Some parts are also dragged out too much; for instance, the scenes at the beginning of the lovers skating just go on for too long, and begin to feel far too soppy.Contrary to one of the other reviews I've read, I felt the ending was actually pretty good. Winter being carried away by the ex-polar-bear gives the feeling that, rather than the typically stupid idea of 'evil turning good at the last minute', that she instead was merely going back to the way she was, and should have been, that she had been bewitched by the mirror.
Mark-129
Although a fine production with top notch visuals, Snow Queen ultimately is a disapointment. Too long and miscast in several roles, the main problem is the opening hour which sets up a love story between Gerda and Kai. In the original, the main thrust of Gerda's quest to rescue Kai from the Queen was friendship that was revealed to be love at the end, but casting the leads as 18 year olds defeats that revelation.
AD
