[CRITICAL] THE SNOW QUEEN

Also traditional a strike of public transport, the Disney studios we offer traditional film animation for the year-end holiday season. Once again, it is an adaptation of a fairy tale, THE SNOW QUEEN, Hans Christian Andersen, or Sneedronningen (to your wishes !) in its original danes in 1844. It will be recalled that the previous Andersen fairy tale adapted by the firm, Mickey was The Little Mermaid in 1990, and it is now one of the film’s more appreciated in the studio.

The return to the story after the video game wreck-it Ralph 2012 for the 53rd “Classic” is not only reminiscent of the most classic in the filmography Disney : we are coming back again on the field of the musical comedy animated ! It is all the more evident when one learns that most of the songs have been composed by two authors of Broadway, Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, who had previously collaborated with the studio for adaptations of their films. If I am not allergic to the musical side of the movies Disney animation (and even, to some classic, enough client, I confess it), this return to the song is quite disturbing at the beginning of the film : the songs are relatively long and are linked together a little too quickly for my taste, so that it becomes more digestible after the first third of the film took place. It is without doubt in my opinion, the main fault of the film the bad weighting of the music.

Moreover, as a whole, THE SNOW QUEEN is a film of very good quality. So visually, the characters inherit the character-design opened with Rapunzel, the visual work done on the backgrounds and some of the detail is quite exceptional : the colorful clothes, design of the ice castle and then the gardens of the palace of Arendelle perfectly studied… As regards the technical performance, it is on the side of the snow is modeled in the film that we need to turn : more than 300 models of flakes have been created for the occasion, the results have been mixed (ice, powder snow, etc…) and the management of impressions is consistent. The universe frosty film wins in realism and immersion greatly (compare the different Ice Age to see !). Besides, the characters are much better animated than at the time of Rapunzel , through a process tested on the occasion of the beautiful short film Paperman, which preceded wreck-it Ralph in cinemas, where traditional animation by hand is somehow scanned in the manner of the performance capture for real actors. As often, it is the secondary characters that we focus the most, thanks to their springs to be humorous with in the first place, Sven the reindeer, and then the silly snowman Olaf, doubled in VF by Dany Boon with a distinctive but effective.

“Probably not the best of Disney, but it is a feature-length animated film that has managed to combine the leg classic from the studio to the modernity of its new technologies.”

Finally, if I’ve described up to now THE SNOW QUEEN as a movie, using springs rather conventional method Disney (good feelings included), it has few elements with respect the original. The scenario resumes at the final few elements of the tale of origin where it was for a young girl to go free a little boy prisoner in the castle of the Snow Queen, and leaves room for a story, not really prince charming for once, but love sororal mainly. Similarly, the construction of the story sometimes leaves a place of surprise quite unexpected, something quite unusual for these animated films generally agreed scénaristiquement. We can say that the writer of wreck-it Ralph, Jennifer Lee, who co-directs also the film alongside Chris Buck (director of Tarzan, with the unbearable omnipresence of Phil Collins in the B. O.).

THE SNOW QUEEN is probably not the best of Disney but it is a feature-length animated film that has managed to combine the leg classic from the studio to the modernity of its new technical processes. With the exception of the songs too much at the start, we can consider THE SNOW QUEEN as the movie’s “ownership” of techniques of modern activity at the service of the stories childish and the tradition of comedy, lively music that are the trademarks studio history.

Finally, I cannot resist the urge to share the story that made me smile in the learner a sense of the appropriateness of the voice cast VF : the doubler of the old duke covetous of the film is performed by Bernard Alane, actor accustomed to scenes of theatre and dubbing, but who has also played in the cinema… the role of hibernating in the film Hibernatus.

Eric

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