Happily ‘Frozen’ in Big Apple

A fun weekend, to this writer at least, would be the one that would start with an easy flight to one of my favorite cities, New York in this case, have a very good friend take me around the city (even if you have been to the city countless times before, nothing beats having a local be your guide as you crisscross the labyrinthine walkways of the picturesque Central Park and marvel at the exploding colors of the changing foliage) and an expensive (well, sort of) lunch at Café Boulud, one of the city’s finest — and Michelin-rated for the foodies out there — before we head to my favorite activity in the world — watching movies!

This writer flew to the Big Apple four weekends ago upon the invitation of Disney Animation Studios as the pioneering animation studio unveils its 53rd feature celebrating 90 years of Walt Disney’s filmic legacy. Frozen, the new film inspired by the classic children’s book The Snow Queen and made by the same team behind Tangled and last year’s Oscar-nominated Wreck-It-Ralph. The movie will open today in the Philippines, but consider this writer lucky to have previewed the movie four weeks ago — and, you know what? I loved it! Really, really loved it!

I was in New York for only two days so I didn’t have time to catch a Broadway show but after watching Frozen, it’s as if I went to one anyway. There’s a show-stopping scene featuring the towering and powerful voice of Broadway great Idina Menzel and a memorable song by the award-winning husband-and-wife tandem of Robert and Kristen Anderson-Lopez (Avenue Q, The Book of Mormon, Winnie the Pooh) that still has me humming the song to this day. (Disney gave us advanced music from the movie and I have been listening to just that one song, Let It Go, everyday ever since.) The couple wrote eight original songs for the movie that are destined to join the roster of classic Disney songs. In Summer, the wishful song of a snowman trapped in perpetual winter, is a delightful ditty that will win Olaf, the snowman, lots of kiddie fans.

Frozen is a visually stunning big-screen comedy-adventure loosely based on the Hans Christian Andersen classic and tells the story of sisters Princess Anna (Kristen Bell) and Princess Elsa (Idina). In the movie, Anna sets off on an epic adventure to search for her older sister Elsa, whose magical powers have trapped the kingdom of Arendelle in eternal winter. Anna’s journey will see her encountering mystical trolls, the aforementioned hilarious snowman Olaf and a handsome mountain man named Kristoff who reluctantly joins her on her quest. Would she find her sister in time? Would she be able to reverse the curse? Would she be able to save her kingdom? Would Olaf get to have his summer? All the answers will be revealed in this delightful and unforgettable new animated classic from Disney.

I started writing this story at the airport as I wait for my flight back to L.A. two days after the screening and I made a mental note to include here the amazing reception the movie received from the kids who watched the movie with us — they were loudly cheering at the conclusion of the movie to my utter surprise! I thought I was the only one who goes gaga when I like a movie but the kids beat me and were already clapping and applauding the movie even before I could recover from the surprise ending. I loved Frozen more because of how the kids reacted to it.

When I told Jennifer Lee, the writer and co-director of the movie with Chris Buck, how the kids reacted to their movie during the party held at the Trump Ice Rink in the middle of Central Park the evening following the screening, she got teary-eyed and told this writer how proud she was of the movie specially considering how long it took them to create the magic on screen. Frozen took nearly three years to complete and even saw some animators travel to Wyoming to study snow in detail to create a magical world on screen that is so rich and so vivid the audience won’t be faulted if they start booking their trips to Arandelle as soon as they step out of the cinema, which, incidentally is actually possible. Yes, sort of.

To create the stunning landscape in the movie, the filmmakers only had one place in mind: Norway. The spectacular mountains and tranquil fjords of the Nordic country is the inspiration for the kingdom of Arandelle and anyone willing to spend a little and visit the places that inspired the movie, Disney can actually make that happen. For eight days and seven nights, a family can go on an epic vacation to Norway and visit the many places from the movie. Visit the website www.adventuresbydisney.com/frozen for more details.

Of course, when you go on your trip, you can only see and visit the places from the movie. You will not, I repeat, you will not be meeting Elsa or Anna during your trip. But they might be inside the castle, you know.

This writer, luckily, didn’t have to fly all the way to Norway to meet the lovely actresses who provided the voices (speaking and singing) of Anna and Elsa. Kristen and Idina sat for two separate roundtables with this writer and both had nothing but great stories to tell about their experiences working on the movie.

Kristen was her usual adorable self. When we told her we didn’t know she could sing, she replied, “I’ve been trying to tell everybody! I’ve been trying! It’s a hard thing to live with, ‘Hi, I am Kristen, I’m a great singer.”

The perky actress is mostly known for her non-singing roles in movies like When in Rome and You Again and for her television character Veronica Mars (which she happily shared has wrapped production and will soon be released.) On stage, she has appeared opposite Liam Neeson and Laura Linney in The Crucible and was in the cast of the off-Broadway production of A Little Night Music.

“There’s other people higher on the list when they start doing these movie musicals,” she half-seriously confided, “but this is a dream come true because I studied music all growing up and I am very excited to be singing.”

Asked if it was scary to be singing on the big screen, she whispered, “No,” before adding, “With her? Yeah!”

With “her”, Kristen is, of course, referring to a woman whose singing voice can soar to high heavens and who is hailed as one of the greatest Broadway actresses ever. Idina Menzel is not quite a famous name yet but fans of musical theater knows her for her landmark works in Rent and Wicked and now, in Frozen, people everywhere will be talking about her and her voice when she does the show-stopping scene in the middle of the movie.

Idina sang Let It Go and the audience will most likely find it hard to let go of her and her voice after watching the movie because I just couldn’t myself. This writer has another story exclusively on Idina. Watch for it. Meantime, go watch Frozen.