Frozen - Movie Review

Frozen
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***--

You can't help but give Frozen an "A" for effort. This is a good movie, and it's good precisely because it's something you haven't seen before onscreen, but have certainly thought about on those family ski trips from long ago. It takes an understated fear and then highlights it, and although on some level it may be like taking someone's fear of getting their shoelace stuck in an escalator and then stretching it out for a feature length film, on another level Frozen manages to throw together enough elements to keep us interested.

At first Joe isn't so excited to have Dan's girlfriend Parker tag along for a Sunday afternoon ski trip, but when she manages to bribe three lift tickets out of a somewhat sleazy resort employee, Joe starts to come around. It isn't until the three sneak on the lift for one last run that the weekend escape makes a turn for the worse. The somewhat sleazy employee leaves his post, the new guy mistakes three other skiers for the three he was told to wait for. He hits the off switch, kills the lights, and Dan, Joe, and Parker are left swinging on the lift far above nature. This wouldn't be so bad, if there wasn't a blizzard approaching and the resort wasn't only open on the weekends, but as it happens that's the case. They have an entire week to look forward to.

It's a great "what would you do?" situation. One thought is to drop. Another is to perform a quick high-wire act and make way to one of the support poles. Of course, all these might be a little bit more complicated if wolves were involved.

If only MacGyver were here. I had assumed that Parker's smoking habit might have proved useful since she has a lighter, or that some secondary uses could have come in handy for the team's ski gear, or maybe that the phone number they tried so hard to remember might come into play. Unfortunately there aren't a lot of improvised inventions to come in handy. Then again, it seems that most of their equipment is thrown off into the snowy abyss in vain attempts to gather attention.

Great films often require characters to come face-to-face with apparent dead-ends. In these situations you can either have those characters use a tool they picked up earlier on, have them crawl through the dead end with nothing but their fingers, have a magical happening to show them another way out, or just watch them squirm. Frozen has one dead-end, but uses just about all of these to keep us interested.

If only it wasn't so frustrating to watch these characters reminisce about childhood memories when what they should be doing is getting off the freaking ski lift they're trapped on. These people seriously need to get their priorities straight.

Frozen is often intense, sometimes quite gross, but very much different and entertaining. I must say that the variety of deaths (even with the few deaths involved) in the end lacked a sort of creativity. But maybe I was thinking this was another Final Destination. Still, it was worth watching, and even better, I'm sure I'll be thinking about it on my next ski trip.