![]() ![]() ‘I’ve been stabbed in the heart? Ah, swings and roundabouts.’ ![]() Sorry, I just… I have to… what the hell is happening with this cover? Is that a wonky-browed blue Snow Queen in a spiky turban emerging from a glass trophy? Who’s the guy in the teal turtleneck, and why is he so laissez-faire about this adventure? Is that supposed to be Kay? Okay, so let’s have a look at the bahahaha! I’d disagree with everything in that review, except for the part that called it ‘nothing spectacular’. I found exactly one critic review for The Snow Queen which called it ‘humorous and neatly drawn’. ![]() It was probably trying to corner the lucrative ‘out-of-the-loop-relative’ market, hoping a flustered, distracted or elderly hand would grab the VHS from the shelves of the Blockbuster. Piecing this stuff together is like trying to build a prehistoric fish out of a jawbone and three vertebrae. The film was only intended for home release. They started production on it in 1991, finished in 1995, and disappeared from the face of the earth by 1998. The Snow Queen seems to have been their first feature out of four. From the few stubs I’ve managed to glean, the company was pretty short-lived. It seems that both Ventureworld Films and Martin Gates (director) have disappeared from human memory. There’s not much I can say about the film’s development. ![]() I feel like a prisoner trying to appease a three-day hunger with a dry rusk, knowing in the hollow pit of my stomach that I deserve this punishment because I once complained that ice cream was not my favourite dessert.Īnd what a stale, weevil-infested rusk this movie is. Right now, though, I feel like an idiot for ever thinking Frozen wasn’t excellent. And considering the number of landscapes little Gerda moves through and how they differ (gardens, palaces, a spooky wood), Frozen seemed to me, at first viewing, to be very blue and white – visually restrained, compared to the sumptuous colours of most animated blockbusters these days. But in terms of adapting The Snow Queen, it actually looks kind of conservative by comparison in adding so many male characters who are instrumental to the plot. I liked it just fine – it’s a sweet movie with very catchy tunes that manages to retain most of the emphasis on sibling love – and some of its changes to the source material, like the decision to humanise the Snow Queen herself, are quite clever. This is partly why I didn’t love Frozen to the moon and back. The heroine, Gerda, does fit a nineteenth-century feminine ideal of sweetness and selflessness, but she has a determination and optimism that ensures she’s active throughout her own story. The women in this story are adventurous, innocent, magical, evil, wise, caring, rough and haughty by turns, but they’re all active characters and several are fascinating. … but because of its emphasis on platonic/fraternal love, and its astoundingly progressive treatment of its female characters considering the time in which it was written. ‘Happily ever after? What an odd thing to say.’ ![]()
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