User Reviews

Okay I will be blunt in this review. Like many Americans who saw the trailer for this film I judged it too quickly solely by its appearance in animation. Living in America I'm engulfed mainly by CGI animation. Any time I want to see an animated film it's nothing but CGI. I'm not saying that I don't like CGI, I just hate knowing that everyone's jumping the band wagon. The only time I see non-CGI animation is when I usually watch a foreign animated film. I don't know what's with foreign countries in making CGI animated films. They usually turn out creepy, abysmal, or just plain weird. Granted making CGI is costly, but like every animated film ever, it's the amount of effort you put into that counts. Usually if a 100% percent effort of work is put into animated film, then the film's budget won't be too expensive. Enough talk, here's my review.

The animation- Like i said before, I live in America and if there is one flaw to our CGI animated films is that they usually cost more than they should. While most of what we make in CGI is beautiful and amazing in both an artistic point and a technical one, certain films shouldn't cost so much. Some examples are The Nut job, Chicken Little, Mr. Peabody & Sherman, and many others. This film had a budget $7 million.I was shocked to learn that such good animation came from $7 million! The animation isn't perfect 10 praise worthy, but pretty it's impressive on an economic stand point. The character designs aren't equal enough, and there many moments of slowed down scenes that aren't required, or help the animation look better. However it's the art direction that made me fall in love with it. It's a mixture of fairy tale drawn designs, and a certain amount of CGI texture that makes the characters look painted. Unfortunately not all of the characters could receive the same amount of treatment. Some of them look like the laziest things in all of animation, but at least they kept the backgrounds equally impressive. I should note that the cinematography in this film is masterful! Up there with some of the best from studio Ghibli and Disney's Tangled. I'll be brutally here if this was done in 2D animation then this film would have looked beyond gorgeous! But for a CGI animated foreign film it's really impressive! Score 7.9/10

The story- The story is based off the fairy tale with the same name. The film does justice to the source material, and adds parts of its own that make it even better. The origin story for the films villain the ice queen is something I didn't expect and is a welcomed addition. Gerda and Kai being siblings instead of friends helps the story because people won't think that they're in love with each other like most animated fairy tales films do. But even with all of these improvements the film fails hardcore in storytelling because of the god awful pacing! No joke, no exaggeration this film has some of the worst pacing in all of animation. The film barely ever likes to take brakes. Every story element in the film is rushed, never allowing the audience to take in what happened. This especially apparent in the films jokes. The movies jokes are pretty good if you can catch them in time. The characters are never allowed to show why we should root for them, or be interested to watch them on the screen, all except for a troll named Orm. He's the only character the movie allows to show development. It made wonder why he isn't the protagonist. I can't even get into the interesting mythology that the movie has created, it doesn't give me the time I need. Score 2/10

Verdict- Honestly if it wasn't for the good looking visuals I would have quit watching the film 22 minutes in. This film could have been perfect 10 material, but it ended up being mediocre. Score 5.5/10 Now I don't regret watching this film, in fact it has altered my perception on CGI animation forever. It showed me the quality still reigns over quantity, even in an era in America where CGI has taken over animation. I actually recommend you watch this film if your an American. Normally I never would tell people to watch a film that I gave a score below a 6, but if you truly want to understand what I'm talking about take the dare and watch the film for yourself.

First, the actual villain and main plot aren't featured in the film very much; snow queen gets very little screen time or development and is overall, an insignificant character, even though the film is named after her. Second, the film kills time with unnecessary side plots. Four of the major scenes during the film had no effect or relevance to the overall story. Third, the women in the film had gigantic and unrealistic breast's; the ratio of breast size to body was so inappropriate I wouldn't show this film to children. Fourth, in light of our recent point about the appropriateness in front of children, the violence in this film was repulsive; the amount of death and gore left my children scarred and shaking. Finally, the overall production of the film was poor and unwatchable. Not only was the voice acting not suited for the characters, but the animation was so unprofessional it makes me want to stop watching films altogether.

Very disappointed. :(

I enjoyed this movie very much. The characters are compelling, especially the troll and the weasel, and it holds true to Hans Christian Andersen's original story. I think that it is underrated. I suspect that because Disney had begun working on Frozen (which is also a very good movie), it may have been swept under the rug. There were couple of parts I could have lived without, such as the silly king and his family. I felt like they threw that in there just to overemphasize the importance of family and Gerda's goodness.

But the overall story was well told. I especially enjoyed the final fight scenes and learning about the snow queen's background. If you like animated movies and enjoy a good fairy tale, then this one is worth taking a look at. It's on Netflix if you have a subscription.

"The Snow Queen" is a Russian animated movie based on Hans Christian Andersen's original story of the same name. The Snow Queen herself (later named Irma) is attempting to destroy all of the world's current wizards and their offspring as they are the only people on Earth who could defeat her. She mistakenly orphans two siblings of the very last wizards and as time goes on her power grows. She finds out from her haunted mirror that those children have grown up and have potential to destroy her. The children, Gerda and Kai, are unaware they are siblings, and once they learn who they are, they are quickly separated. The Snow Queen recruits her slave troll, Orm, to get Gerda to come to her. If he is successful, he will be freed. The rest of the movie is Orm guiding Gerda to the Snow Queen in a journey to save Kai.

The animation of this, while not at the quality of the higher-budget, current Disney movies, is still impressive. For a budget of nearly 9 million dollars, this is very polished. The ice has so many awesome, gritty-looking textures, which in a way, I prefer to the icy textures in a movie like "Frozen" (2013), which are much more reflective than this. The backgrounds of every location also hold a lot of character to them. The locations like the ship stuck in the ice, the castle divided in two, the greenhouse, the caves, and especially the Queen's spiky palace, with the room of mirrors, royal hall, the blizzard outside, and the throne room. The ice palace has so much more character in it than a clean-cut palace. There is more menace and these cool-looking spikes lining the outside of it just add to the look. The character designs are a little too simplistic and wide-eyed for my taste. The few I like are the stag, the white horse, and the Queen herself. While most characters have a rounded design, large eyes, and soft skin, her appearance is more bony and edgy. She has smaller and narrower eyes, thinner lips, icy-textured skin, cold stares, and her dress and hair blend into a snowy fog. Her design is so memorable compared to most of the other representations of Snow Queen, including Elsa herself.

The story is okay; it is your basic buddy road-trip movie, but it does have a little bit of an edge in comparison to what I was expecting. For one thing, the wizards themselves are not blatantly explained to be a type of person, but it is implied that they are all artists, musicians, creators and such, which is definitely inspiring. There are also some mature themes in this of slavery, civil war, identity, hatred, torture. The best parts are when there is either an action scene, a moment between Orm and Gerda where they talk to each other, or even some exposition scenes about the Queen. I am also glad they include the mirror in this story, as that is probably the coolest idea to me in a story.

I must warn you though, this may not be a movie for young children. There are some slight undertones of incest. Because Gerda and Kai are not aware at first that they are family, they both kind of have a crush on each other. Kai paints a picture of Gerda (which could also be interpreted as a vision or dream of her) but Gerda makes sure she looks presentable before she enters Kai's room in the boiler, and hides behind a curtain before he sees her. It is very quick, and can be interpreted differently, but there are undertones.

Characters, again, are very basic, with maybe a few quirks to their personality here and there. For example, the King with the divided court who wants to cut Gerda in half, or the greenhouse keeper with the dead flowers. Gerda herself is your standard good-natured girl who just wants to save her brother, but cares about everyone equally, with a little hint of snark. Kai is just a motive for Gerda to want to go to the Snow Queen. Orm is a jaded, angry troll who is snarky, but he clearly does not want to get on the Queen's bad side. He is the last troll alive, but he was a coward. He wants his freedom, but he knows it comes at the price of taking his only friend to her death. The Snow Queen is the other character with a good backstory. She was once a young wizard with a talent for connecting to nature. When people could not understand who or what she was, they discriminated against her. And when she could not convince them to be a little nicer to her, she found dark magic in the caves and wished upon the waters for the abilities she has now, letting her anger and power consume her.

The background soundtrack is alright, nothing entirely special. However, there is one track that I think is one of the coolest scores for a movie like this. It is the Snow Queen's theme, which is played in the background of her backstory reveal, when she freezes Kai's blood, and when she enters the throne room for the final action scene. It starts in a soft haunting piano theme, while it builds in the number of instruments every time it is played. After the piano, an eerie vocal humming joins in, very ethereal. The instruments continue to climb in the action scene with violins and such. I wish it was available on iTunes, or even YouTube, as I would totally listen to it on repeat.

In the end, I prefer this story to Disney's "Frozen" as I enjoy the ice textures more, the Snow Queen steals every scene she is in, the darker tone and morals set in a bleaker world are more consistent, and the theme of independence Orm learns more and more. It sticks more to the book than "Frozen" and has cooler, darker ideas than it. Most things do not need to be dark, unless they serve a purpose. The darkness in any "Snow Queen" story is necessary. The Snow Queen herself is meant to be a dark, elegant figure of malice and mystery, and this was closer to that than Disney's adaptation.

So I took my children to the movies to watch the Snow Queen, and they loved it. They made plans to watch the number 2 (as the director confidently advertises for the nmb 2 movie before receiving responses to the first movie - pretty arrogant). My children liking the movie forces me to give it 3 stars. If not I would have given it 1 star...

I had great anticipation for this movie, portaying one of my childhoods favorite stories. I've read the fairytale in books by HC Andersen, and I've seen earlier movies of it. It is a magical story! I was greatly disappointed by this animation.

Reasons: 1: bad animation. Does not succeed in making facial expressions (important in animation) look clear and real.

2: The movie does not succeed in creating a clear story-line. Several figures are unclear (what was the point of the plant-lady?), and the movie jumps from one action to the next.

3: many scenes are borrowed from other movies (slalom-scene from IceAge, scary creatures crawling down columns in a big hall from Lord of the rings, big meat-eating plant from Little shop of horrors, just to mention 3 of them)

4: it's not funny! Well-made animation movies with side-kick animals should be funny for both children AND adults!

5: the troll does not look like a troll...

I will NOT be watching the nmb 2. But maybe my children will...

This movie held me in keen anticipation ever since the start. It's a brilliant movie which is simply so intriguing and adventurous. Quite frankly I'm surprised this movie isn't more popular than Frozen, the most overrated movie of 2013.

The animation was fantastic. The drawings were superb and realistic (except for the fact that the troll looks more like an anteater). The only flaw-if you could call it that, was the English dub (since the original movie's in Russian). It was done rather poorly, and the lip movements didn't match the words at all. It may seem like a big deal, but after ten minutes into the movie, it won't matter, trust me, you'll be took caught up in the story.

I didn't understand one thing in the beginning though. If Gerda's dad was such a great wizard, why didn't he fly away on some arctic bird (or a magical carpet or whatever), instead of using a wagon and get his family and himself to safety, even if he wasn't powerful enough to face the Snow Queen on his own?

Also, didn't the Snow Queen kill off all the wizards? (except for Gerda and her brother Kai) So how did the flower lady give life to a plant, the ivy?

Another thing was that Gerda was very, very lucky to have met so many people on the way who ultimately helped her reach the snow queen. Talk about luck. It seems like the only reason those people were in the movie as sub-plots were to help her. The first people gave her a sledge, next she got a reindeer and after that she even got a boat that took her directly to the Snow Queen's castle. Of course, Gerda's a nice polite girl, but my, she's sure got a lot of karma on her side.

I may just be nitpicking though. This movie's amazing, and you should definitely watch it!