Frozen - Movie Review

Frozen Movie Review
As a person who grew up watching fairytales and fantasy movies, I could definitely sense stereotypes could soon be history and modern themes are coming of age. That’s what you would conclude after watching Disney’s “Frozen”. There’s nothing of the typical kind ‘Damsel in distress’ or ‘Prince Charming’. Instead you get to see a whole new perspective of ‘true love’, making it not only a movie for the kids but a wholesome family entertainer.

The King and the Queen of the kingdom of Erindale have two beautiful daughters. The elder Princess Elsa possesses the strange power to freeze anything.  She accidentally freezes her younger sister, Princess Anna while playing. The royal couple sought the help of the trolls (googling out these characters turn out to be supernatural creatures of Scandinavian folklore, variously portrayed as a friendly or mischievous dwarf). The trolls heal Anna also erasing her memory about her sister's powers but warn about Elsa’s mythical powers to her parents as this power could only grow and would show off only when thought about it. Fearing this, the king and queen confine Princess Elsa to the palace and the 2 sisters grow up separately. Years later, the royal couple die in a sea storm and Princess Elsa is chosen to be the next queen.  Princess Anna is extremely happy as she would be seeing her sister after a long time on her coronation.  In her merriment she dances around the kingdom in joy and stumbles upon Prince Hans, twelfth in line to the neighboring kingdom’s throne.

It’s love at first sight and she’s head over heels for him.  Anna and Hans propose their wedding plans but Elsa refuses their marriage. In a heated argument which follows, Elsa’s freezing powers are revealed.  Feeling dejected about her act she leaves the kingdom to the North Mountains. Though dissuaded by others, Princess Anna sets out to search her sister leaving Prince Hans incharge of the kingdom.  On her way, she requests help from Christoff, an ice-trader  who nurses feelings for her but keeps to himself fearing his low working class. The duo together with the snowman, Olaf find Princess Elsa who builds for herself an ice palace and lives there cut off from civilization. Anna fails to persuade Elsa to return to the kingdom and in a fit of rage Elsa accidentally strike Anna’s heart with her freezing charm and it’s learnt from the chief troll, Pappy that Anna could be recovered only by an act of true love.  How is Anna recovered ? What happens to Elsa and Prince Hans? Did Anna find her true love? What happens to the eternal winter in the kingdom left behind by Elsa?  Did Elsa found the way to control her powers ? Did Kristoff expressed his love to the princess? Watch the movie in a theatre for those answers.

I watched the movie in 3D and it was a good experience. The ice palace, the scenes involving the sledging in the snow mountains, the eternal snow in Erindale are a few worthy spectacles. The antics by the snowman Olaf keeps you in entertained. What I personally liked about the movie was the unconventional story line from that of the fairy tales. Added to it the numerous songs/jingles with a vivid animation makes the movie more attractive.

So grab your popcorn and sitback and enjoy “FROZEN” this winter !!

Pizza 2 - The Villa - Movie Review

Pizza 2 - The Villa Review
Movies of a particular ‘genre’ is not a quite common scene in tamil cinema. We mostly we end up in a mixed bag of many resulting in a ‘masala’ movie euphemistically called ‘commercial flicks’. Pizza was one ground breaking effort from this. Taking on this franchise, comes in another movie not essentially a sequel but of the same genre.  As usual I was late to this movie as well so better not to comment on how it all started.

Jebin (Ashok Selvan) is a failed business man. Having found his true passion in writing, he tries to find a publisher for his debut novel. With many failed attempts he decides to publish it on his own selling his bequeathed property. That’s in when he is told about a ‘villa’ in puducherry his father (Nazzar) had left behind by the lawyer. But this particular property has an intrigued past disturbing his father to that extent to even destroy it at one point. Having lost his father in coma, he has no clue about this ‘villa’ and sets out to find out on his own with a pretext of selling it to finance his book publishing.

After seeing the antique villa which houses a lot of paintings by his dead father, he decides to write his second novel from there. Impressed by the ‘villa’ his girlfriend, Aarthi (Sanchita) dissuades him from selling it. In the meantime his debut manuscript fetches him a publisher. Ecstatic about it attributing this success to that of the fortunes of the villa, he plays the Grand Victorian piano only to find an old key inside the piano. The variety of the paintings in the villa seems to make sense to him leading him to a forbidden room in the villa for which the key fits in.

 This opens the ‘pandora box’ kind of events in his life. The paintings in the forbidden room seem to influence his life events. This leads him to look out for the past history about the villa. Why is that all previous owners died of insanity ? What influenced their pre-cognition ? What happens to Jebin and his girlfriend ? Did he sell the property ? What do these painting convey ?  - Watch out the movie for those answers. Mind that you have a final twist in the story,  leaving an evident scope for sequel to follow.

If pizza was more of fiction leaving a lot room for fantasy, Pizza2 offers you a lot of facts. The explanations given have been scientifically backed up. But on the other hand you could obviously manipulate the next course of events to a certain extent killing the suspense at times. With very few characters on screen the screenplay is short and crisp. A few actors from Pizza1 have different roles to play in as well. Invariably as in suspense movies, the background score is spooky enough. The cinematography adds to it with minimal lighting.

Though it’s a fresh and fine attempt on the genre, the conventional dresscode for the writer hero (khadi kurti, bespectacled), too much of effort to explain the prospects of the sequel elongating the climax and a few minor flaws could be avoided. Go for it !! It’s worth watching !!