Frozen (2013) - Lee, Buck et al. triumph with fabulous Disney adventure favorite

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+ Best Family Movie of the Year + Best Mega-hit Movie of the Year + Best Musical of the Year + Most Profitable Movie of the Year: 362.32 mil. $ range

An uninformative but beautiful and anticipation-building ice crystal-centered poster for Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee's Frozen

Two beautiful princess sisters in the high north are alienated, because the one of them, Elsa, has to protect the world from her curse, freezing capabilities.

Frozen is written by great debuting Rhode Islander co-writer/director Jennifer Lee (Wreck-It Ralph (2012, screenwriter)), with co-director Chris Buck (Tarzan (1999)) and Shane Morris (The Dukes of Hazzard: The Beginning (2007, TV movie)) supplying story elements, based on fairytale The Snow Queen (1845) by Hans Christian Andersen (The Little Mermaid (1837)).
It is a fabulously good-looking, hyper-detailed, delightfully colorful adventure with fantastical songs, - mega-hit Let It Go is only the biggest and most well-known of them. It is also funny and has enchanting romance and feeling. Frozen is near-perfect Disney-type movie magic.

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2013 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED VI] 

Jennifer Lee: Wreck-It Ralph (2012) - Original story gets lost in benign but overly flashy animation (co-writer)

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 150 mil. $
Box office: 1,280.8 mil. $
= Mega-hit (returned 8.53 times its cost)
[Frozen premiered 10 November (New York International Children's Film Festival) and runs 102 minutes. Development began in the late 1990s, with Megan Mullally first attached as Elsa. Several Norwegian landmarks are shown in the film, and Norway is the biggest inspiration for its look. The film opened #22 to a 243k $ first weekend in 1 theater in North America, where it widened the following week to #2 and 93.5 mil. $ from 3,742 theaters, behind The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, subsequently spending another 13 weeks in the top 5, 2 of which were at #1, grossing 400.7 mil. $ (31.3 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Japan with 249 mil. $ (19.4 %) and South Korea with 76.6 mil. $ (6 %). It became the highest-grossing animation and musical of all time until The Lion King (2019). Bloomberg Business calculated the film's total cost (including production, marketing and distribution expenses) at 323-350 mil. $; Deadline Hollywood calculated the film's profits at over 400 mil. $. The film won 2 Oscars: Best Animation and Best Song (Let It Go). It also won 1/2 Golden Globe nominations, 2/3 BAFTA noms, 2/3 Grammy noms and many other honors. According to Excipio, a copyrights infringement-tracking site, the film was the 2nd most illegally downloaded of 2014, behind The Wolf of Wall Street, with almost 30 mil. downloads. The home video release still broke records: becoming the fastest-selling digital release at the time in North America, where it also sold enormous 18 mil.units, including 7.5 mil. blu-rays, accruing more than 308 mil. $ domestically alone. The success was such that a global merchandise shortage ran through most of 2014: Disney sold more than 3 mil. Frozen costumes in North America alone; more than 8 mil. Frozen books were sold by August 2014. The filmmakers and cast returned for smash hit sequel Frozen II (2019). Lee and Buck returned with Frozen Fever (2015, short) before their theatrical return Frozen II (2019). Kristen Bell (Zootopia (2016)) returned in Parks and Recreation (2013-14)) and theatrically in Veronica Mars (2014); Jonathan Groff (Looking (2016, TV movie)) in 2 shorts and a TV movie before his theatrical return in American Sniper (2014); Idina Menzel (Rent (2005)) in 10 TV, short and video game credits before her theatrical return in Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018). Frozen is certified fresh at 90 % with a 7.69/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Frozen?

Wreck-It Ralph (2012) - Original story gets lost in benign but overly flashy animation

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The festive poster with kapow value for Rich Moore's Wreck-It Ralph

 

Ralph (John C. Reilly (Chicago (2002))), the arcade computer game character of the game Wreck-It Ralph, is tired of being a lonely outsider in his world, who only gets to smash things to smithereens. So he leaves his game to win a medal. - But his decision lands everyone else in the arcade game world in deep trouble!

 

Wreck-It Ralph begins as a fresh, original and really funny idea. But it later turns out to have some real problems: Sarah Silverman's (Masters of Sex (2014-16)) girly character and the villain King Candy (voiced by Alan Tudyk (Wonder Boys (2000))) are both boring, and it is as though Wreck-It Ralph gets lost in the candy world which much of it plays out in. It indulges in flashy animation for its own sake and attempts to pull an edifying story out of the mess in the end, which as a result feels cheap.

Before this meltdown, though, Wreck-It Ralph provides enough lavish and computer game-enthusiastic fun to make it worth seeing. Jane Lynch (Rio (2011)) and Jack McBrayer (Bad Night (2015)) are both fun, with the latter building on his Southern-charm trademark.

The film is written by Phil Johnston (Zootopia (2016)) and Jennifer Lee (Frozen (2013)) and directed by feature-debuting Rich Moore (Zootopia).

 

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 165 mil. $

Box office: 471.2 mil. $

= Box office success

[Wreck-It Ralph premiered October 29 (El Capitan Theatre, Hollywood) and runs 101 minutes. The concept for Wreck-It Ralph was developed first by Disney in the late 1980s, and was redeveloped and reconsidered several times before the film that came to be. Moore was hired based on his previous work directing animated TV-series such as The Simpsons (1990-93)) and Futurama (1999-01)). Wreck-It Ralph contains an estimated 188 individual character cameos from a wide variety of real and imaginary computer-games. The film opened #1 to a 49 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it stayed in the top 5 for a total of 3 weeks and grossed 189.4 mil. $ (40.2 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were the UK with 36.1 mil. $ (7.7 %) and Japan with 29.6 mil. $ (6.3 %). Wreck-It Ralph was the 14th highest-grossing film and the 4th highest-grossing animation of the year. Roger Ebert gave it 3/4 stars, equal to a notch better than this review. The film was Oscar-nominated for Best Animated Feature, which it lost to Brave, and for the same Golden Globe, also lost. A sequel is in the works for a 2017 release. Wreck-It Ralph is certified fresh at 86 % with a 7.6 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Wreck-It Ralph?