Frozen
Talk about your efficiency savings! We can’t even afford to have separate genres of movie, now; with the addition of Leslie Nielsen, “AWOOOOGA!” sound effects and a slightly different ending, Frozen would function as a perfectly passable parody of itself, a sideways glance at modern moviemaking formula. The car that won’t start. The bus that won’t start. The ski-lift that won’t start. Quickly, then; three attractive young Caucasians go snowboarding (we find them sympathetic because they can’t quite afford it). A quick skip down the scriptwriting bunny slope later and they’re stuck in a ski-lift halfway up the slope in the middle of the night.
“Well, why don’t they…” Oh, but there’s no point in going through all that. The biggest strain on the viewer’s nerves during the whole sorry ordeal isn’t suspense but indignation. Most other movies conjure up some mumbo-jumbo or another to explain why this patently obvious plan won’t work, or that idea is impractical. Frozen doesn’t accord the viewer even the peremptory respect of dismissing his solutions; and when it does, it’s with the frank disingenuity of a peevish Dungeon Master.
The figure is apt. This movie comes right from the “Imagine” school of filmmaking, as practiced by groups of bloodythirsty teenagers sitting around a backyard lantern worldwide. “Imagine if….”, “Yeah, imagine THEN!….” For 70 minutes our heroes are plagued by a senseless succession of bland and cruel indignities like peons in a god-game grown boring; the wolves, the weather, the liquid waste. And in the meantime? Oh, the usual. The woman shrieks. Someone makes a speech about how he’s “going out there”. Blame is passed unaccountably around in a vapid game of Recrimination Tag. Deaths occur, are mourned and are promptly processed with a side salad elegaic anecdote. Someone makes a speech about what he’s going to do “as soon as he gets out of this mess”. String music. Somebody will notice that we’re gone! Nobody will notice that we’re gone! Someone makes a speech about regrets. We can’t just die up here! Somebody will come! People don’t just freeze to death on ski-lifts!
The last of these at least is a valid point, and would have looked well at the start of the movie rather than at the end – possibly even at the start of scriptwriting – but hey, it’s not like you can get your money back now, and you still ate all the popcorn, so whaddya gonna do? Fuck off home and go to sleep, maybe there’s something better on next week.