La reine des neiges

A Few years ago I saw the Snow Queen on Hallmark, I was absolutely blown away with the story and magic of that adaptation. Thinking that it was the same movie I was disappointed to find I had gotten another telling of the story. Yet I was willing to give it a chance, as I usually love anything made by the BBC. I have to say though I agree that the score of this movie was beautiful, I may have to find a copy somewhere. I was terribly unhappy with the CG animation and acting, you could just tell that the actors were filmed on a blue screen. It felt extremely fake.It was just horrible, it hesitated and you knew from the moment you began that it wasn't real snow. It just felt cheep. The BBC didn't have a winner with this film. It felt rushed as well, even though it was quit close to the original story. If you want to really experience the Snow Queen, please by all means read the story. If your interested in seeing a film that is well made and acted, I recommend the one done on Hallmark,which can be found on Amazon. Steer clear of this film, unless you feel the need to waste an hour. However, if you like classical music do get a CD of this movie the music it's self is really the only good thing in this movie.

The Snow Queen is one of Hans Christian Andersen's best fairy tales. However, there has only been a few adaptations of it, and most are mediocre and childish. This is no exception.

The best thing about this TV special is the musical score; which is so beautiful and mystical it could have come from a classical music piece. I can't say the same for the rest.

This made-for-TV special looks like it was made by a group of college film students. I'm not too sure how much of this is 'real', because it looks like every shot has been superimposed over an Adobe photo edit. Even worse, the motion capture has a weird, jerky style of action that really detracts from any 'magic'. This is proof that CGI can give authentic looking dinosaurs, and encourage some of the shoddiest special effects ever shot.

The character development is so weak that neither sympathy, nor an understanding of personalities is felt. The story mainly skims and summarizes the plot of Andersen's fairy tale, giving the feel of headline news when compared to the original book.

I would normally give an adaptation like this a three, but considering that this is a one hour TV special, a 'major motion picture' style cannot be expected. This gets a four.

This is a confused and confusing adaptation, wherein stylish minimalism substitutes for story and meaningless special effects replace plot elements until the story is more or less completely gone.

A key plot event, for example, entails utterly unexplained and un-anticipatable magical powers being deployed, where Andersen's original invokes more poignant and symbolically instructive natural cycles.

The writers of this adaptation transform a story with powerful symbolic resonance into a bad Saturday morning cartoon.

Instead of this I strongly recommend you seek out some version of the 1959 Lev Atmotov / Nikolai Fyodorov adaptation, which preserves the symbolic power of Andersen's material.

I really wanted to like this movie, especially when I saw that Patrick Stewart was in the cast as the voice of the raven since I'm a long-time Patrick Stewart fan. I realize I'm a snob when it comes to "The Snow Queen." This was one of my all-time favorite children's stories. I also realize that anytime you read a story and create your own image of things, a movie will have a hard time living up to your creation. That being said, I really enjoyed "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe" but, alas, I cannot say the same for this movie.

The CG effects were cool but distractingly obvious. It was sort of like watching somebody's first attempt at a video production using CG. Gerda's mother was played by an actress (Juliet Stevenson) I had seen before but couldn't remember where. To give a gauge as to how emotionally engaging the movie was, I spent most of the movie trying to figure out where I had seen her before.

I would say that, for young children not familiar with the original story, this would be a good 'pop it in the VCR for an hour so I can get some cleaning done' movie. But if it wins any awards, I'd be shocked.

Every generation of directors and children's TV programmers seems destined to try their hand at Hans Christian Anderson's Snow Queen, this version is one of the best.

Filmed with a mixture of animation and live acting, it manages to capture the spirit of early eastern-European animations and graphic novels, the unreal backdrops suggest a stage performance, and the jerky motion, marionettes. Combined with a wonderful score written by Paul K. Joyce (and performed by the Royal Philharmonic), this is certainly an adaptation children will love, and continue to be entertained by for years to come.

Although some parts of the story which are skimmed over could have had more time spent on them (and it's possible some adults will be expecting Disney and fail to see past the computer imagery), it's good to remember that this is a story to be enjoyed, not studied, and its for kids who probably wouldn't want it to drag on.

All in all this is a very worthy production, there are far worse ways to spend an hour of the holiday period.