Fairy Tale Fridays - Frozen

Disney's latest blockbuster, "Frozen," is the most recent fairy tale adaptation to make it big. And by "adaptation," I mean "loosely based on." "Frozen" takes Hans Christian Andersen's "Snow Queen" as its source material and, I suppose, any chance for people to discover new fairy tales is a good thing. "The Snow Queen" was first published in 1845 and is considered by many to be Andersen's best story. It's also his longest, so I'm not going to share it with you here but I highly recommend you read it. At it's heart "Snow Queen" is a tale of redemption and, despite all of the other changes made to the story for the movie, so is "Frozen."

Disney being Disney, every thing's a bit softer in their adaptation...and cuter. You can be sure there are never talking, comic sidekicks that are animals in fairy tales. And the title character in the source material is evil, whereas her movie descendant is merely frightened and confused. But this particular adaptation has some things going for it that other adaptations didn't - it doesn't take the love of a man to save the girl, it takes the love of a sister.

Speaking of "Frozen' and adaptations, have you finally been able to get the song "Let It Go" unstuck from your brain? Good - here's an adaptation of another "Frozen" song, "Love's An Open Door." If this doesn't make you smile, your heart just might be frozen!


By the way, moms and dads, I don't know if this is good news or not but a sequel to "Frozen" is in the talking phase. Given that it's now become the most successful animated movie ever, you've got to think it's going to happen. From a lover a fairy tales, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for even more material from the original tale to make its way onto the big screen.