(Seriously, I'm spoiling more than a broken meat freezer. If you haven't seen it yet, stop reading and go fucking see it. You will not regret it.)

Oh my God.

This movie.

It's not often that I fanboy so hard over Disney movies not named Lion King, but seriously, this movie is fantastic, and I'm not even exaggerating. It might even be my favorite Disney movie (I'll have to wait for the DVD so I can watch it even more before deciding this). Why all the praise? Well, let's do this the right way; with a list!

The Visuals:

The animation is, to put it simply, beautiful. While relatively simple, the faces show a spectacular amount of emotion. Look at all the different expressions we see, especially on Elsa and Anna. Even in something as short as the ~3 minute song Let it Go, Elsa shows spectacular emotion through body language alone. Seriously, watch the song on YouTube, but mute it. You can see how she runs the spectrum, from fear and sadness, to innocent joy and excitement as she finds she can use her power without repercussions, to that sexy confidence and elation as she realizes that on the mountain, alone, she has no limits. Anna has an equally expressive face. Just watch her closely during the various Do You Want to Build a Snowman songs.

The minor characters have great animation. Hans' change from good to evil can be fairly clearly seen in his face. Even after he's revealed, but is still acting good, you can kinda see tinges of bad in his face (although that may just be because we already knew he's acting). Even Olaf has quite an expressive face, seeing as he's a snowman.

And while body language is often subtle, the grand, impressive side of the visuals are equally great. The wispiness of the conjured snow is quite a feat, making it look like snow would really look. As any animator can attest to, making things like wind and water look realistic is quite difficult. At the same time, we have the ice creations, grand and intricate, with very well-done lighting.

The ice can be used as a pretty good indication of Elsa's mental state, as well. In the very beginning, when the ice is a source of childplay, it's simple and yet beautiful. Innocent. After she has to conceal her powers, the ice becomes spiky and chaotic, looking more like natural ice. When she accidentally freezes the fountain while running from the castle, it looks dangerous, with downward spikes looming over the people. When she escapes to the mountain, things change greatly. The ice drops in the trees (to which Anna and Kristoff both comment on how beautiful they are), and of course, her ice palace. When told about the eternal winter Arendale is in, she creates the snow golem, a crude version of Olaf, created out of fear and a desire to distance herself from humanity, rather than innocent playfulness. Her ice turns even more threatening, and even turns red, when she's in fear for the lives of her people and her sister. The ice she uses while fighting the two assassins is spiky like the old ice, but less chaotic, more calculated and direct, showing that instead of fear, she is being controlled by her anger. This culminates in the giant storm at the end. She mentions "the storm inside" several times, and that she has to conceal it, but after nearly killing her sister and seeing the true damage she's done to Arendale, she can no longer contain the storm and it comes out. When Anna freezes completely, the storm stops and the snow hangs in the air; Elsa's entire world has stopped. At the end, with all the happiness and reconciliation, the fountains become beautiful ice sculptures.

The Sounds:

The voice acting is pretty great, although I must confess, I was hoping for more accents, especially after the opening number, Frozen Heart. The only Scandinavian accent was from the comic relief character, Oaken (although I must admit, he was pretty funny). If they all had American/British accents, it would've been fine, but then we have the trolls, half of which sound like black women from the south. Not being racist or anything, but why are there southern black trolls in medieval Norway?

Other than that, the movie makes good use of both sound and silence to convey emotion.

And of course, the songs. Mother of God, the songs. Okay, so they're not all perfect, and some are a little too show-tuney for me, but most of the songs involving Elsa and Anna are great, especially their duets. For the First Time in Forever is great, especially the reprise, when Anna confronts Elsa in the ice palace. The musical conversation portrays all the conflicting emotions very well.

And of course, Let it Go is sublime. I've been looping it for over an hour while writing this, and it's just as good each time. probably my favorite Disney song ever, except for maybe Be Prepared

Something else that's pretty freaking cool; the song writers actually went to Norway to learn about Norwegian musical and vocal techniques, and incorporated them into the music.

The Humor:

The humor was actually a lot better than I thought it would be, though I didn't realize this until I had seen it a second time. At first, I thought Olaf would just be an annoying comic relief character. And he kind of was, until I got past his somewhat annoying voice and really listened to him. The timing on his lines is great, and his Summer song is full of subtle jokes, a second layer of humor under the obvious "snowman who longs for summer because he's never actually experienced it" concept.

Although, one thing I will say, I'm getting tired of non-dog animals acting like over-the-top dogs. Maximus in Tangled, Sven in Frozen... it's okay for animals to be funny, but not if you use the same (somewhat weak) joke multiple times.

The Story:

Often the deciding factor of any movie, because very few movies have visuals or sounds so amazing that they can make up for a bad story (Avatar came close. It was kinda good). Frozen has a great story, and perhaps my favorite part of it is that it avoids almost every Disney princess cliche, and does it well.

Sure, we have a damsel in distress, but of a totally different kind. Elsa lives in constant fear that she'll hurt others, and it keeps her imprisoned. I've heard some say that her parents were bad for keeping her locked up, but really, Elsa seemed fully on board with it. She didn't want to hurt anyone ever again, and it terrified her as her powers grew. Her almost irrational attachment to her gloves showed just how important it was to her that her powers never show. All of her isolation is self-imposed.

The movie makes fun of the cliche of love at first sight, and although it does seem to go with it for a bit, the audience knows full well that Hans isn't going to be Anna's true love. Of course, almost nobody was expecting him to go full douchebag and try to kill her for the throne. After that, everybody expected Kristoff to be the true love, which makes perfect sense for Disney (and Olaf even comments on this). But again, the audience is wrong. The true love ends up being the unconditional, family love between the two sisters. Since when has that showed up in a Disney movie? And the fact that Anna's own act is what saves her also sets it apart. Throughout Disney history, whenever love is needed to save somebody, it's always been the Damsel in Distress being saved by somebody else truly loving her; but in Frozen, she's saved by the love she herself feels for her sister. If using the very last of your life to save the life of the person who killed you in the first place because she's family isn't true love, I don't know what is.

It doesn't even adhere to the classic "overcome your fear" route. Elsa actually does very little work on her own to overcome her fears. Sure, she has her happy, ignorantly blissful moments, but once she learns of the plight Arendale is in, the fact that she can still hurt others no matter where she is comes crashing home. Her fears are magnified, because even isolation can't stop her. She clings to this belief in later parts of the movie, when she tries to flee Arendale the second time (after she gets captured) and go even further than before. It's almost like a Shakespearean tragedy, in that she never wins on her own. No matter what Elsa does, it ends up bad. And in fact, the story could work very well if Anna simply died at the end (but it's Disney so they obviously couldn't end it on such a low note). They didn't even go the less Dinsey, yet still pretty cliche, route of the misunderstood person coming to terms with their own dark powers and ending up evil, or at least not good. Elsa could easily have been written into a villain (and though I haven't read it, as far as I know, the character she's based on from the original Snow Queen fairy tail was the villain). But she remained good, with all of her bad actions stemming from her all-consuming fear. Which is ironic, really; every time she hurts somebody, it's because she's scared that she will hurt them, and the fear causes her to lose control.

Never been good at conclusions, so I'll end with this.

If you haven't seen it yet, go see it.

And if you've seen it and don't like it, well...