29/07/2011

FROZEN (2010)




If you like the idea of watching a girl pissing herself - set to an uplifting string symphony - then ‘Frozen’ is the film for you.

If you like spotting plot-holes and rushing onto IMDB to write 500 words on how stupid it was that jumping off the chair-lift would be the VERY FIRST THING Dan tried... then ‘Frozen’ is also the film for you.



And why not? The acting in ‘Frozen’ is good. And the story is admirable. Admirable in the way that it happily traps itself in a ridiculous, terrifying-but-boring situation, then gamely tries to make a film out of it. Someone once said the secret of film-making was to "Get your man up a tree. Throw rocks at him. Get him down.” And ‘Frozen’ is the most literal interpretation of this that I have ever seen. Only the tree is a chairlift. And the rocks are wolves. And they’re not thrown. But it’s still quite close.

‘Frozen’, or ‘Chairlift!’ as I would prefer it to be called, starts off with three teens arguing, joking, laughing and generally just wasting screen-time until they pull themselves together and get stuck up the Chairlift! But who will survive and what will become of them?

So – what would you do if you were stuck in a chair-lift? That’s the question we all ask when we watch ‘Chairlift!’. If you’d just jump into a pack of wolves without discussing any options then you’ve got a lot in common with Dan, the first of the chairliftees to (spoiler) die in the most hilarious death I think I’ve ever scene. Apart from Nicolas Cage in The Wicker Man remake obviously.






... and Jon Voight in The Champ.



It’s worth watching the film purely for Dan's death throes alone, as the poor swine howls at the sight of his broken bone protruding from his leg, and then howls even more at the sight of howling wolves turning up and looking a bit peckish. Then, as he's being eaten, he howls.




The laughs even keep coming after Dan dies, as Parker (the girl) recreates the scene from Dumb & Dumber when Jim Carey licks a frozen pole and gets stuck to it.

Then we’ve got the aforementioned pissing scene and some more incredibly exciting stuff as our hapless heroes come up with some innovative-yet-dumb ways of escaping with varying degrees of success. I won’t spoil it for you, but let’s just say the ending is... not all that exciting.

All in all then, fair play to the film-makers in getting themselves stuck up a metaphorical tree and managing to make it laugh out loud funny. If they make a sequel where 3 teenagers take a wrong turning and somehow manage to get themselves stuck up an actual real tree, getting rocks thrown at them, count me in!



If you enjoyed Frozen then you'll also like:

Dumb & Dumber

Alive

Where Eagles Dare

Golden Shower Girls #4