Although the movie has been out since last year,  this past week, I climbed up on the sled and took a wild ride with Anna and Kristoff, in the not so wonderful winter-landscape created by Elsa via her out of control emotions.  Frozen (based on the Hans Christian Anderson classic:  The Snow Queen) has been a runaway hit across all demographics that stretch far beyond tween girls. I actually watched it with my 27 year son who had seen it himself with his 4 year old surrogate son. I knew some of the songs, obviously Let It Go has been an earworm for many and I can belt it out with the best of ’em!

The cartoon cinematography is beautiful, some of the humor Disney-esque tongue in cheek that is appropriate for all ages, but it is the inner landscape of the characters that is most touching. The take away messages are multi-layered and represent the various aspects of human existence. Elsa (the queen) who in a playful, unconscious moment through the use of her ability to turn anything into ice, inadvertently injures her younger sister Anna.  She then hides herself away in a metaphorical and literal fortress of solitude lest she do any more harm. Anna feels rejected and can’t understand why her sister with whom she had once been close, has shut her out. She herself, has fallen into a sleep of forgetfulness as predicted by an elder who is part of a tribe of stone people she is to meet later in the film.

When the time comes for Elsa to come of age and coronated as queen of Arendelle, since both of their parents were killed years earlier in a storm at sea, she cautiously steps out into the light of day until, once again, emotion overtakes her when being confronted with the idea that her sister plans to marry a man she just met that day. So desperate for love, Anna was literally willing to give away the keys to the kingdom. Angry, Elsa casts Arendelle into a state of eternal winter. Anna goes off in search of her sister and encounters Kristoff (an ice harvester who first appears in the beginning of the film as a child), his moose Sven and Olaf- a snowman that Elsa had made when the sisters were young. He loves ‘warm hugs’ and fantasizes about living in a toasty climate, not knowing that it would mean his demise.

The ideas of emotional control, shutting them down for fear that they can do harm, personal sacrifice, unveiling the shadow, and the certainty that love can thaw the hardest of hearts may be revelations for people For The First Time In Forever.