The Snow Queen

Year of release : 1995

Run time : 1h18m

Genre : Family / Adventure / Musical

Voices of : Helen Mirren, Hugh Laurie, Imelda Staunton

The British animation was co-written, directed and produced by Martin Gates, and has a sequel released in 1996 titled “The Snow Queen’s revenge”.

The animation is adapted from the 1844 Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale “The Snow Queen”.

The animation opens with grandmother telling the brother and sister Tom and Ellie the story of the Snow Queen and her army of trolls. Tom is very talented at doing puzzles, very kind to his sister and animals.

At the North Pole, in the Snow Queen’s ice castle we find out she only has 3 trolls who look like humans, that she overworks, as although she has magic powers she makes them do everything around the place. She also has an army of bats (?!) which is ironic, considering bats love warm temperatures, and hibernate or migrate in cold weather, as they feed on insects. Also, what is the Snow Queen and her trolls eating? Fish?

Anyway, this Snow Queen is asking her trolls to put her large, magic mirror on top of a mountain, so all the light from the sun would be reflected away from the world, so it would be eternal winter and darkness.

Unluckily, this plan doesn’t go well, as the mirror falls off the mountain and shatters to pieces, two of them falling into Tom’s eye and heart.

The moment this happens Tom turns mean to everyone, his sister, the animals..and when the Snow Queen comes for him, as her bats found all the broken mirror pieces except for the two inside him, he leaves with her.

Ellie decides to go after him, immediately (as she doesn’t need anything, like cold weather clothes, food, grown-ups), and is joined by the Peeps bird her brother was feeding.

Walking through snow, she reaches an oasis, a beautiful place looking like a spring cottage, where a hag lives, who after offering her shelter reveals she wants Ellie’s heart so she can become young.

With Peeps’ help Ellie manages to get away, and after, she meets 2 large birds, who take her to a palace, as they think Tom might be the boy their princess is marrying (after a 5 year engagement) as he passed all the tests.

In the meantime, Tom is putting together the queen’s mirror, as being good at puzzles, finding where pieces fit, comes easily to him.

He does hear from the trolls he’s being mean to, that the moment he’ll finish it, the queen will k1ll him to get the last 2 missing pieces.

I don’t know what is it, but the story of the Snow Queen bores me. That doesn’t mean to say the animation isn’t good.

It is definitely aimed at children, with the animal characters, all the human characters being kids, and singing.

The voice actors were good.

I personally didn’t like the soundtrack. It was definitely made for kids.It has that kind of happy music.

The animation took 4 years to make, and was made using traditional 2D cel animation.

You can watch the full animation on the YouTube platform.

Rating : Could have been a contender !