Snow Queen (2002)

I bought this film thinking it was a foreign import that I had seen many years ago, but nonesuch was the case. The film I was looking for was "The Polar Bear King", a Norwegian production dealing with a very similar story about a young princess searching for her abducted prince."Snow Queen" however, is not set in the middle ages, but circa 1900 in the cold reaches of a Nordic landscape (even though everyone speaks English). We're presented with a sprawling magical epic of young love challenged by the callous heart of a queen who herself seeks to conquer what she already had, but failed to see.There's a lot of subtext and other themes going on here. We see the Snow Queen, and witness her cold manifest itself on both physical, emotional and even spiritual levels. She goes forth and sees that another wants, and covets another's possession. She exercises her power, and so our tale begins. Is she really evil and cold, or is there something missing from her life? Perhaps there's even more to her that we as yet fail to discover? Again, the story reveals all.During the unfolding of the tale our young protagonist ventures forth into a realm that lies "straight on til morning", to borrow from Disney's "Peter Pan". There she meets eccentric antagonists and other characters, mostly female, and mostly with an agenda. Our young heroine must brave, challenge and escape those who pose a roadblock to her ultimate objective.The production values are the usual top notch from Halmark. They don't spare expense when it comes to filming their intimate epics, nor do they waste money on extravagance that will not be used nor seen. We see a town that's in transition from becoming a small intimate affair where everyone knows everyone else, to becoming more of almost a small city ready to latently embrace the industrial revolution that's occurred in the outside world. We see vast wastes of snow capped mountains, and lush green forests and gardens. We see bandits and soldiers and a whole feast of visuals as our gallant heroine moves from one episode of her adventure to another.The cinematography is basic, but unlike a lot of other made for TV movies, is not bland for the sake of expediency. The camera angles are a bit more dynamic and inspired, but not quite the caliber of theatrical release. A combination of good camera usage and quality art direction gives the audience a very sumptuous TV film production.My critique is that it's not the film I wanted, but I enjoyed it for what it was. It's an American film made for American audiences based on some Scandinavian folklore, in regards to a tale that has some role reversal from the familiar tale of Gilgamesh. Everything aside, it is worth a night's viewing if you have nothing better to do.Enjoy.

People comparing this movie to big blockbusters like Lord of the Rings or the Matrix will inevitably be disappointed with the way this movie turned out. Although it lacks in the big special effects department and there are no battles with hundreds of extras, there is still a masterful amalgamation of two old folk tales here. The acting talent, although not A-list, is still great and the interaction between the characters is perhaps more sincere than in a larger movie with an A-list cast. My particular favourite from this movie is Bridget Fonda, whose performance as the Snow Queen herself was quite moving, assisted enormously by a stupendous wardrobe and makeup. She injected humanity and a sense of pathos into the character of the fallen season corrupted by the devil's evil magic. Fonda aside the acting was not what we have come to expect from Hollywood, which I think is a good thing since Hollywood seems to have run out of ideas on how to train its acting talent to portray roles and so they have become stale and reliant on CGI and other special effects to take us away from the actors who all use the same tricks on us. Instead it shows new ideas some real thinking on the part of the actors about how they can find new variations on the the old themes of love and danger.

Hallmark wowed me with Gulliver's Travels back in the day. Even the remake of Snow White, while kind of freakish, but beautiful with Kristin Kreuk in it was a helluva lot better than this lumbering hulk of garbage.That said, please understand that I am a loyalist, and The Snow Queen and The Little Mermaid were my two favorite fairy tales of all time (you could say that Hans Christen Anderson was my first favorite author- I even liked Danny Kaye as Hans in the movie). I disliked the fact that Gerda and Kay(Kai) were so much older, and their little flirtation with romance, it felt heavy handed and false. There's no way that just after a couple of months and one kiss Gerda would chase off after Kay. Even with his silly Help Me note.That said, I think that the bits with Kay and the Snow Queen could have been considerably edited down, and more time spent with Gerda on her travels. I am not sure about the poster who said that there was no robber girl, but there was. I do know that the travelling thru the seasons was added because of the whole "the mirror is the devils creation and he gave it to the seasons..." bs storyline. Which, of course, is utter tripe.As far as being beautifully shot; sure, if you like white. Everything frm the frozen land looked as if it had been sprayed with canned snow, nothing really looked good. I didn't really like what they did to the snow queen; all in all, it was a complete disappointment to me. ESP the fact that I rented it and didn't think to remember that since it was hallmark it was probably a freaking miniseries or at least a two part movie. Christ I have been sitting in front of the tv for close to four hours!Two thumbs down, and a very bad rating. The acting is horrible, and the only thing I truly liked was the clothes.

So this review is probably a year away from its start date but I just saw it on video and feel compelled to say something.The story was awesome, the movie definitely dragged. Bridget Fonda did look good as the snow queen but her acting is off a bit, someone may want to remind her this is a hallmark movie she's in.Gerda and Kai were cute. The made a cute couple.Visually, everything was beautiful. The landscape, the snow, the snow queen - everything.Now I have to read the book again....