“DO YOU WANT SOME MALTESERS?” yells the large woman behind me, either oblivious to the fact she's sat in a cinema addressing her ankle-biter or couldn't care less about the audience around her.
I'm trying to watch Frozen, the latest CGI masterpiece from the Disney stable. Their 53rd animated offering is a polished, fun reworking of a Hans Christian Andersen tale The Snow Queen.
The witty script is peppered with interruptions from the human foghorn, broadcasting her thoughts to the whole of Cineworld on an aptly chilly January afternoon.
Thankfully Frozen is good enough to withstand such interruptions. The tale of Elsa, a cursed princess who can create frost and ice opens with her exile after temporarily harming her sister, Anna.
As the years fly by, and the siblings adjust to life without their late parents, the duo clash again when the ice princess kicks off over Anna's shotgun engagement.
Elsa goes off and builds an ice palace (like Dr Manhattan’s crystalline Mars base in Watchmen), while the curse of her icy wrath wreaks havoc on her empire.
Thrown into the mix are Olaf, a cute snowman; ice expert (and potential love interest) Kristoff, and his reindeer, Sven.
They attempt to melt the ice princess’s chilly heart and restore order to the kingdom.
Of course nothing quite goes to plan.
Frozen looks terrific (I saw the 2D version), boasts great songs (Let It Go belted out by the peerless Idina Menzel is an instant classic), and features some witty touches.
Olaf impaled on an icicle made me laugh out loud, mainly because those subversive touches that fly in the face of usual Disney touches linger longer.
The fact I enjoyed it as much as I did considering the unwelcome audience commentary was proof of how good it was.
I'd like to see it again, preferably without the ad libbed surround sound.
