I kind of assumed this was supposed to be a knockoff of "Frozen" (despite coming out earlier), but apparently not. In any event, like the original fairy tale, it's a bit muddled with unnecessary side plots, some of which go nowhere; the royal family scene was particularly pointless. The idea of people who have magical artistic abilities was interesting, but also doesn't really go anywhere; the father's magic mirror is important, true, but the Snow Queen is supposed to want Kai and Gerda because they're potential artists and thus a threat to her. Kai draws pictures, and Gerda I THINK is supposed to have some special affinity with flowers, but neither of these winds up saving the day or anything.
The animation is a bit iffy on the humans, but the scenery is much better; there are also some 2D scenes (the troll back story and Creative Closing Credits) that are quite good. The characters don't really have much time to grow, except for Orm the Troll, who's probably the most interesting, despite some moments of being annoying comic relief. (Apparently he's starring in the sequel.) The robber team, led by a bickering mother and daughter, was also kind of cool, but again, that's one of the subplots that Gerda wanders into and then leaves without much impact on the main story.
Overall, I enjoyed it. It wasn't amazing, but it was better than I expected it to be. If you have streaming on Netflix and 76 minutes of free time, give it a watch.
Animation Better Than It Looked
I kind of assumed this was supposed to be a knockoff of "Frozen" (despite coming out earlier), but apparently not. In any event, like the original fairy tale, it's a bit muddled with unnecessary side plots, some of which go nowhere; the royal family scene was particularly pointless. The idea of people who have magical artistic abilities was interesting, but also doesn't really go anywhere; the father's magic mirror is important, true, but the Snow Queen is supposed to want Kai and Gerda because they're potential artists and thus a threat to her. Kai draws pictures, and Gerda I THINK is supposed to have some special affinity with flowers, but neither of these winds up saving the day or anything.
The animation is a bit iffy on the humans, but the scenery is much better; there are also some 2D scenes (the troll back story and Creative Closing Credits) that are quite good. The characters don't really have much time to grow, except for Orm the Troll, who's probably the most interesting, despite some moments of being annoying comic relief. (Apparently he's starring in the sequel.) The robber team, led by a bickering mother and daughter, was also kind of cool, but again, that's one of the subplots that Gerda wanders into and then leaves without much impact on the main story.
Overall, I enjoyed it. It wasn't amazing, but it was better than I expected it to be. If you have streaming on Netflix and 76 minutes of free time, give it a watch.