"The Snow Queen" is a Russian animated movie based on Hans Christian Andersen's original story of the same name. The Snow Queen herself (later named Irma) is attempting to destroy all of the world's current wizards and their offspring as they are the only people on Earth who could defeat her. She mistakenly orphans two siblings of the very last wizards and as time goes on her power grows. She finds out from her haunted mirror that those children have grown up and have potential to destroy her. The children, Gerda and Kai, are unaware they are siblings, and once they learn who they are, they are quickly separated. The Snow Queen recruits her slave troll, Orm, to get Gerda to come to her. If he is successful, he will be freed. The rest of the movie is Orm guiding Gerda to the Snow Queen in a journey to save Kai.

The animation of this, while not at the quality of the higher-budget, current Disney movies, is still impressive. For a budget of nearly 9 million dollars, this is very polished. The ice has so many awesome, gritty-looking textures, which in a way, I prefer to the icy textures in a movie like "Frozen" (2013),which are much more reflective than this. The backgrounds of every location also hold a lot of character to them. The locations like the ship stuck in the ice, the castle divided in two, the greenhouse, the caves, and especially the Queen's spiky palace, with the room of mirrors, royal hall, the blizzard outside, and the throne room. The ice palace has so much more character in it than a clean-cut palace. There is more menace and these cool-looking spikes lining the outside of it just add to the look. The character designs are a little too simplistic and wide-eyed for my taste. The few I like are the stag, the white horse, and the Queen herself. While most characters have a rounded design, large eyes, and soft skin, her appearance is more bony and edgy. She has smaller and narrower eyes, thinner lips, icy-textured skin, cold stares, and her dress and hair blend into a snowy fog. Her design is so memorable compared to most of the other representations of Snow Queen, including Elsa herself.

The story is okay; it is your basic buddy road-trip movie, but it does have a little bit of an edge in comparison to what I was expecting. For one thing, the wizards themselves are not blatantly explained to be a type of person, but it is implied that they are all artists, musicians, creators and such, which is definitely inspiring. There are also some mature themes in this of slavery, civil war, identity, hatred, torture. The best parts are when there is either an action scene, a moment between Orm and Gerda where they talk to each other, or even some exposition scenes about the Queen. I am also glad they include the mirror in this story, as that is probably the coolest idea to me in a story.

I must warn you though, this may not be a movie for young children. There are some slight undertones of incest. Because Gerda and Kai are not aware at first that they are family, they both kind of have a crush on each other. Kai paints a picture of Gerda (which could also be interpreted as a vision or dream of her) but Gerda makes sure she looks presentable before she enters Kai's room in the boiler, and hides behind a curtain before he sees her. It is very quick, and can be interpreted differently, but there are undertones.

Characters, again, are very basic, with maybe a few quirks to their personality here and there. For example, the King with the divided court who wants to cut Gerda in half, or the greenhouse keeper with the dead flowers. Gerda herself is your standard good-natured girl who just wants to save her brother, but cares about everyone equally, with a little hint of snark. Kai is just a motive for Gerda to want to go to the Snow Queen. Orm is a jaded, angry troll who is snarky, but he clearly does not want to get on the Queen's bad side. He is the last troll alive, but he was a coward. He wants his freedom, but he knows it comes at the price of taking his only friend to her death. The Snow Queen is the other character with a good backstory. She was once a young wizard with a talent for connecting to nature. When people could not understand who or what she was, they discriminated against her. And when she could not convince them to be a little nicer to her, she found dark magic in the caves and wished upon the waters for the abilities she has now, letting her anger and power consume her.

The background soundtrack is alright, nothing entirely special. However, there is one track that I think is one of the coolest scores for a movie like this. It is the Snow Queen's theme, which is played in the background of her backstory reveal, when she freezes Kai's blood, and when she enters the throne room for the final action scene. It starts in a soft haunting piano theme, while it builds in the number of instruments every time it is played. After the piano, an eerie vocal humming joins in, very ethereal. The instruments continue to climb in the action scene with violins and such. I wish it was available on iTunes, or even YouTube, as I would totally listen to it on repeat.

In the end, I prefer this story to Disney's "Frozen" as I enjoy the ice textures more, the Snow Queen steals every scene she is in, the darker tone and morals set in a bleaker world are more consistent, and the theme of independence Orm learns more and more. It sticks more to the book than "Frozen" and has cooler, darker ideas than it. Most things do not need to be dark, unless they serve a purpose. The darkness in any "Snow Queen" story is necessary. The Snow Queen herself is meant to be a dark, elegant figure of malice and mystery, and this was closer to that than Disney's adaptation.

Gerda, a small girl whose parents have been killed by the evil Snow Queen, sets out on a journey to rescue her only brother Kay from the clutches of the same tyrant. Accompanied by a troll who doesn't really know on which side he is, she must try to put an end to this terrible reign which is about to become invincible.

I have to tell you that although I didn't have high expectations from this one, it managed to disappoint me. The story is as cliché as it is stupid, the replies are for kindergarten, the side characters are as pointless as they are ugly and idiotic, the basic laws of physics don't apply here (the characters walk and run on ice like it's tarmac) while the finale is unconvincing, to say the least. To give you a small example, every single one on that land is against the Queen and her ice age but nobody is willing to do anything about it. Furthermore, they even slow Gerda's quest with their pathetic problems only to pretend to help her by "providing" some material help (which was destroyed by them in the first place).

This movie has one big plus and that is its aspect. It looks absolutely gorgeous from every single angle (except the above mentioned side characters) and although its animations sometimes lack a bit of polish, it still looks great overall. I can't say I enjoyed this movie and I'm only giving it this rating for its appearance and its soundtrack. Everything other than that is not worth mentioning, unfortunately

The models could use some work, and there were cliches here and there, but these characters and story flow are great. And the music is beyond phenomenal.