Just a week after Tom Hanks reached deep into Walt Disney’s heart in Saving Mr Banks, the studio’s latest blockbuster animation arrives as pure as snow.

And Frozen is a fabulously festive, funny and enjoyable return to form that Walt would surely have adored.

Haunted by how her ability to create ice and snow from her fingertips once nearly killed her equally pretty sibling, the grown-up Princess Elsa (Idina Menzel) is feeling increasingly isolated.

But after the King and Queen are lost at sea, Elsa reluctantly emerges to claim the throne. Unfortunately, her gloves come off  on coronation day and the locals witness her powers, branding her a witch.

She flees into the snowy mountains to live alone in a castle of ice.

Younger sister Anna gives chase, leaving the kingdom in the hands of her trusted sweetheart Prince Hans (Santino Fontana).

As she ascends towards Elsa’s hideaway, Anna meets hunky ice trader Kristoff (Jonathan Groff), his loyal reindeer Sven and a blissfully naive talking snowman called Olaf (Josh Gad).

Loosely based on The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen and co-directed by Chris Buck (Tarzan) and Jennifer Lee (the writer of Wreck-it Ralph), Frozen has an energy and a style that is, at times, simply breathtaking.

Some of the animation is jaw-dropping, while the score will underpin a sense of genuine peril for younger viewers who will be shocked by the source of the film’s darkest villainy.

And, yet, despite the film reaching new heights of easy-to-watch 3D technical excellence even for Disney, it just falls short of becoming an all-time classic.

The ice formations, snowstorms and giant waves are brilliantly animated, yet the characters’ round eyes remain so fixed they even make Barbie look real.

Written by husband-and-wife team Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, the songs feel like a stage version waiting to happen – less the Walt Disney of old, more High School Musical.

After pioneering the leap into digital animation by directing Pixar’s Toy Story (1995), has the studio’s executive producer John Lasseter – the film’s latter day Walt – been playing safe again?

Frozen just needed a tad more courage to maximise the potency of its own chilling convictions.

Had the icy transformations, the shadows, the devilment and the edge-of-seat action all been sustained for longer at the expense of the odd spoonful of sugar it would have been untouchable in the modern era.

However, Frozen thankfully recovers from any periods where its core purpose seems to be in danger of melting away.

The ending is terrific.

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