Entertainment

How Disney’s ‘Frozen’ ruined my life

Because I’m a film critic, last fall Disney sent over an early DVD of “Frozen” — free.

Thanks, Disney! So far that freebie has cost me maybe $900.

I have two little girls, ages 6 and 2, and each of them has seen “Frozen” at least four times as many times as I ever saw “Star Wars.” The apartment is bursting with “Frozen” storybooks, “Frozen” coloring books, “Frozen” dolls, “Frozen” stickers, “Frozen” games, “Frozen” puzzles, “Frozen” costumes and “Frozen” nightgowns.

We have three of those nighties — for two kids. How did that happen? Among the many, many “Frozen” books in the house are two different “Frozen” Little Golden Books — long version and short version. (As I write this, the shorter one is the No. 5 best-selling book on Amazon.) To paraphrase Roy Scheider confronting a similarly all-consuming menace in “Jaws,” we’re going to need a bigger apartment.





Sometimes when my 2-year-old wakes up, “Elsa?” is the first thing she says in the morning. It’s a simple one-word request meaning, “Fire up the ‘Frozen’ DVD and nobody gets hurt.”

And when it’s time to go to bed, she refuses to stop caterwauling until her mom comes in and sings “Let It Go.” (She sings along, sort of: “Awww gooooooooooo! Awwww gooooooo!”) For a mandatory encore, my wife sings, “Do You Want To Build a Snowman?” (Our daughter doesn’t know any of the words in the song, but never fails to hit her cue for imitating the tick-tock sound Anna makes when she’s under the grandfather clock.)

The kid has a vocabulary of maybe 20 words — and two of them are “Elsa” and “Anna.” (Last night, she added a 21st: “Dizzy,” for Disney.)





Last Sunday, I found my attention wandering away from a pretty exciting Giants football game because I got a ping about a sweet deal at Target for an Anna-and-Elsa comforter ($29.99!). Target’s website offers 196 “Frozen” items. We don’t have all of them. Yet.

In theory, we buy our kids all the crap they want to keep them happy — that is, sedated in a Disney stupor — so we can relax and watch a Giants game. But “Frozen” has turned my sweet daughters into mad merch-munching dragons who get all the hungrier the more we feed them.





A few weeks ago our family went to what we thought would be a nice dinner party on Shelter Island. Our toddler spotted a small hole in the deck and wondered if her tiny, freshly purchased 2-inch Elsa doll would fit through it.

It did!

As she wailed, I spent the next hour trying to fish the thing out with a fondue fork covered with sticky tape. I’ve had more fun raking leaves than I did at that party. And when we went back to Target to get another tiny Elsa doll to replace the one now permanently entombed under a beach-house deck? Sold out. Screaming ensued.





Both girls, natch, want to be Elsa for Halloween. We already have the costumes. Which may be worn out by then.

What is with the Elsa obsession, anyway? Anna is way cuter, braver and more honorable (she runs toward her responsibilities; Elsa runs away from them). She has a better sense of humor and is much less of a beeyotch than Elsa — the Anna Wintour of the fjords. Are my daughters destined to grow up into ice-hearted loners who think a sparkly Windex-blue dress and a haughty air are appropriate responses to having magical powers?

As we embark on Year Two of the “Frozen” Era, Disney is no doubt gearing up to release a new batch of Elsa merch in time for the holidays. And my bank account is dissolving faster than Olaf on the Fourth of July.

Girls, sorry about that college fund we keep meaning to start for you. And here’s my advice for coping with the job market of the future without a college degree: Seek help from those magical trolls in the forest.





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Filed under frozen , 9/24/14