Pro-shot | 2025 | rated PG | starring Laura Dawkes, Samantha Barks, Craig Gallivan, Jammy Kosongo, Oliver Ormson | directed by Michael Grandage, Brett Sullivan | 1 hr 51 mins | 3 1/2 out of 5 stars |
One of the distinguishing characteristics of Disney’s 2013 smash animated film Frozen was that it was staged like a Broadway musical in animated form. A call back to the 90s Disney renaissance musical with a Disney princess twist. It came at a time when it’s twist on true love’s kiss was novel and clever and characters could still sing wistfully about falling in love even if it wasn’t the be-all and end-all. By 2025 we took that message and ran down the wrong path with it. Romance has been destroyed; love is looked down upon and the women of TikTok would be giving Princess Anna bird-hand lectures about how she needs to fight the patriarchy by conning some guy to chisel her ice. Less than a decade old, Frozen‘s story feels like a work from the past.
This pro-shot, which despite the title was filmed in London’s West End, represents Disney mounting considerable resources to bring the animated world of this story to the stage, with every trick in the live theater book to allow its actors to perform literal magic in front of a live audience. It’s a grand-scale production with sliding sets, rolling bridges, lighting snow effects, and impressive wig and costume quick changes. It’s also a skillfully, if a bit invasive, pro-shot with the camera perfectly framing the actors faces in close-up and even shooting from the back of the stage against the audience. I always caution that a pro-shot is a very different experience than a live show because we’re seeing what the director wants us to see and not what your eye can take in as it roams the stage, so the parts where Frozen blends live theater with a cinematic lens has a bit of a claustrophobic feel, but it is undeniably well shot.
The fun thing about live theater is how innovative it can be to pull off certain special effects live in front of an audience without the help of post-production or CGI inserts. To that extent, Frozen is a spectacular production that looks exactly like what you would get when the biggest entertainment company pumped millions of pounds into it. What would otherwise be cleverly illuded to in another production is literal in this one. The sets are huge including a large icy bridge that rolls across the stage. The special effects are confounding illusions. I’m still unclear how these girls conjured up snow in their hands or how Samanth Bank’s Elsa pulls off the fastest quick change in theater history.
The big feat here is actually the performances. Banks (Les Miserables) channels the pathos and guilt of Elsa, but it’s Laura Dawkes’ Anna who deliver’s the show’s star-making performance. She’s terrific and if Broadway were used as a talent incubator for Hollywood she would have agents at her door with movie roles. Elsewhere, Craig Gallivan takes the show-stealing comic relief role as the on-stage puppeteer behind Olaf and he’s just as good as Josh Gad.
Where movies are about efficient storytelling, theater is about giving everyone their moment, a medium that allows for detours where minor characters pour their heart out in song. We get a few original songs in the show, but nothing compared to the hold-overs from the film. And that’s basically what Frozen is, a live stunt, a well-made cash-in for a popular movie. It’s kind fun and it’s well done, but it’s also flabby in the story department in the way plays usually are. It’s an opportunity for a kid to see some of their favorite songs form the movie performed live on stage, and that it accomplishes. As a pro-shot on Disney plus, it functions as a backdoor to the same thing Disney has been doing for the last decade: remaking all their cartoons in live action. As someone who doesn’t think live action is inherently superior to animation, that animation is an art all on its own just as live theater is, it’s hard to sell this version of Frozen when the superior animated version is just right over there.