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Snow Queen (TV) More at IMDbPro »

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26 reviews in total

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18 out of 28 people found the following review useful:
strong love, mixed with the magic of fairy tales, 19 December 2004

Author: Aprodia from Sofia, Bulgaria

I have probably watched the movie 4 or 5 times. Every time, i get more and more impressed by how far the wish of a young heart can go, and the strenght of both Kai and Gertha to struggle for what they believe in.

And the whole story is presented in such a way, you just get transfered into the plot and before you know it, you are there. you can see... yeah, there's Kai... working hard on the mirror... a little jump.... there's Gertha, fighting for her love..... and there's the Snow Queen...

it's just a wonderful mix of love, adventure, tension.

it's brilliant 10 out of 10

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10 out of 13 people found the following review useful:
An excellent adaption of a well known fairy story, 31 December 2006

Author: rats_rox from New Zealand

This is possibly one of my favorite films. It tells the tale of a girl named Gerda (Chelsea Hobbs) who lost her mother at a very young age, so has been bought up by her father. She falls in love with the bell boy named Kai. However, on her birthday the snow queen (Bridget Fonda) comes the the hotel which her father owns and kidnaps Kai. Gurda then goes after Kai, and follows him through the four seasons in an attempt to rescue him.

I thought that this was an excellent adaption of the story with great performances from all the cast. It has wonderful special effects and the story fits together very well and is easy to follow. I think that it is a great film for all the family to enjoy. I have watched it every time t has been on since it came out and have never tired of it which is why I have given it a 10!

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7 out of 10 people found the following review useful:
The SLOW Queen, 28 December 2002

Author: LeMarchand from England

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Sometimes Hallmark can get it right - like The 10th Kingdom - but many of their fantasy films plod, and this falls into the latter category. The version I saw may have been cut (a demon [?] shown in the trailer and publicity stills didn't appear), but anything that made the movie shorter can only be a blessing.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS IF YOU ARE UNFAMILIAR WITH THE ORIGINAL FAIRY TALE:

Anyway, the film updates the story to the early part of the 20th Century (?), and makes Gerda and Kay (here called Kai - being a Lexx fan, I kept expecting him to say, `The Dead do not solve puzzles') 18 year olds. Hans Christian Andersen's basic story is followed: the boy gets a shard of ice in his eye, goes bad, is taken off by the Snow Queen to solve a puzzle in her palace and Gerda goes to find him, having various adventures on the way.

As the two main characters are older than in the original, a lot of time is spent getting them together and `in love'. Unfortunately, I was never convinced that they were particularly in love, and certainly not enough in love to make sense of Gerda's quest. By the time the main plot kicks in, the movie's pace has slowed to a crawl. Alas, when Gerda begins her search for Kai, it only manages to pick up the pace to a leisurely stroll.

There are a few odd additions to the story that seem to go nowhere. At the start of the film the Snow Queen kills Gerda's mother, but no explanation for this is given. A polar bear living in the Snow Queen's palace is more than he seems (though this is possibly because the producers realised that the bear's feelings towards the Snow Queen would be OK in a Fairy Tale, but not in a modern film). Again, this is never explained. Also, hints that the Snow Queen has an erotic desire for Kai are dropped, but never followed through. The script is also full of anachronisms that really jar you out of the `fairy tale' mood.

The production looks good, though there is evidence of penny-pinching: the Snow Queen's palace is the hotel where Gerda and Kai lived covered in ice. The three main characters are played with varying degrees of success: Kai comes across as bland as does Gerda initially, but once she sets off to find Kai you warm to her. Bridget Fonda looks great as the Snow Queen, but seems to be in a different movie to everyone else.

Ultimately, the film is unsatisfying. It looks good, but drags and lacks magic.

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11 out of 19 people found the following review useful:
A film to remember....., 16 October 2003

Author: Stl Vouz

Complete entertainment! Although there are many strange things in the movie that the fairy tale itself doesn't have them including the autumn characters (mother and daughter) the general concept rocks.

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12 out of 21 people found the following review useful:
Lots of Art, Not much Script, 13 October 2004

Author: ixtoploplcatl from Philly

This 3-hour made-for-TV miniseries came home with us from Blockbuster's this weekend. The production company clearly spent a lot of money on sets, costuming (Bridget Fonda, especially), and special effects (including a great Jim Henson talking polar bear & reindeer). They should have spent a bit more money getting a coherent script. The story line was so loose that it really never came together. One can overlook Irish-accented Germans, but not herky-jerky storytelling. With senseless loose ends which included a special guest appearance by the Devil, this one is certainly not destined to be a Christmas Classic. A shame that they wasted good performances by the two female leads.

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2 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
Another fine Halmark production., 17 June 2011
Author: Blueghost from The San Francisco Bay Area

I bought this film thinking it was a foreign import that I had seen many years ago, but nonesuch was the case. The film I was looking for was "The Polar Bear King", a Norwegian production dealing with a very similar story about a young princess searching for her abducted prince.

"Snow Queen" however, is not set in the middle ages, but circa 1900 in the cold reaches of a Nordic landscape (even though everyone speaks English). We're presented with a sprawling magical epic of young love challenged by the callous heart of a queen who herself seeks to conquer what she already had, but failed to see.

There's a lot of subtext and other themes going on here. We see the Snow Queen, and witness her cold manifest itself on both physical, emotional and even spiritual levels. She goes forth and sees that another wants, and covets another's possession. She exercises her power, and so our tale begins. Is she really evil and cold, or is there something missing from her life? Perhaps there's even more to her that we as yet fail to discover? Again, the story reveals all.

During the unfolding of the tale our young protagonist ventures forth into a realm that lies "straight on til morning", to borrow from Disney's "Peter Pan". There she meets eccentric antagonists and other characters, mostly female, and mostly with an agenda. Our young heroine must brave, challenge and escape those who pose a roadblock to her ultimate objective.

The production values are the usual top notch from Halmark. They don't spare expense when it comes to filming their intimate epics, nor do they waste money on extravagance that will not be used nor seen. We see a town that's in transition from becoming a small intimate affair where everyone knows everyone else, to becoming more of almost a small city ready to latently embrace the industrial revolution that's occurred in the outside world. We see vast wastes of snow capped mountains, and lush green forests and gardens. We see bandits and soldiers and a whole feast of visuals as our gallant heroine moves from one episode of her adventure to another.

The cinematography is basic, but unlike a lot of other made for TV movies, is not bland for the sake of expediency. The camera angles are a bit more dynamic and inspired, but not quite the caliber of theatrical release. A combination of good camera usage and quality art direction gives the audience a very sumptuous TV film production.

My critique is that it's not the film I wanted, but I enjoyed it for what it was. It's an American film made for American audiences based on some Scandinavian folklore, in regards to a tale that has some role reversal from the familiar tale of Gilgamesh.

Everything aside, it is worth a night's viewing if you have nothing better to do.

Enjoy.

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5 out of 8 people found the following review useful:
Excellent considering its budget, 19 May 2005

Author: Korridin from London, England

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

People comparing this movie to big blockbusters like Lord of the Rings or the Matrix will inevitably be disappointed with the way this movie turned out. Although it lacks in the big special effects department and there are no battles with hundreds of extras, there is still a masterful amalgamation of two old folk tales here. The acting talent, although not A-list, is still great and the interaction between the characters is perhaps more sincere than in a larger movie with an A-list cast. My particular favourite from this movie is Bridget Fonda, whose performance as the Snow Queen herself was quite moving, assisted enormously by a stupendous wardrobe and makeup. She injected humanity and a sense of pathos into the character of the fallen season corrupted by the devil's evil magic. Fonda aside the acting was not what we have come to expect from Hollywood, which I think is a good thing since Hollywood seems to have run out of ideas on how to train its acting talent to portray roles and so they have become stale and reliant on CGI and other special effects to take us away from the actors who all use the same tricks on us. Instead it shows new ideas some real thinking on the part of the actors about how they can find new variations on the the old themes of love and danger.

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11 out of 20 people found the following review useful:
A Too Much Long and Confused Fairy Tale, Where Something is Missing to be a Good Movie, 22 December 2003

Author: Claudio Carvalho from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Gerda (Chelsea Hobbs) lost her mother when she was a child. Her father, musician as a hobby and owner of a hotel, lost his happiness with the loss of his beloved wife. Close to her eighteenth anniversary, Gerda meets Kai (Jeremy Guilbaut), the bellboy of the hotel, and they fall in love for each other. On the day of the party of her birthday, the Snow Queen (Bridget Fonda) kidnaps Kai and Gerda commits suicide, jumping in the river, trying to recover Kai. This is the beginning of Gerda´s adventure through the reigns of the four seasons. This confused story has some crazy parts that recall Alice in the Wonderland. Although having good special effects, the story is very confused, cold, slow and too much long. It is not clear why many things happen. My vote is five.

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2 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Spooky, but Very Nice, 23 May 2009

Author: Jay Raskin from Orlando, United States

I thought the movie started out a bit slow and disjointed for the first hour. However, it became more absorbing, fascinating, and surprising in its last two hours. So, while it starts out like a cheap horror film, it evolves into a beautiful and wonderful fantasy film.

Bridget Fonda stands out as the Snow Queen. This was her best performance and it is sad that this apparently was her last performance, as she has not acted in the last 7 years. She absolutely personifies both the beauty and coldness of Winter.

My daughter, age 14, found the film a bit frightening, so if you are showing it as family entertainment, please stay with your child and reassure her or him that it is just a fairy tale fantasy and not to take it too seriously.

It is really one of the best fantasy films that I have seen in a long time, slightly better than "Eragon" or any of the "Lord of the Rings." It is about as good as "The Golden Compass".

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5 out of 9 people found the following review useful:
Unbelievably good lil' tale!, 20 April 2005

Author: anntoanette from Czech Republic

Enchanting. The best time to see this movie is sometime when unhappy or sad. It's all just so cute, all, even the way that white bear loves the Queen in secret and gets Her in the end, also the achievement the two young actors of Gerda and Kai gave. It's music is also very nice. The two of us will always be one combined with sad piano tones in some places gives a very touching result and if one watches both parts at once, he'll see the Snow Queen is not so bad. She only tries to surround Herself with love in the wrong way. The evening this movie was on here (first part) I only watched it, because I was bored, but I loved it a lot more after and was very angry, when they didn't show the next part because of the Pope's funeral... Yeah, that was terribly sad for me. But when they said it will be on next week, I was so happy, that I recorded it and now I'm glad to have done so.

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