I came across this on Facebook the other day:
While it's definitely true about the movie, it's wrong about Frozen being the first.
The first one I can think of is Beauty and the Beast. Not only is she not saved by a man, she saves the man! And everyone else under the enchantment as well. Granted, there may be other problems with the movie - which are hilariously spoofed here at Advice from a Cartoon Princess - but passively being rescued by the man isn't one of them.
The other one is Tangled. Granted, Flynn and Rapunzel do a good deal of rescuing each other throughout the film, but in the end it's Rapunzel that brings Flynn back, not the other way around.
This is not to dismiss Frozen in any way - my family and I loved the movie. When it first came out my house was like a musical, with all three kids likely to break into song at any moment. But I wanted to point out the other ones as well, in part because each one also stems directly from it's source material.
Beauty and the Beast is the most like it's source, and it's easy to see how the woman does the rescuing. In Rapunzel, there may not be a lot of adventuring on her part, but she's certainly not saved by the prince. In fact, he gets his behind whupped by the witch, who not only tosses him out the window, but blinds him as well! Again, it's Rapunzel to the rescue, restoring his eyesight. As an added bonus, did you notice that the nothing bad ever happens to the witch? No dramatic death scene there - she seems to have been fed up with it all, dumps Rapunzel in a desert, and presumably goes on to live a much less complicated life.
Frozen is, by far, the least like it's source, so much so that it's a completely different story (which is also a good thing, in my opinion. It's just like Maleficent; I'd rather see something totally original instead of a garbled version claiming to be the story). But even though it's different, in the original it is the girl Gerda who rescues the boy, her friend Kai.
So not only are there good movies out there, they're also based on good stories. Not every fairy tale has a passive princess!