Dir. Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck
Frozen came out in 2013 and promptly took over the world. A billion dollars at the box office, a Best Animated Picture Oscar, and a song that we couldn’t escape no matter how hard we tried. I don’t need to name it, you know what song I’m talking about. Personally, I never thought the film lived up to the hype. I found most of the characters annoying and thought that with only two exceptions, the Frozen soundtrack is mediocre. And aside from the songs being individually forgettable, as a whole, the movie felt ineffective as a musical. Most of the songs didn’t reveal anything meaningful about the character’s head space or propel the narrative, the movie just stopped to give you 3 minutes of requisite song. I needed to begin this by making my feelings on the original Frozen clear before saying this: I really liked Frozen 2.
This movie takes place shortly after the events of the last film. Elsa has adjusted to being the Queen even if she’s still learning to really control her powers. Anna is delighted to have her family together and the gates open to the people of Arendelle and Kristoff is struggling to figure out how to propose. Yet this seemingly perfect life is disrupted by a call that only Elsa can hear. When magical events cause Arendelle to become uninhabitable, Elsa, accompanied by Anna, Kristoff, Olaf, and Sven, must go off on a magical adventure to further understand her powers and save her kingdom.
This movie doesn’t really feel like a continuation of the first because it goes full fantasy adventure while the previous was more of family drama that happened to feature accidentally magically enveloping a kingdom in ice. It does however feel a lot like the love child of Avatar: The Last Airbender and Moana. Not to get too specific but when a movie centers on balancing nature spirits, it’s hard not to make comparisons. Additionally, it is remarkably similar to Moana’s general plot structure. Elsa tries to ignore a pull to the unknown to do her job as a leader but is eventually forced to go out and heed that call after her people and homeland are threatened by the forces of nature, meant to atone for the crimes against the spirits made by another. And while Elsa’s ocean adventures are more likely because Disney created this insane program for hyper-realistic water that they want to flex as often as they can rather than an intentional similarity, so much ocean time made it impossible not to think about Moana.
Aside from being more action packed, this movie really did a 180 on some of the things I liked the least about the previous film. If, like me, you thought Kristoff was bland and found his reindeer obsession creepy, Great News: he’s basically kicked out of the movie for about ⅓ of the run time. He gets one song as a consolation prize before being yeeted from the main plot and I truly don’t know who that song is for. It’s shot as an early 2000s style, boy band music video with all the ridiculous drama of Chris Pine singing agony in Into the Woods. It got one of the strongest laughs in the movie but almost solely from the adults who know what it was parodying.
More good news, Olaf is much funnier in this movie. He still has decent sight gag humor which kids will enjoy, but he’s evolved as he’s gotten older and he’s lost some of that annoying naivete. He maintains his trademark optimism but also learns how to navigate other, more complex emotions. One of his scenes gets probably the other biggest laugh of the movie from adults and children alike.
The music works a lot better in this one. Unlike the stop and start nature of the music in the first film, the soundtrack in Frozen 2 is fluid. It moved the film forward and connected scenes, serving an actual narrative purpose. The songs also sampled melodies from other previous songs which helped make the soundtrack and score feel more cohesive. And while music is of course subjective, I just think these songs were nicer.
But for all the notable improvements of this sequel, there are a few things about this movie that sat oddly with me. As stated earlier, the movie shares many similarities with Moana. Which I think made it a more interesting, but it’s odd that based off the title alone it will likely make far more money than the one it’s cribbing from. Additionally, this movie’s efforts toward diversity are cringe-inducing as a result of the lazy execution. Much like Maleficent 2 before it, this movie attempts to rectify the whiteness of the original film by adding diversity to the crowds and adding one or two characters of color who our main characters speak to but who have little to no characterization and do nothing that affects the plot in any way.
In Maleficent 2, we met Prince Philip’s Black bodyguard. In Frozen 2, we meet Anna and Elsa’s Dad’s Black bodyguard. This bodyguard, whose name I can’t recall because he doesn’t actually do anything (according to IMDB, Mattias), is voiced by Sterling K. Brown who was all over the press tour speaking positively of diversity and what song he sang to audition. Yet his character doesn’t sing and could in fact be removed from the film altogether and absolutely nothing would change. We are also introduced to an Indigenous tribe who live in the enchanted forest, the Chief of which, Iduna, is voiced by Evan Rachel Wood. Aside from a questionable reparations story line, these newly introduced characters serve no real purpose other than sources of exposition. While I can appreciate Disney’s attempts at diversifying, until these characters actually become fully realized, they are only paying lip service.
Frozen 2 is funnier, tighter-paced, and more musically cohesive than its predecessor. In only 90 minutes, the movie tells a tight adventure story while also adding depth to its already established characters. Unfortunately, the movie can’t do the same for its new characters, making a token effort at representation that is given more time and development in the promotional material than in the actual film. That being said, it doesn’t ruin the experience of a good movie too much for those who aren’t extremely critical of every movie they watch. Other than that, I think this one is definitely worth seeing in theaters.