Frozen II Review
PG: Action/peril and some thematic elements
Runtime: 1 Hr and 43 Minutes
Production Companies: Walt Disney Pictures, Walt Disney Animation Studios
Distributor: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Director: Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee
Writer: Jennifer Lee, Allison Schroeder
Voice Cast: Idina Menzel, Kristen Bell, Jonathan Groff, Josh Gad, Evan Rachel Wood, Alfred Molina, Sterling K. Brown, Martha Plimpton, Jason Ritter
Release Date: November 22, 2019
Out of all of the classic features to come from Walt Disney Animation Studios, nothing has come close to the whirlwind of an inescapable phenomenon that is Frozen. Look back at the final trailer for the first film where the tagline was, “Experience the greatest Disney animated musical event since The Lion King,” and hey, they were right. No other Disney animated feature had the same critical and financial success as The Lion King until Frozen came along. Frozen was such a significant milestone for Disney Animation that making a sequel was inevitable. It was always bound to happen, especially after how many Frozen featurettes Disney has made. I’m still healing from that 22-minute Olaf special they had the nerve to play before Pixar’s Coco, but whatever. Here we are at Frozen II. Does it live up to the predecessor? Well, in some ways yes and in most ways no.
Years after the events of the predecessor, all's right in the kingdom of Arendelle. Anna and Elsa’s sisterly bond has grown. Olaf has become more sentiment in the concept of age and becomes curious as to why he doesn’t age. Kristoff is getting ready to propose to Anna. Everyone’s life has become very neutral and routined where they’re a full family, even down to partaking in family game nights. That is until Elsa hears a singing voice calling out to her, alluring her to journey off into the unknown to find the source of her power. Now, Anna, Kristoff, his reindeer Sven, and Olaf must embark on a quest into the enchanted forest to find the answers regarding the past of Elsa’s magical powers and her kingdom.
In the six-year time gap since the release of Frozen, Walt Disney Animation Studios has exceptionally upped their animation game big time, for Frozen II is downright a visual spectacle to marvel at. If you thought Frozen was beautiful, Frozen II is animation at its absolute finest. The predecessor emphasized on the wintry environment with its own beautiful detailing and innovation with each setting. Now the animators focus on the season of autumn and, to no surprise, they absolutely nail the look of that season as well. With such luscious backgrounds that look like something straight out of the forest areas you’d see in the midwest of America during the season, you can't help but admire the amount of effort that went into the production to give this new adventure for these characters its own grandeur. The different backgrounds all have their own significant identity and style, especially when the animators and different effects artists are playing with scale, having someone like Elsa stand amongst these surreal settings that are so crisp and lifelike. Since the backdrop of the story focuses more on the four elements, the production designers provide an individual identity to each of their own with such creativity. The animation department does a masterful job at expanding the Frozen world and creating new lands beyond Arendelle.
Then, each character is given some sort of updated feature that wasn’t present in the predecessor. For example, on the lower half of Olaf’s body, you can see the detailed composition of snowflakes and crystals on his snowy skin. Though it can get a bit frenetic at times, everyone feels like they’re moving with the same motion and maintains consistency throughout. I love the look and designs of the new characters, especially Lieutenant Mattias (voiced by Sterling K. Brown), a Black soldier who was trapped in the enchanted forest for years. I love that character’s design and the structure of his figure.
Between this and the original, I found this to be much stronger in regards to comedy. Ever so often, I’m busting a gut through the — though not necessarily clever — humorous gags or comedic moments that often come straight out of left field and catch me off guard. Aside from those aspects regarding the animation, Frozen II fails to even come close to capturing the magic of the original in terms of story and music.
Maybe I was feeling some sort of exhaustion from the over-saturation of Frozen content throughout the years, or maybe I went into this with more hesitation than expectation, but either way Frozen II just never seems to click.
Frozen came out during a year where the animated feature film game was weak and it delivered a clever twist for the studio known best for their princess features. For the well-earned message it delivered and what it represented for both Disney Animation and storytelling, it rightfully struck gold. But since it did strike gold and become a worldwide phenomenon, this was an easy obligation. Regarding script and music alone — two major elements — it doesn’t carry anything remotely of its own weight. Similar to Disney Animation’s previous feature, Ralph Breaks the Internet, the story sets out to expand the universe of the world they built and doesn’t feature an antagonist of some sort. But the Ralph sequel managed to triumph because it was able to exhibit the evolution of the friendship between Ralph and Vanellope right when they’re reintroduced and the writers were able to craft a well-developed narrative that challenged their relationship. There’s not much of a conflict nor a genuine challenge for Anna and Elsa’s relationship. Their sisterhood and the love between the two are present and much stronger, for it does make for some good heartwarming scenes, but the conflict between them feels out logistically out of character for them both. Their conflict is primarily centered on Anna being co-dependent of Elsa to an extent that she becomes overprotective, unwilling to trust her when she impulsively takes action and makes decisions on her own. Anna is the powerless one and doesn’t trust Elsa to go on this journey to find herself on her own when she already knows what she’s capable of. Their conflict, or lack thereof, feels entirely incomplete, for it doesn’t really challenge them to seek growth. This movie’s idea of character growth is literally a costume change in a musical number.
And since the material for Anna and Elsa’s relationship doesn’t contain much magnitude, just imagine how much everyone else gets the shaft. Olaf doesn’t have much to do except provide jokes that get a bit grating at times, but then he has several hilarious running gags that compensate. If there was one thing we learned from Coco in 2017, for those still scarred, is that a little bit of Olaf certainly goes a long way. But the one who got me was Kristoff. Poor Kristoff is reduced to a onenote subplot that’s stripped out of a ‘90s sitcom. His subplot revolves around him trying to propose to Anna and him just bumbling, picking all of the wrong moments to attempt his proposals. At first, it’s amusing, but it’s literally the only thing he does to an extent that it counteracts the entire character he was initially built upon. In Frozen, he often questioned Anna’s poor decisions into getting a rushed marriage, making commentary of the Disney princess tropes. Here he acts as one-note as a Disney prince and honestly, he deserves more. There is a moment where the gang splits up in the enchanted forest, and he takes it as, “Oh, she doesn’t want to be with me anymore?” Like, what kind of false miscommunication are you tryna do here? Because it’s not working! If anything, it ruins Kristoff, even though they do something fun to him that I’ll get to later.
The new characters introduced are also completely underdeveloped. When Elsa and the gang enter the enchanted forest, they meet a tribe and their kingdom who has been trapped ever since their parents were kids. That’s over 30 or so years that they’ve been trapped and they’re all so chill and sane. There are even characters who were born in the forest and raised there, yet they act so nonchalant though they have no real concept of the world beyond them. I don’t want to get too deep about the psychology of one person’s mindset in this form of imprisonment and wanting some sense of Darwinism in a kids’ movie, but if that sense of realism was applied, there would’ve been some sort of urgency to free the trapped people in the midst of the rather generic plot.
Then, there’s the music. I’m not saying the music is bad or anything. A lot of the numbers are beautifully animated and have spectacular visuals. Heck, this movie proved to me that Idina Menzel might have one of the best singing voices of our time. The main issue regarding the music is not only that a majority of the songs are sub-par, but they’re also not memorable. Not to say you hear one Disney song and you’ve heard them all, but a lot of the tracks here are retreads of familiar tunes from other Disney features or attempting too hard to recapture the same spark as “Let It Go”.
They had more fun with these song sequences, but some are contextually out of place, making lesser versions of pre-existing Disney songs. “Into the Unknown”, which is supposed to be their defining number, bears so much resemblance to Moana’s “How Far I’ll Go” and others just seem like continuations of songs from the predecessor. The music lacks newness… except for one song. Kristoff. Circling back to Kristoff. Kristoff has a song called “Lost in the Woods” and it’s the best song and scene the film has to offer, primarily because it’s the only sequence that dares to go out of the norm of a typical Disney sequence and provides a fresh coat of originality. The song itself sounds like a blend of Chicago’s “You’re the Inspiration” and “Man or Muppet” from the 2011 Muppets movie. Admixed with the bizarreness of the sequence itself feeling like a scene stripped out of an ‘80s music video, it’s the only song that’s inspired and stands out. Similar to the Jemaine Clement song from Moana “Shiny”, it’s the number that comes straight out of left field. The difference is that one works contextually with the story and progresses Maui’s character arc. This… not so much, but it does make you laugh your ass off. Plus, Weezer does the cover for it so it’s still a win regardless. If anything, I would prefer that for the Best Original Song nom because it’s the only daring song. Everything else feels a bit more bland and derivative.
At the end of the day, you can sense that Frozen II was fun for the animators and everyone had a great time making it, but it certainly lacks the labor of love in story development that made the predecessor so profound. It doesn’t reignite the same spark nor does it do much to carry its own weight. It’s so dependent on your love for the characters that you’re blindsided to call out the very unengaging narrative they partake in, which lacks any real sense of depth, character development, or an emotional impact resulting in you feeling left out in the cold.
