Frozen II

I will say this for the second Frozen, though.  “Let It Go” deserves to be as beloved (and probably also hated) as it has become. It’s a fantastic song. But Frozen II features a stronger group of songs overall.

The Good:
This film has sensational songs and a score I absolutely loved. At several moments, I told myself, “I definitely need to mention how effective the score is at this particular moment,” but I can’t remember even one of all my carefully noted examples. I assure you, though, that Christophe Beck’s score is beautiful, often haunting, sometimes rousing. This is probably my favorite score of the year, and the new songs by husband-and-wife team Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez are outstanding. I doubt any of them will ever eclipse the insane popularity of their “Let It Go,” but overall, they are a stronger group of songs. (I’m reminded of the two recent Disney Muppet movies.  Muppets Most Wanted didn’t have any single musical number that stood out as much as “Man Or Muppet” but as a group, the songs were better in that second film.)  I don’t know when I’ll see Frozen II again, but I will definitely be playing this soundtrack on repeat in the car all winter.

I also think Princess Anna gets a far stronger part in this film…eventually. Even though Elsa carries much of the movie, late in the film Anna’s scenes become really special. The enormity of her courage is on full display, and Arundel is lucky to have her. Maturing is a huge theme of Frozen II, and by the end, it is Anna who has matured the most conspicuously (Elsa’s grand flourishes notwithstanding). Honestly, in the first film, Anna is so eclipsed by her sister (which is unfair because she performs heroic act after heroic act). She’s plucky and courageous, but she’s also immature, impulsive, and naive. She’s shamed as frequently as she’s praised, and Elsa has the powers, so all the little girls want to be Elsa. Anna has so many fine qualities, but she makes the mistake of believing someone who says he loves her. Because of her obvious vulnerabilities, children sometimes fail to notice her heroism. But it’s on full display here. Anna really comes into her own at the end of this movie. She’s always been courageous when she could hold out hope, but here she continues bravely even when all is lost. So Anna fans should be happy with this development.

Elsa also learns more about herself and her powers.  These discoveries are somewhat frustrating, though.  She seems to gain great insight, but what I mainly learned was what the hot new holiday toys will be this Christmas.  In all seriousness, though, we do get the sense that Elsa’s discoveries are powerful, but also the sense that they’re more powerful to her than they are to us.  As the character learns more and more about herself, she seems to get further and further away from the rest of us.  Her scenes do contain some enchanting and powerful subtext, though, particularly her last big musical number.

Kristoff doesn’t have a lot to do this time around, but he does get his own, full-fledged song.  You could certainly complain that he’s just kind of there, but I think the movie does effectively demonstrate that being there is a thing.  (The thing about people who are there is that when you need them, they’re there.)  I also am reasonably certain that Kristoff’s origins and backstory will get more thorough exploration in Frozen III.

All of us found Josh Gad’s Olaf much funnier and less aggravating this time around.  And (arguably) new supporting characters voiced by Evan Rachel Wood and Sterling K. Brown enhance the story.  Martha Plimpton and Jason Ritter also show up as new characters (a big deal if you love Goonies and Gravity Falls), and Alfred Molinda returns as Grand Pabbie.  There’s also an adorable salamander who was my son’s favorite part of the movie by a mile.  (“He is literally the cutest thing ever!”  “Will they find a salamander for the other elements, too?”  “He is literally so cute to me.”  “Boys only like cute things.”  “That lizard can lick his eyeball.  I love him.”  “That salamander was the best part.  I liked him the best.”  “The movie had bad parts and good parts.  That salamander was the only good part.”)

The film’s visuals are stunning, aesthetically pleasing to say the least.  I enjoyed watching the entire movie, partially because it was so beautiful to see. 

And if you like the emphasis on female bonds and women saving themselves, you’ll be pleased to see these themes at work again in Frozen II.

Best Scene:
Early on, I thought, “This is not exactly great. The one saving this movie is definitely Elsa.” The early Anna/Kristoff material is pretty weak, and Olaf isn’t as initially effective as he becomes as the film progresses. Elsa is always captivating, though.

In the end, however, the best scene belongs to Anna. I was stunned by this development.

I love her song “The Next Right Thing.” It’s so true and genuinely good advice for children (or anyone) without being obnoxious.

The scene made my sister and my daughter weep copiously. Meanwhile, I kept thinking, “Get UP! Have you forgotten how monarchy works?” And my son kept whispering impatiently, “Is this the end? It MUST be the end now!” So apparently we’re the hard-hearted ones in the family.

But this is the only scene in this film that fleetingly taps into the kind of high stakes and emotional resonance the first Frozen gave us so effectively.

Best Scene Visually:
Everything looks good in Frozen II. (I particularly liked one brief glimpse of the protagonists from behind as they stare into the forest.)

But as you would expect, Elsa is the one surrounded by (and often causing) the most spectacular visuals. Certainly she’s the one who’s going to sell all the toys.

That horse of hers seems destined to magically appear in toy stores this holiday season, and the way the grimly determined Elsa keeps running into the sea (shown partially in previews) looks fantastic.

Best Action Sequence:
One person puts Arundel in grave danger. Another hurries to save it. Their collective efforts are thrilling to watch.

Best Song:
It’s a lot easier for me to mention the worst song. It’s an extremely forgettable ditty about how everything is pretty much the same except that the pumpkin-headed scarecrow is no longer at his peak. Maybe after repeat viewings of the film, this amiable-if-unspecial number will take on new meaning for me. (I do realize that the song talks about how nothing will ever change, even though everything is about to change, and the song is full of markers of seasonal change. But it’s still lacking and gave me bad memories of that interminable “short” before Coco.)

All the other songs are amazing. Idina Menzel gets two huge, showstopping numbers. She sings far more in this film than in the first one, and she’s sometimes joined by AURORA (who is a human singer, not some cutting edge software as we confirmed with a Google search in the car).  Our kids absolutely love to sing the AURORA part in “Into the Unknown” in their own special way (which often sounds alarmingly like Olaf’s).  My husband noted, “That’s a great song, but it’s not easy to sing along with like ‘Let it Go,'” but our children’s subsequent crooning begs to dinner.

And Jonathan Groff gets a real song this time.  He has a very nice singing voice, and the 70s/80s power ballad aspect makes the song delightful on its own with terrific vocals and flashes of inspired comedy (though I’m not sure how well it works within the context of the story.  It’s so funny.  The whole thing is a big joke.  But Kristoff isn’t laughing.  I’m not sure the tonal discrepancies work to the story’s advantage).

Despite the fact that Idina Menzel’s frequent singing is what made the movie work for me, Kristen Bell’s Anna ended up stealing the show at the end.  Her “The Next Right Thing” may be my favorite song, although I’m still extremely fond of Olaf’s deliciously ironic “When I Am Older.”  (One or the other of those is the best musical scene, even though “Into the Unknown” is probably the best stand-alone song.)

I strongly prefer Panic! At the Disco’s version of “Into the Unknown” to Demi Lovato’s “Let It Go” (no offense to Demi Lovato in general).  And Elsa gets another great song, too, “Show Yourself.”

The Negatives:

Frozen II pretends to be high stakes, but it isn’t really.  Even it’s biggest, most dramatic, high-stakes moment has more in common with Infinity War than with the original Frozen.  Elsa continues on a journey of self-discovery and growth, but we don’t get anything as revelatory as “Let It Go.”  There’s nothing as chilling as, “Oh Anna, if only there was someone out there who loved you.”  I’m pretty sure these moments of high melodrama are one of the things that made the original film so appealing to children.  (That’s why it was appealing to me, anyway.)  Frozen II doesn’t have the same emotional highs and lows.

Also, the story wants to tell us too many things.  What it shows us is cool, but it wants to throw out more and more details.  It doesn’t really explain Elsa’s powers.  If anything, it makes us feel we know even less about them as it shows us there’s an entire huge mythology surrounding them that we also know nothing about.  The trailer hints that something epic will happen, and while the movie is definitely high fantasy, it seems to be largely focused on righting a wrong we never knew existed before.

In the end, Anna emerges from Elsa’s shadow and stands strong as her own person.  But that’s in the end.  For most of the movie, she doesn’t do much except trail around after Elsa and misunderstand Kristoff’s bungled marriage proposals.  And all Kristoff does is bungle marriage proposals.

At first, I found this weak.  Then as it continued, I thought, “Is this going to be like Sideshow Bob and the rakes?  Are they going to take nothing (i.e. two people in love who want to marry each other and have no real impediments, yet can’t seem to get through the proposal) and stretch it into some kind of all-consuming comic business that becomes increasingly absurd and is literally all that happens to them in the movie?”  I could have gotten on board with that.  But the completely pointless misunderstandings never get big or crazy enough.  And then Kristoff just drops out of the movie for forty-five minutes (maybe more).  He does get a song, though.

My sister points out that the repeated, recycled first-movie footage got a bit wearying, too.  (There is a lot of that!)  There was also one moment that reminded me strongly of the third book in The Southern Reach Trilogy, then made me realize, “This whole set-up is kind of like Annihilation.”  I was also reminded of Superman, The Last Unicorn, and none of that is bad.  But the problem I see is that the movie is going for an epic feel, but provides no epic feels.  There simply aren’t enough true emotional highs and lows.  It’s all middle (with continuous exposition throughout).  And with one exception (that late Anna song), when the moments come when we are supposed to feel things, we get a whimper, not a bang.  (That makes it even less satisfying, that nagging suspicion that we’re supposed to feel more.)  We get material that feels familiar and reminds us of other things, but those other things gave us more emotional payoff.  This has all the trappings of an epic, but none of the emotion.  Frozen II also gets bogged down in finding solutions to problems we never knew existed, then puts off giving us real answers about things that we cared about going into the movie.

It’s weird for me to admit this since I’m a word-oriented person, but in terms of animated high fantasy adventure movies of 2019, I think the (largely non-verbal) How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World is a far stronger film that nails what it sets out to achieve.  Frozen II is good, but it’s pretty far from great.

As a series of outstanding music videos, though, the movie is fantastic.  I have to say that all seven of us in our group of viewers aged four to sixty-seven enjoyed our time together at the movies.  And I simply cannot wait to ride that atmospheric Frozen ride at Disney World again.

(Also, for what it’s worth, my soon-to-be-eleven-year-old reports that she liked this Frozen better than the first one.)

Overall:

I hope I’m right about the Christmas toys introduced by this movie because I want them.  Even though we all found the story development somewhat lacking, Frozen II still provided a fun time at the movies for my entire family, and I’m excited to listen to all the songs again and again (and less excited but still expecting to hear them again and again and again and again). Idina Menzel is fantastic, but Kristen Bell gets the best scene.  Nothing will ever compare to that magical, epic moment when Elsa first let it go, but fans of the original will still want to see this movie.