Movie Reaction: Frozen II

The Pitch: Frozen - a little magic

I love Frozen. I don't have kids, so I haven't been forced to watch it 1100 times. I don't listen to the radio, so "Let It Go" never overwhelmed me. I saw the movie on opening weekend, before any of the hype had set it. I didn't even wait that long in line to go on the Frozen ride in Walt Disney World. I'm lucky and have had nothing but positive interactions with the movie. It's not my favorite of the Disney animated movies, I guess, but that shouldn't be a mark against it, given the competition. My stance going into Frozen II was pretty much if the music was good, I got a few stupid laughs, and they didn't pad the run time, then I'd be happy.

So, success.

Frozen II builds on the mythology of the first movie by introducing a mysterious forest that's magically blocked off from Arendelle. Elsa is doing a fine job queening the land. Anna and Kristoff are looking to bring things to the next level in their relationship. Olaf and Sven are still comic relief. It's a nice starting point. Then, Elsa starts hearing a chant in the distance. After a strange occurrence forces everyone out of Arendelle, Elsa, Anna, and the team go to the magical forest hoping to fix things. I'd describe the story as a bit undercooked, but that suggests that "Elsa builds a ice castle in the mountains" from the first movie made any more sense.

Frozen II has a lot of world building and moves things to an epic scale. Some of those epic sequences, like Elsa taking on the ocean - which has been featured heavily in the trailers - are pretty impressive. Others feel like they just had a bigger budget to burn. Frozen has transitioned from plucky underdog to hulking behemoth nicely. Disney knows how to produce crowd pleasing hit movies once they know they have eyes on them.

Most of the things that endeared me to Frozen in the first place are a little worse though. The music isn't as good. Instead of the charming variety of songs in the first movie, Frozen II chases another "Let It Go" hard. There are a lot of anthems. I'm a bad judge of if any of them will hit the same way as "Let It Go". I came away from Frozen thinking "Love Is An Open Door", "For the First Time In Forever", and "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?" were all stronger than "Let It Go" so what do I know? I didn't care quite as much for the different character beats either. Olaf and Sven felt like they were playing the hits. Anna relied even more on the fact that Kristen Bell is naturally winsome and likable. They seemed to want Elsa to be even more of a tortured soul even though she has less to be tortured about. It's not that I thought any of this fell off drastically from the first movie. But, even a 10% drop off in the intangibles is the difference between a stone-cold classic and "another good animated Disney movie".

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Side Rant/Movie Theater LVPs (Least Valuable Patrons): OK, I don't have a single person in mind for this. It doesn't feel that long ago to me, but Frozen was 6 years ago. All those children who fell in love with the movie are tweens now. When I saw Frozen, it was new and we were all discovering it together. Frozen II belongs to the tweens now. And I forgot how awful tweens are in groups in a theater. There's performative fandom and oneupsmanship. There's always one who has to make a point to show that they are only into the movie ironically. And the phone etiquette is abhorrent (at least dim the screen, dammit) I saw the movie Friday night, and it was clear that it was the second or third time for some of these tweens. I know this, because they were already starting to quote lines out loud as they happened or point things out ahead of time.

Look, I know I sucked as a movie audience member for a lot of years too. I was a bad side commenter. I felt emboldened to be obnoxious when I was with a group of friends before the movie started. I didn't clean up my act until my early 20s, and I'm embarrassed when I think back on it now. Then again, I rarely got shushed or head-turned, I never threw things, and I never did things to be intentionally disruptive during the movie, so I'm probably being my harshest critic. Regardless, it's a tradition for the old to complain about the young. I'm just doing my civic duty by airing my grievances; on my blog, no less. I'm such a cliche.