Somewhere after the Disney Renaissance of the 90s Disney lost a step. At first it wasn’t necessarily a quality issue. The Emperor’s New Groove, despite bombing at the box office is pretty well regarded. Lilo & Stitch brought it back a little (did similar box office as Hercules, but still way short of the films at the tail end of the Reniassance). Things began to slide down with Treasure Planet both from a quality standpoint and box office standpoint. Then Brother Bear (outright critical flop) and Home on the Range (what the heck happened?!) were released and Disney became a complete non-factor from a feature film animation standpoint. What were the causes? Briefly, as I want to get to the review, you have your options between the rise of computer animation (which Pixar and Dreamworks were doing quite well with), the Disney films not being as good or the Disney’s failure to create new fans during the Reniassance (I’m definitely one that lapsed into my teenage years). Disney would buy Pixar, but would keep Pixar and Disney animation studios separate.
Disney went ahead with a few computer animated films, all forgettable (not necessarily bad though). One more classically animated film came after that (The Princess and the Frog, a bit underrated but still disappointing at the box office). Things turned around in 2010 as animated films suddenly became big box office. Toy Story 3 hit the $1 Billion mark (back when that mattered) and then Disney’s own Tangled got close to $600K. The combination of computer animation and a return to the princess fairy tale got Disney Animation back on track. And that leads us to Frozen.
Last Watch: Disney+
I was very curious to see how Disney’s adaptation of the Snow Queen was going to work. After the success of Tangled it’s not a surprise that Disney went this direction though. The epic fairy tale was the key to not only getting a whole new generation of young fans, but getting some parents who fell in love with Disney 20 years prior back. A big key, which definitely helped Tangled, would be that the movie had to be good. Did Frozen accomplish that? Yes, yes it did.
Frozen is a beautiful, charming, fantastic film. Everything works so well that the one hour-forty minute run time will just breeze right by. Like fun and even epic songs? Frozen’s soundtrack may be the greatest is Disney’s library. Likable characters? Great and even breathtaking visuals? Check. How about a really fun story that has several nice twists but at the same time doesn’t change or hurt the classic Disney storytelling formula? That may be the highest bar to clear, and Disney manages to clear it with more than enough space in-between.
Let’s look at the story. As children, two sisters, Elsa (Idina Menzel) and Anna (Kristen Bell) are princesses of Arendelle. Elsa was born with magical ice powers, with the ability freeze anything, while Anna has no such powers. They play as children but Elsa accidentally hits Anna with an ice blast, to which Anna has to be cured. Anna is cured, but at the cost of her memory of Elsa’s powers. This turns into a traumatic event for Elsa, as she hides her powers from Anna as they grow up. Everything comes to a head as their parents die in a shipwreck, and Elsa is set to be coronated as queen. What an excellent set-up! In the first five minutes Elsa and Anna’s motivations for their actions throughout the film are completely explained. It helps that part of this was done though an amazing song, “Do You Want To Build A Snowman”, which is fun, epic and then even tear jerking. I was invested immediately.
Before we continue let’s discuss our two main protagonists. Kristen Bell is excellent, voicing a character with a wide arrange of emotions. Anna is quirky, sad, fun, determined, energetic character and Bell hits all of those emotions perfectly. Idina Menzel works well as Elsa too, obviously especially when we get to the singing part. I believe every single emotion these characters portray. Yes, it helps that the computer animation is perfect, but the voice acting really makes it for me. The relationship between these two characters pushes this film to another level.
Continuing on, during the coronation celebration Anna meets Prince Hans (“the one”) and tells Elsa they are going to be married. Elsa doesn’t approve though, and loses control of her previously hidden powers. This causes her to run off, unwittingly leaving Arendelle in a deep winter. Anna loves her sister though and runs off to find her. On the way she meets ice seller Kristoff (and his reindeer Sven) who helps her on her way. They also run into Olaf, a sentient snowman that Elsa created as she set off the nuclear winter. They all get to Elsa’s ice palace (gorgeous), but Elsa’s afraid she’ll hurt Anna again (and then accidentally does). This time the damage is more serious than when they were children, with only an act of true love being able to save her. I’ll look to avoid getting deep into spoilers, but this twist here works really well and cements Anna as one of the all-time great Disney characters for me.
Jonathan Groff as Kristoff is pretty fun too, especially his relationship with Sven. Josh Gad is great as Olaf. Usually the comedic sidekick is a huge hit or miss, and while there are a couple of annoying spots overall Gad gets the job done.
It needs to be stressed that the visuals are incredible. I know Pixar is the king of computer animation and all, but Disney Animation made a massive statement here. Of course the music is incredible as well. Every song hits, and I’m of the opinion that “Let It Go” is the greatest Disney song period. I never thought I could relate to an ice queen running away from her kingdom, but “Let It Go” sure did that. No surprise that it won an Oscar. Of course, the song was covered by everyone on Youtube for years.
Best Scene: The “Let It Go” sequence. I really can’t pick anything else even though there’s a lot of great stuff here.
Worst Scene: Literally the only scene that didn’t sit right with me in the film is right before Elsa accidentally reveals her powers during the afterparty of the coronation. When arguing with Anna, she yells out that Anna should leave, which misses the mark on everything else their relationship is portrayed as in the film. I literally have no other complain.
Personal Story: I was a little disappointed that I didn’t see Tangled on the big screen. Since I like “the Snow Queen” and Disney had started winning me back with Wreck-It-Ralph, I decided to give Frozen a chance. I think i saw the film seven or eight times in theater. It was the first time outside of the superhero genre that I really felt I watched a masterpiece. That and I was singing “Let It Go” for months afterwards.
Final Thoughts: I consider this the greatest film Disney animations has ever released. Really, the main competition here is Beauty and the Beast. And while yes, that’s great as well, I really enjoy the characters (and songs) much more in Frozen. I don’t plan to give this grade out often, but Frozen deserves it.
Grade: S
Last Watch: Disney+
Before we delve into this I will give Disney some credit. They very easily could have just done a princess love story with Anna or Elsa and slapped Frozen II on it. Not only did they not do that, but they’ve begun to expand the mythology of world the Frozen franchise takes place in. I definitely would have never expected that beforehand. I didn’t see a trailer ahead of time and was surprised in a good way at the direction Frozen II goes. It’s almost fair to call this an action film.
I have a theory about why this came about. I’m guessing Disney projected that Frozen mainly catered to 8-9 year old girls. Six years later they’re projecting that those same girls are likely reading books like Percy Jackson or The Summoner series. And this is Disney’s attempt at going that direction (I think Pixar did the same with Brave, but I can’t completely say as I haven’t seen Brave). Once again, I’m pleasantly surprised.
We return to pre-Frozen Arendelle and through a bedtime story from Anna and Elsa’s parents there is a mist that closes off the woods from everyone. We also sneakily learn a more about Elsa and Anna’s mother than seems contradictory but I do think works in the film overall. We cut to present day Arendelle and there’s a spirit calling Elsa to those woods. Anna and Elsa have promised one another that they would tackle everything together, so they go off with Kristoff, Sven and Olaf to uncover the mystery. We end up with four stories. Elsa’s, Anna’s, Kristoff’s and the people who are trapped in the mist. Let’s do this backwards.
Kristoff’s story sucks. He wants to propose to Anna but keeps screwing it up. They clearly had nothing for this character and decided to make him a one joke deal, only that joke is done four or five times. It’s not done well, with one exception (there’s an unexpected song that’s funny). The character outright disappears half-way through. This idea could probably be done well if it received some focus.
Anna’s story isn’t necessarily bad, but it’s forced. Disney really wants to put these two on the same pedestal and the way they decided to do this was to have the sisters agree to do everything together, even if it’s dangerous. Sure, she doesn’t have powers, but Anna does remind us often how much she went through in Frozen and it usually works as a justification to keep her along. We do get to a point where it’s clearly too dangerous for her to continue the journey with Elsa though. While that scene is botched (we’ll get there), Elsa does have to send a message to Anna in order for her to save the day. Again, it’s forced…but I ended up liking Anna more by the end of the film (she’s one of, if not my favorite Disney protagonist). It’s just that…
This is Elsa’s show, no matter how hard Disney tried to include anyone else. Her uncovering why she was born with powers does directly tie into the trapped people in the mist. And quite frankly, this movie would be a lot better if they just focused on that (it’s very similar to Toy Story 4 in this regard). When Elsa’s on screen doing her thing the movie is pretty awesome. There are two incredible music sequences for Indina Menzel this time around. Sure, neither reach “Let it Go” status, but “Into the Unknown” and “Show Yourself” do belong with Disney’s best songs.
Unfortunately Elsa’s story overshadows any story development for the trapped people in the mist. There’s no real consequences when Elsa and Anna resolve the issue either (which would have been interesting). There’s an important discussion about respecting indigenous people and their culture that’s absolutely missing in this film. Everything pretty much gets situated with an “oh, that’s the solution to the problem, yay, everyone’s saved and happy”. Big swing and a miss by Disney there.
Two more pieces: There’s no real villain here this time at all, and frankly the way Elsa is being built up it’s time to bring one in. The mythology is there now. Give us an awesome villain from Frozen III. Also, Olaf has his moments (his re-enactment of Frozen is gold), but he’s much more annoying this time around. He’s really around for three reasons: give kids a laugh, for an emotional scene with Anna (which misses quite frankly), and to remind us over and over that water has memory.
Best Scene: The “Show Yourself” musical sequence. It’s beautiful and it’s powerful.
Worst Scene: When it’s clear Anna can’t go with Elsa anymore because it’s too dangerous, Elsa creates an ice boat then kicks Anna and Olaf away into what turns out to be danger. It’s really eye opening and after Anna tells Olaf it’s okay to be angry about it the situation is never brought up again. It actually took away from “Show Yourself” (which takes place shortly afterwards) for me the first time I watched it.
Personal Story: Despite liking the film, I didn’t bother seeing it again after I saw it the first time in theaters. Overall I couldn’t help but be disappointed that it couldn’t recapture the magic the first film had. Still made me really like Anna’s character though, at least at the end of the film.
Final Thoughts: If I didn’t like these characters so much the grade would be a lot lower. Frozen II misses a lot of opportunities to really be an impactful film. That being said, if the point was to make Elsa a bigger star and to create a whole new mythology for the Frozen franchise, then Frozen II did it’s job. I can even forgive the inconsistencies for the parents from Frozen to Frozen II as I doubt when Frozen was made Disney knew this was the direction the franchise would go in. Now give us a real villain all five of our characters can go up against.
Grade: B+