Review: Frozen II
Frozen II, directed by Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee, tells the tale of the Snow Queen Elsa (Idina Menzel) who rules the kingdom of Arendelle and keeps it at peace with the help of her sister Anna (Kristen Bell) and friends Kristoff (Jonathan Groff), a snowman named Olaf (Josh Gad), and a reindeer named Sven. But when a mysterious voice calls Elsa into the deepest parts of a mystical forest, the gang ventures into the unknown to protect Arendelle from danger and discover the secret to Elsa’s powers.
Being the follow up to a massive pop culture icon that’s also the highest grossing animated film of all time, this film has a lot to live up to. Despite me feeling the hype was grossly overblown I thoroughly enjoyed the first Frozen; it had great animation, great characters, a terrific message, and some catchy songs to boot. Since I didn’t LOVE the first film it was rather easy setting my expectations for the sequel, which unfortunately still left me feeling unsatisfied with what we got. Despite its best efforts, Frozen II struggles to justify its existence outside of being an obvious Disney cash-grab.
Before the bad, let’s talk about the good. The animation, as expected, is gorgeous; every drop of water looks real, the characters we know and love look a lot more defined the second time around, and the backgrounds and locations were all a sight to see. The voice performances were all great; no one felt like they were phoning it in and some in particular were actually impressive. A good amount of jokes landed pretty well and some of the songs were not only catchy but also very well written for the film. And unfortunately that’s all I liked; I tried hard to enjoy this film more but man did it get on my nerves sometimes.
Story-wise, this was one of the laziest written films I’ve seen all year. There was a lot of exposition dumps that constantly repeat what we already know and were presented in a way that felt like a cop out. Things happen in the plot just for the sake of it; some moments in the plot requires for the characters to be by themselves so the film makes up some hackneyed excuse to separate them. There was also no character development in the film; our main characters start off in one place and basically stay there for the whole movie.
Kristoff especially gets the worst treatment out of all the characters here. Not only was his character basically a trope for the entire film (Kristoff wants to marry Anna but doesn’t know how to propose, HiLaRiTy EnSuEs), but he then gets literally written out of the film halfway into it and doesn’t physically show up until the climax. He literally gets lost in the woods, sings a completely out of place song about it, and disappears until he’s needed for the plot again.
And that’s my biggest issue with the film. These characters work off each other brilliantly but when you seperate them like the film did, then you not only lose the dynamic that makes them so likable in the first place, you also start to notice why they weren’t such great characters in the first place on their own. Elsa has no defining character traits outside of having ice powers, Anna is bubbly, energetic and has some of the best scenes but only when there’s someone else on screen to work off them, and Olaf’s Olaf. He was surprisingly funny the first film but give him more screen-time than needed and he’ll really start to push your tolerance of him.
Overall this was one of the more disappointing films to come out this year. It had some very strong animation for sure, but good animation alone doesn’t make for a good movie. Now if you’re one of those people that will tell me, “Oh it’s just a kids movie don’t be so hard on it,” need I remind you that this website features reviews for movies like The Lighthouse, Midsommar, and The Irishman. Those movies TOTALLY sound like kids movies right? I’m not a kid reviewing this film; I’m a grown adult, and chances are you reading this are one too.
On a side note, just because this film is meant for kids doesn’t mean it’s excused from any criticism whatsoever. If you think it absolutely should be excused then you must be obligated to love movies like The Emoji Movie then. Sure that movie was the epitome of blatant product placement in a movie that’s unoriginal, painfully unfunny, and extremely mean spirited for kids, but it’s for kids so that makes it okay right?
But this is Disney; the film’s already on it’s way to make a billion worldwide and it hasn’t been a week yet. You think my review will stop that? If my 1/10 review of the 2019 Lion King didn’t stop that heap of lazy garbage from making $1.7 billion worldwide (nearly twice as much more than what the original made), then what makes you think my middling review of Frozen II will make any difference? Kids will most definitely enjoy this film and if you love Frozen you probably will too. Don’t let me stop you from enjoying something you already love. I genuinely tried to enjoy this film, but I guess the magic just didn’t work for me the second time around.
Final Verdict: 4/10