I thought Frozen II would be a good movie to show what my new projector can really do. I always find that animation looks especially good when projected on a wall, so even if the movie were not good, it'd be a treat for my eyeballs at the very least.
Well, the movie was not good.
Now I should say, I was not a huge fan of the first Frozen. I gave it 3.5 stars out of five, but I now think my feelings toward it are a little closer to a three. And since I often find myself defending the vastly superior Tangled against it, it tends to drive those feelings of comparative dislike, maybe even down to something like 2.5 stars.
Still, I had planned to see the sequel in the theater when it opened last year. I had a good opportunity on the morning I arrived in Tasmania after a ferry ride overnight, when we were going down there for Christmas. I didn't have any other family members with me (my kids were not interested in the movie anyway) and I didn't have anywhere to be until the next day. But I succumbed to the desire to see Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker a second time, rather than Frozen II a first.
Good decision.
This film is a mess. At any given time I did not understand the point of the plot or what its real thrust was supposed to be. The plot, such as it is, screamed of resulting from a bunch of writers sitting in a writing room, knowing they needed to cobble together something credible in this enchanted and ice-encrusted world, because the eight-year-old girls would demand it, but really, having no driving force to tell any particular story themselves.
This narrative slackness is borne out in the songs in particular. Not a single song in this movie is derived from the action. People start singing because they are, mathematically, at a segment of the plot where a song is required. Perhaps the worst example of this, in a character I find incredibly annoying, is when Josh Gad's Olaf sings a song called "When I Am Older." The whole point is that the situation he's in right now -- not that strange in terms of this world, but strange enough for him I guess -- will make more sense to him when he's older. The thing is, he's like the fifth most important character in this film, and he has no agency at all -- everything just happens to him. Why do we care what does or doesn't make sense to him? Oh that's right -- Olaf has to have a song, that's why. Every other song is either an "I'm looking ahead to the great unknown" (that's almost exactly the title of the song) song or a "I'm at my lowest moment" song. How many "lowest moments" can one film have?
Not that these things really matter that much, but I noticed that Elsa's powers can basically be summarized as "whatever the plot requires at the moment." The big climax doesn't even really register because of course she could do what she does -- why not?
I did notice an interesting thing, speaking of Tangled. There were at least two moments that I thought were direct references to that film. There's a little chameleon-like creature in the "enchanted forest" that is basically supposed to serve the same function as Pascal in Tangled, and even looks a lot like him. Then Rider is the name of one of the new characters we meet -- as in Flynn Rider from Tangled. It's almost like this movie's writers themselves realized that Tangled is the better movie, and a better source from which to steal than the original Frozen.
I could certainly go on about my dislike for this movie but I suspect my brunch will be arriving shortly, at which point typing will become much more difficult.
So I'll just close out by saying yes, Frozen II could not even get two stars from me. That's where I thought I would go with it, but by the end I was so annoyed that I busted it down a half-star further to 1.5.
It did look good on the projector though.
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