[7.0/10] I don’t know what to do with *Frozen 2*. It’s a movie with some bold choices, and even some greatness in it, that’s also at least two drafts away from feeling fully-formed and complete. It starts off with a rush of jumbled lore-introduction, info-dumps, and piece-moving, pivots into one of the darkest but powerful stretches ever in a Disney movie, and then just as quickly rushes its way toward the expected happy ending, albeit a heartening one. It’s got brilliant visuals, intriguing themes, and some delightful comedy, but also a confused script, shaky worldbuilding, and hastily-sketched new motivations.
That said, at the end of the day, I still like it better than *Frozen 1*. Like its predecessor, *Frozen 2*’s ideas are better than its execution, but those ideas are bolder and more ambitious, so I’m a bit more willing to forgive the film’s reach exceeding its grasp. This movie tries to do *a lot*, and not all of its worth doing. Of the things that are, not all of them are done well. But there’s more going on under the hood here -- arguably more than a roughly ninety-minute film can handle -- which makes me admire its aims, even where it falls short.
The one area where *Frozen 2*’s goals easily meet its actual accomplishments is in the film’s visuals, which are head and shoulders better than those in the 2014 original. The big-headed barbie doll look for the main characters still looks a little strange, with some uncanny valley effect when they get extra emotive. In the same vein, some of the new characters look fairly generic, either lacking distinctiveness in their design or falling into the “standard Disney cute” territory.
But the movie also opts from an autumnal vibe in lieu of the original wintertime look, and the results are utterly gorgeous, with a wash of red and orange against a welcoming countryside. Stony earth guardians wheeze and lumber with the right balance of living spark and nature-y trappings. And the film’s action sequences are propulsive and stunning, particularly Elsa’s ice-assisted wave-breaking and Anna’s dam-crushing race against the earth guardians.
The film also has plenty of solid comic relief, which once again mainly comes in the form of Olaf the enchanted snowman (now gifted with permafrost). The running gags about him having matured, evolving into theoretically more complex thoughts and a font of arcane details bring the chuckles. The moments in the picture that poke fun at the most notable elements of the last movie have a self-aware comedy bite to them. Just Josh Gad’s delivery of lines that aren’t especially hilarious on paper elevates them and keeps the film’s dramatic moments more lively and accessible.
That’s necessary because a lot of those moments don’t really make sense. The first half of the movie barrels through a raft of cobbled together details from Anna and Elsa’s past, their kingdom’s history, the relevance of neighboring communities, the mythos of the region, the source of Elsa’s powers, a crisis that threatens to destroy Arendelle, parental secrets, nature spirits, trapped realms, generational conflicts, water being able to summon images from the past, and tons of other bits and pieces that make you feel like a story with this much baggage should have been done as a miniseries rather than crammed into forty-five minutes of setup.
It also zips to establish major impulse and pulls for the major characters. Elsa has her responsibilities as queen, but keeps hearing the call to adventure, and knows it’s something she’s s’pose to be, “Rainbow Connection”-style. Anna is worried about losing her sister again and so won’t let Elsa do anything on her own. Kristoff...wants to propose, and is bad at it. OK, his isn’t as good as the others, but still, all of these are solid planks on which to build a story. There’s just not enough time in all the throat-clearing and new additions to the world, cast, and rapidly-expanding plot for any of this stuff to feel fully baked.
It also doesn't help that most of the songs are good enough, but like the ones in the original *Frozen*, a little too poppy or on-the-nose to fully burrow into your heart. There are, however, two exceptions. Once again, Olaf’s song nearly steals the show, with his “When I’m Older” number capturing an amusing flavor of teenage certainty with humor and sweetness. Likewise, “Show Yourself” is the emotional climax of the picture, and represents Elsa’s psychological breakthrough, with soaring melodies and impressionistic visuals to match.
The song arrives just when *Frozen 2* really starts to get interesting and, frankly, pretty dark. Elsa and Anna discover their parents’ wrecked ship and essentially witness their last moments before Elsa shoos her sister away. Right after that emotional breakthrough, Elsa nebulously “pushes too far” and becomes frozen herself. That push still leads her to witness her grandfather maliciously turning on their neighbors to the north out of prejudice toward magical folk. Olaf dies thanks to Elsa’s neutralization at the hands of unhappy spirits. And Anna has to reckon with what it means to be fully alone, resolving to do the “next right thing” despite all she’s lost.
This material comes at the audience quickly, and one after another, but it’s powerful, embracing the emotional depths and hardships that don’t typically have currency in Disney, at least not in this sustained fashion. It’s worth the price of admission and almost single-handedly justifies the film. There’s not adequate build to these moments, and the fast resolution undercuts them, but *Frozen 2* depends on them as the crux of its project, and that much works.
They also feed into an intriguing anti-colonial, ecological theme that runs through the heart of the picture. It’s masked in layers of symbolism and magic and fantasy, but there’s a potent notion of harmony between communities, and recompense needing to be made for those who’ve benefited at the expense of another group, even if that requires reckoning with misdeeds from one’s own family and making sacrifices in your community to achieve it.
Of course, the movie zips its way to the preordained happy ending in ways that aren’t exactly earned. Anna comes up with a rapid, reckless plan to destroy the dam that’s been hurting the magical folks, even if it’ll wreck Arendelle. But the consequences are obviated by the move restoring the magical balance and thus restoring Elsa, who uses her magical powers to spare Arendelle from suffering any real consequences. Olaf is revived. Kristoff figures the right time to propose. All of the darkness and tough choices the movie scratches out in its crestfallen middle are wrapped up and fixed in about ten minutes of screen time, with little in the way of costs or impact.
That is, perhaps, inevitable in a Disney movie where everything has to end with the characters copasetic and a new joyous status quo forged. But it’s just another area where *Frozen 2*’s considerable strengths have to contend with its just as considerable weaknesses. The movie aims high, spinning a complicated yarn about angry spirits, lost histories, uneasy psyches, and anti-colonial corrections. That the movie loses control of that rumbling snowball of ideas is no sin, but it does make you wish the creatives who started it rolling took a little more time to settle on a clear direction for it.
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