We all knew this had to come eventually and now it’s finally here. Frozen….2 baby. Yay!
Frozen is up there with Minecraft and Fortnite as one of the easiest franchises to instantly dislike. I was a bit of a Frozen hater back when it first came out, but it’s mainly because I thought it was super overrated.
Six years have passed, the perfect amount of time for Frozen to become irrelevant and enough time for fans’ anticipation levels for the upcoming sequel to be up at cloud level. As a grown man who couldn’t be further from the Frozen marketing demographic, yet is a huge fan of great animation, I have to say Frozen II is about as good as I thought it would be, although my expectations weren’t very high.
I don’t want to come off as if I hate Frozen because that’s far from the case. I haven’t seen Frozen in a long time and basing it on memory I think I enjoyed this one much better. (I’ll have to confirm that later with the Disneyathon.) The animation is amazing and quite breathtaking. There is a lot of vibrant colours and there is some great cinematography throughout the movie, but more so closer to the end.
There are some great songs, same as the original, though there is no real standout like the infamous Let It Go. To be fair I have only heard these songs once and maybe my opinion might change over the next few weeks when I hear the same songs over and over. I hope the new successor to Let It Go is Kristoff’s song Lost in the Woods which was probably the biggest surprise in the whole movie.
Probably the worst song is Olaf’s song When I Am Older as it’s pretty much a repeat of the song he sang in the first movie. Don’t worry, Anna and Elsa get their own songs too, with Elsa’s centric song probably being my second favourite in this movie. Though any reason to hear Idina Menzel’s beautiful singing voice is a win in my book.
I did like that the story was a pretty good continuation from the first movie. Elsa’s weird ice powers are now connected to new elements as well which I think means Elsa is basically the Avatar now! I did enjoy the mystery of the true birth of Elsa’s powers and the secret war that happened in this mystery magic forest. Elsa and Anna’s sisterly bond was also a nice touch in this movie and Kristen Bell and Idina Menzel’s performances were phenomenal. It’s worth pointing out that it’s a lot darker than the last one as Elsa and Anna go through some tough times, something you wouldn’t expect from a movie aimed at 12 year olds.
It isn’t perfect as Frozen II introduces plenty of side characters connected to this war that immediately feel like a massive waste of time. None of them standout and aren’t given any time for you to care about them so what’s the point? It’s quite annoying too as they’re connected to the big mystery backstory and since they don’t add much how they fit in is quite confusing.
Let’s get to the characters that you care about. Kristoff probably doesn’t need to be here as all he does is try and fail to propose to Anna, something that is totally original and I have definitely never seen before. No Way! Olaf produces a funny line or two, but he did overstay his welcome pretty damn quickly. I did enjoy Anna and Elsa, but they’re not perfect either, mainly towards the end where it gets quite muddled and making everything kind of meaningless. I’ll stay spoiler free, but be warned the ending isn’t great.
Overall Frozen II is a confident sequel to the first. I won’t say it’s my cup of tea as it does do some daring things, but it holds back in order to stay mainstream and, I presume, to reboot the Frozen merchandise machine. The Disneyathon might change it later, but for now I’m sticking with a 6/10. If you liked the first one then ignore my review and go see it, if not then I would wait until it’s on Disney+ or something.
I was thinking while making this of doing some experimenting by inserting a quick one liner in the comments to hopefully interact with more of you. I’ll do this for the next couple of posts and see what happens as this is an experiment. Anyway more reviews very soon and I have been The Blog Complainer, signing out.
Since I don’t know anything about Frozen fans Question of this post: Which do you prefer Frozen or Frozen II?
Frozen II kind of bums me out. Similar to you I’m not the biggest fan of the original but I do think the characters have fun personalities and the animation is marvelous. I thought the epic adventure route was intriguing but what the did with it…..ehhh. It was an epic journey across the backyard I guess, as the film appears to forget to be climatic as the characters suffer minor inconveniences with the excitement of a filler arc, a merchandising focus that makes Space Jam look more sincere by comparison and a sequel that feels like Disney is trying to improve more upon Pocahontas than Frozen. It wasn’t awful but IDK I feel if people really loved this franchise they would be more disappointed by how underwhelming it was.
Glad we’re pretty much on the same page. I agree that the final climax was pretty damn anti-climatic and it’s one of the reasons why I wasn’t a fan of the ending. Now that you pointed it out I did notice the Pocahontas similarities and Pocahontas did do that aspect better. Though I would rather watch Frozen II over that boring drag. It sucks it’s going to sell like mad and I saw this movie in a cinema full of little girls and they did not sound disappointed in the slightest.
Frozen is superior. Better songs, better story, same fun characters. Our grandchildren watch Frozen on Disney+ all the time, along with Moana and others.
More memorable songs is definitely true but basing on what you just said then perhaps it is the superior one. I don’t know I’ll confirm my answer when I get around to watching the two again.