Reel Snippet – Frozen 2
Summary: The Kingdom of Arendelle has enjoyed three years of comfort and peace under Queen Elsa (Idina Menzel) and her sister Anna (Kristen Bell), along with Anna’s partner Kristoph (Jonathan Groff), his reindeer Sven, and their snowman companion Olaf (Josh Gad). The lull is broken when a group of elemental spirits awakens after many years and chase the people out of the city. Following a mysterious voice only Elsa can hear, the group travels north to a land called Northuldra that’s been sealed off by an enchanted fog since, as the story goes, they attacked the people of Arendelle during a peaceful meeting when their mother (Evan Rachel Wood) and father (Alfred Molina) were children. It falls to them to soothe the spirits and uncover a history that has been kept secret for far too long.
Review: Frozen 2 isn’t quite as magical as the original, but was good nonetheless. The first Frozen was lightning in a bottle that breathed new life into the Disney Princess genre, so the sequel not quite living up to it isn’t a surprise. Even so, it was still good — the characters were enjoyable as before, the visuals are beautiful, and the new additions to the world and story are welcome and engaging.
The characters are the ones we know and love, though Kristoph gets the shaft with an irrelevant subplot to try and propose to Anna. As before, Elsa is the standout with the most dynamic acting, story, and action. Seriously, the scene with her and the Water Spirit is intense and beautiful. Anna’s character is probably the most different from the first movie, having developed one of the most severe cases of separation anxiety I’ve seen in film in a long time and of course, Olaf is Olaf. I will say that I don’t feel the new characters, like the guard captain played by Sterling Brown, are too memorable or serve much of a purpose. Well, apart from one Northuldran woman who sort of teases the possibility that Elsa might not be one hundred percent straight, but nothing really comes of it.
The songs, sadly, don’t stick with me as well as the previous film’s. While I could recite Let It Go from memory after the first time I heard it, I have trouble recalling more than a few lines from the breakout songs Into The Unknown and Show Yourself. Anna’s big song is pretty powerful nonetheless, especially since Kristen Bell relates to it so well vis a vis her own struggle with depression. Kristoph’s song, on the other hand, is very memorable, but not for the right reasons — it’s this very out-of-place hair metal song akin to that of Poison and it contains a baffling, out-of-nowhere homage to Bohemian Rhapsody that made me scratch my head in bewilderment.
There isn’t much to say about Frozen 2 apart from that it’s more of the same with more beautiful animation and some fun lore expansions, but not a ton of new ground broken (though some people might get a kick out of the meta jokes). It relies a lot on certain Disney tropes where the first film avoided quite a lot of them. I can’t think of anyone who would hate this movie, that’s for sure. So ultimately, I will say that it’s good and leave it at that. Of course, people have already seen it, so what’s my opinion worth, am I right?
Fun Tidbit: The Northuldra are based on the actual Sami tribe of indigenous people in Norway, who underwent similar struggles involving a dam as depicted within the movie (though admittedly with a lot less magic).
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