#this originally had a art of war punchline but it was too unclear what the joke was exactly n i value clarity of comedy more than innovation

[nicomrade]

for my non-poker playing followers this is basically the equivalent of riiching/pushing every single hand no matter what. to my non-poker non-jong followers uhm its maybe similar to always hitting in blackjack. you dont play blackjack either? start gambling.

[dweemeister]

Frozen II (2019)

Six years ago, Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee directed Frozen, a film that became a pop culture phenomenon destined to induce musical madness for anyone who needed to babysit a child. I contended in 2013, as I do now, that Frozen had the best-looking CGI for a Walt Disney Animation Studios film at that point in Disney history and its musical score by Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez a great asset. Let me get a few other unpopular opinions (at least, on tumblr) out of the way now. As the 2010s close, Frozen still has the best musical score and original song (“Let it Go”) of any Walt Disney Animation Studios film released in the twenty-first century (the century is still young). Due to overexposure and criticisms borne out of bad faith, social media turned on Frozen quickly. But I think one thing yours truly and Frozen’s harshest critics can agree upon is how little did we know that Frozen would be as successful as it has become, how it crossed cultural and linguistic barriers that other films in the recent Disney animated canon could not.

When its sequel was announced by now-disgraced John Lasseter (Lasseter served as producer but is uncredited on Frozen II), the weight of expectations hoisted upon Buck and Lee (who wrote the screenplay) must have been tremendous. As Lasseter often said in the mid-2010s when announcing a Disney or Pixar sequel, he claimed that a Disney or Pixar sequel only comes to fruition when, “the filmmakers who created the original have created an idea that is so good that it’s worthy of [the] characters.” Frozen II is a gorgeously-animated film that misfires on its characterizations and plotting, but deserves partial credit for attempting to communicate a worthy message to those children – some who are just now navigating the confusing years of teenagehood – who fell in love with and have repeatedly watched the 2013 original.

Time has passed since we last saw our heroes, Anna (Kristen Bell) and Elsa (Idina Menzel) of Arendelle. Little has changed in Arendelle in those years, with Kristoff and his reindeer Sven (Jonathan Groff as both) presumably still harvesting ice and Olaf (Josh Gad) basking in the fact he has a magical coat of permafrost. One evening, Elsa (and only Elsa) hears a siren in the distance, emanating from the north’s Enchanted Forest – which is surrounded by an impassable mist. A substantial but manageable disaster disrupts life in Arendelle shortly after the mysterious call, forcing the protagonists towards the Enchanted Forest. There, they meet a lost Arendellian military unit that has been in constant warfare with the Northuldra tribe since around the time Elsa and Anna’s parents have been missing. Elsa and Anna help the factions agree to an armistice. Amid this peace, Elsa travels even further north to confront her family’s past to understand her unsettling present.

Frozen II’s greatest failing is, surprisingly, not Jennifer Lee’s tiresome insistence on impossibly frequent humor and dialogue that sounds as if the characters have been airlifted from contemporary America – though there is plenty of both in this film. Instead, it is an elementary building block to any art that attempts a narrative: understandable, meaningful motivations. With Elsa, she journeys northward on little else but a hunch and bedtime stories imparted to her during her childhood – flimsy reasoning at best. For Anna, she apparently has become paralyzed in the fear of disrupting how she and her sister have been interacting with each other and their lives in Arendelle. Lee needs to imbue Anna with depth here, as it is unclear exactly what Anna fears losing most. Kristoff accompanies Anna and Elsa because he wants to offer marriage to the former, doing so with the competency of a Sous-chef asked to perform a coronary artery bypass. My apologies to any Sous-chefs with medical experience. And, oh yes, Olaf goes along because Disney needs to make that sweet green.

Lee also cannot help but pack her screenplays with exposition. If this is any indication of how intelligent she thinks moviegoers are, the results are not flattering to anybody. There are worthy ideas in this screenplay, yet they are obscured by plot contrivances needed to position characters in certain spots that reeks of narrative convenience or thematic cold feet. An idea that seems to have been inspired by Avatar: The Last Airbender does not inspire additional confidence, but perhaps a few guffaws and rolled eyes. The Northuldra tribe are inspired by the Sámi people, an indigenous people native to northern Norway, Sweden, and Finland as well as far northwestern Russia. Frozen II dances around the idea of having something to say about imperialism – in terms of cultural/racial supremacy, coercive diplomacy by gun barrel or bayonet, environmental exploitation – but declines to do so.

Elsewhere, Olaf’s characterization is still that of the buck-toothed, boisterous goofball that he is. But unlike the first Frozen where Olaf exuded childish silliness, he is spouting philosophical claptrap that will pass over the heads of children. Frozen II is preening here: “Hey, parents showing your children Frozen II! You’re smarter than your grade schooler; isn’t that hilarious!?”

This contempt extends to a late scene where Lee’s screenplay has Elsa scoff at a reference to “Let It Go”. The moment, brief as it is, is as perplexing as it is infuriating. Assuming that it is supposed to be played for laughs, why would Chris Buck and Lee think that those who despise 2013′s Frozen care to watch this sequel? Why would they think that, for the children who adored Frozen upon its original release and since then (while probably encountering few people bashing on the film), that moment would be the slightest bit humorous? Considering the number of people – even if it is only one person in the world (I’d wager everything including the kitchen sink that the actual number is higher) – who found inspiration in “Let It Go” and its use in narrative and character development context, how could they be so disrespectful to those individuals as well as Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez? Perhaps this is rabblerousing over something insignificant, but it seems to exemplify a level of contempt the filmmakers have for elements from the previous film and, potentially, the audience willing to watch the sequel.

Every Walt Disney Animation Studios film released since Winnie the Pooh (2011) has treated tropes introduced in the older Disney animated canon in similar fashion. Disney history, even for a film made six years ago, is a punchline, not to be celebrated or engaged with critically. The Walt Disney Company of 2019 is one preferring to bury its past (this also includes the companies it has acquired). If there, like in the early 2000s, is a war for the animation studio’s soul, it is playing out in how these films are being made.

Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez’s sufficient musical score is worse, title-by-title, when compared against the 2013 original. “All Is Found” feels out of place in this film because of its orchestration – this is the only song in either Frozen film using Nordic instruments and inspired by Nordic folk music. As interesting as this song is lyrically (and for how those lyrics play into what eventually occurs in this film), it suffers from the same problem plaguing “Frozen Heart” from the first film in that they are just too musically detached from the showtune style that the Lopezes bring to Frozen II. “Some Things Never Change” lays out the subtext and the film’s dramatic irony too obviously, and Groff’s silly vocals to imitate what Sven would sound like is a juvenile decision. Shortly after, “Into the Unknown” – which features the voice of AURORA as the mysterious Dies Irae-like voice that only Elsa can hear – is sung by Elsa with bombast. As talented as Menzel is, “Into the Unknown” is overproduced, contains an excessive amount of vocalizations, and has no business being the third song sung within the opening twenty or twenty-five minutes of a film. The early placement of “Into the Unknown” creates pacing issues in the film’s first half from which it almost does not recover.

In the film’s second half, we find Kristoff a frustrated figure, unable to find a moment to pop Anna the question. In the film’s acid trip of a musical number, Jonathan Groff, as Kristoff, is given a 1980s power ballad named “Lost in the Woods” for curious reasons. “Lost in the Woods”, for reindeer-related reasons, is the most entertaining number in Frozen II, but, like “All Is Found”, makes no musical sense – it is framed as a homage to multiple 1980s power ballad music videos that one could have found on MTV in that decade. Maybe the part of me that is irritated by the swathe of 1980s nostalgia sweeping American popular culture right now is being hypercritical, but I will acknowledge that – when listened to divorced of narrative context – “Lost in the Woods” is a fantastic musical homage. Frozen II’s thematic parallel to “Let It Go” is actually “Show Yourself”, not “Into the Unknown”. It is yet another song demanding much from Menzel and has been subordinated by, presumably, Disney marketers and executives.

Before mentioning the film’s final song, the Lopezes should be praised for steering the plot away from stormy waters, lending a needed course correction to an otherwise hapless screenplay. “All Is Found”, “Some Things Never Change”, and “Show Yourself” provide a necessary musical boost that might otherwise have contained even more tedious exposition. To Frozen II’s credit, the story’s second half is unexpectedly, but never unjustifiably, melancholic. The best song on this soundtrack just so happens to provide the greatest narrative boost to Frozen II in the film’s darkest moments. “The Next Right Thing”, echoing a line repeated a few times from different characters, is a musical and thematic triumph. The song, eschewing lyrical/poetic meter (this is a radical decision; very few songwriters in the history of Broadway musicals and Hollywood would dare to even compose one song with no identifiable lyrical meter), literalizes how one carries on in the midst of depression and loss. Bell cries rather than sings some of the song’s lines, but, given the lyrics, it is deserved.

Through "The Next Right Thing” and what transpires to the film’s conclusion, Anna and Elsa – in their distinct ways – learn how to answer the most baffling questions children and adults will ever face. How does one regain their bearings when one’s peers and loved ones all seem to be changing into something unrecognizable? How can the tragic decisions of the past be resolved depending on who made those decisions? I’m not saying Frozen II is an articulately-crafted drama examining the human condition, rising to the heights reached by cinema’s most celebrated auteurs. but it is at least attempting to pose difficult questions to its audience – and yes, to the children and teenagers that have and will grow up with Anna and Elsa and company – that numerous other animation films from other major American studios would dare not attempt. The bar may not be high, but the filmmakers – and yes, the Lopezes – provide a small, yet necessary, lift.

For the Walt Disney Animation Studios, what has been deemed the “Disney Revival” in some quarters has been predicated on the company’s financial strength over the 2010s, ignoring how distractingly metatextual and behaviorally contemporary these recent films have been. If one is looking for 2010s animated films reflecting and extolling humanity’s goodness and/or affirming cultural and ideological empathy, do not look to the major American animation studios for these qualities. In some future year, may those audiences looking back on the films that they cherished as children take inspiration in Anna and Elsa’s courage when facing life’s uncertainties. May they teach a few grizzled movie fans to see something that only they could because of their youth.

My rating: 6/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.