Giving the success of Frozen it wasn’t a great surprise when the sequel was announced but the initial trailer dropped with such dark imagery that I must admit I was a little curious with how Disney would play this one. Unfortunately, they played it pretty safe and whilst the humour, songs and visuals are of a similar level to the first there seems to be a little less heart in this film.
Picking up from the ‘happily ever after’ of Frozen, Queen Elsa starts to hear a calling. She works out that the voices she hears are linked to her powers and the mystical 4 elements of the world. When her investigations cause the whole city peril, she, along with the Anna, Olaf, Kristoff and Sven, travel to the enchanted forest to put an end to the threat and learn the truth about Elsa’s mysterious past.
There is much that’s good about Frozen 2. The visuals are brilliant with many of the set pieces bought beautifully to life. Olaf is still extremely funny mixing clever one liners for the adults and physical humour for the younger audiences that paid dividends in the original. The voice performances and singing is again strong and the pacing keeps the movie ticking along quite nicely despite its relatively long run time for a kids film.
However, I came out just feeling like it lacked a little bit of soul. It wasn’t necessarily the obvious moral driven plotline, or the on the nose statement about colonialism. Everything just felt a little bit more commercial and like the big corporate machine churning out a sequel.
Many of the elements that made the original so successful are mirrored in this. Idina Menzel (as Elsa) blaring out ‘Into the Unknown’ is a perfectly watchable and enjoyable song in the film but its parallels to ‘Let it Go’ see it ultimately fall short. Similarly, Olaf (despite owning much of the humour in the film) gets his own solo song that never quite lives up to ‘In Summer’. The dynamics between Elsa and Anna of a sister’s bond being so important are practically lifted from the first. Most annoyingly Anna and more noticeably Elsa change attire so often that it feels like an attempt by Disney to sell a lot of children’s clothes in the run up to Christmas.
Ultimately its by no means a bad film and will likely be a big commercial success but I had hopes that given the ingenuity of the first, that Disney would be more daring with the sequel. Unfortunately, Frozen 2 suffers from the ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ mentality that cripples so many sequels.
Written by Will
Hughes Reviews 