Saturday, November 30, 2019

Film Review - Frozen 2 (2019)

Frozen 2 is the sequel to the hit 2013 animated film Frozen and this time Anna and Elsa (Kristen Bell and Idina Menzel) find themselves heading to an enchanted forest after Elsa hears a strange voice in the wind calling her so they, Olaf, Christophe and Sven head off on a new adventure to save their kingdom of Arendale.

Frozen 2 thankfully doesn’t try to repeat the Disney Princess Fairytale story of the first film and thankfully this has much more of the feeling of an adventure film where the heroes go on a noble quest to save their kingdom from doom and this adventure feel is one of the best things about this sequel as it stops the series from becoming repetitive too quickly and it is a great quest to watch unfold.

Also the film does a very nice job making sure that the bond between Anna and Elsa is not lost amidst the adventure and the songs and the comedy, it was one of the things I liked most about the first film and it’s also the case here as you really feel the closeness between the 2 of them and the sense in the case of Anna that she simply cannot lose her once more as she’s the only real family she has left even though Olaf, Christophe and Sven are also there in her life even though nothing could compare to the bond between Sisters.

But alas this sequel is sadly something of a mixed bag for me despite those big positives and there are 2 big negatives I have with this movie:

- First of those is most of the songs themselves, the songs worked in the first movie for me because the movie being made then was a more old fashioned Disney movie like Little Mermaid or Beauty and the Beast or Aladdin where the songs were fundamental to the spine of those stories whereas here because the storytelling is taking on much more of that adventure quest feel the songs for the most part I felt got in the way of the quest story and with one exception ground it to a halt.

That one exception is Lost in the Woods which Mr Jonathan Groff who voices Christophe sings and it is very very good especially the visuals that back up the song and I had a big smile on my face during that song.

- And secondly the films comedy moments just fell flat for me and again those moments worked for me in the first movie because Olaf was that films equivalent of characters like Sebastian in Little Mermaid or Cogsworth and Lumiere in Beauty and the Beast and Abu and Iago in Aladdin where you have those humorous sidekicks that provide that comic relief for the kids in the audience whereas here I felt the humour fell flat very quickly and after a while I got a bit sick of Olaf playing the fool.

And so that was Frozen 2 and it’s a real mixed bag for me, I loved the adventure story and the focus on the bond between the Sisters but the songs and the humour fell flat for me, 2 and a half out of 5.

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