Frozen II (2019) - Movie Review

Discussing the worldwide phenomenon that is Frozen is… difficult. Mainly because, for pretty much every single day since its initial release, it’s been damn-near impossible to escape the bloody thing. Overplay is something that can sour a film to an immense degree, and between the moichendising, the sing-a-long screenings that continue to this day, and the ubiquity of Let It Go, it is all too easy to understand why a lot of people have grown plain sick of the whole thing.

For me personally, though… no amount of overplay can kill this thing. It remains one of the single greatest things Disney has ever produced, an astounding feat of sophisticated storytelling and mesmerising animation and music that, upon first watching, it basically became the subconscious watermark that every other animated film has to measure up to for me. Whether in comparison to the media juggernaut that is Frozen’s afterlife, or just the sheer brilliance of the film itself, making a feature-length follow-up to it was going to be a Herculean task. And man oh man, I don’t think anyone was expecting this to be the end result.

With Disney/Pixar’s technology continuing to build over the last handful of years, to the point where previous challenges like water, light and realistic textures have improved dramatically in the process, simply saying that the animation here is good would still be underselling it. Even going from the lighting improvements in Coco to this, there is still something that feels like it’s been upgraded in the interim: The confidence of the people putting it together. More so than many of Disney’s latest efforts, this one shows the animators putting as much stock as possible in the visuals to tell the story. And from the grandeur of the enchanted forest where the bulk of the film takes place, to its menagerie of mystical creatures, to the visualisation of what are ultimately very abstract ideas, they have reason to be this confident in their abilities.

Then there’s the soundtrack, where another challenge presents itself: Matching up to the endless earworms that were the original songs. Well, given how much stock I put in Robert Lopez’s songwriting, considering he also worked on Coco, Avenue Q and even The Book Of Mormon, he and his wife Kristen Anderson-Lopez certainly don’t disappoint. Whether these songs will have the same staying power remains to be seen, but the end result certainly won’t be from lack of trying.

The mood shifts from the tragic (The Next Best Thing, showing Anna in one of Disney’s most depressing moments yet… seriously) to the hilarious (Olaf’s When I Am Older, containing a level of musical irony that marvellously backs up what is actually a pretty challenging conceit for a family film: The world doesn’t make more sense just because you’ve grown up) to the tragically hilarious (Kristoff’s Lost In The Woods, which competes with Agony from Into The Woods for being so self-consciously overblown that you can’t help but giggle at the result), all without missing a beat.

It also melds greatly with the visuals to aid with the storytelling… which brings us to the story itself. I described the original Frozen as ‘sophisticated’ because that’s how dense the writing in it truly is. It took a fairly standard part of the typical fairy tale (lacerating numerous other tropes in the process) and wrapped it up in so much metaphor and thematic short-hand that it breathed new life into it. The sequel definitely follows in that tradition, except it’s gotten to the point where it’s somehow managed to confuse even the adults watching it. Well, even though actually breaking this thing down without spoilers will be a tricky proposition… one of the main songs here is literally about stepping out into the unknown to better one’s self, so might as well give it a fair shake.

The main plot boils down to Anna, Elsa, Kristoff, Sven and Olaf entering the aforementioned enchanted forest to discover some major secret about their kingdom’s past. It feels weirdly reminiscent of Thor: Ragnarok in how it looks at Nordic culture and the hard truth of its colonial roots. It also delves into somewhat into Smallfoot territory in how it approaches the notion of learning long-kept secrets about one’s own society, and how paralysing it can be to try and come to terms with that knowledge. Then there’s the general musings about the connection between man and nature, with the main plot taking an ostensible video game collect-a-thon plot and turning it into a quest to re-establish that connection.

Again, it’s a story made of relatively simple and familiar aspects, but also again, it’s depicted with a mythical and almost-cerebral touch, like it’s meant to watched with an equivalent of David Lynch’s 10 Clues in order to parse through it all. Hell, I get the feeling that I’m likely missing something deep beneath the surface besides what can charitably be called the obvious.

But at the same time, for a sequel to a film that basically everyone in the Western world knows line-for-line with how prevalent it is, I wasn’t expecting to walk away from it with the descriptors ‘challenging’, ‘cerebral’ and ‘abstract’ in response to it. It may prove too obtuse for certain audiences, and I totally get being confused by the storytelling here… but I can only see that as a positive. It improves on the layered writing of the original, once again furthered by the terrific acting, animation and soundtrack, to create a genuine experience of a film that shows unparalleled poise in how it lets every aspect of the production depict the story at hand.

It’s basically the usual ‘What will adults get out of this film made for children?’ questioning that gets brought up with a lot of family films, but one predicated on wondering if the adults are smart enough to get what’s going on. With all the crap that’s been going on this year regarding the discourse around Disney films, I can’t help but have quite a bit of respect for this film because of that.