The 2013 Disney animated film, Frozen was a phenomenon across the world. While Disney has had its fair share of classics that everyone around the world hold dear to their hearts, Frozen came during a new era of regrowth for the company and bloomed a fresh new delight for people young and old, with people gravitating towards the catchy songs, colorful animation, and a great update to the classic Disney formula. Being one of Disney’s highest grossing movies of all time and one that has resulted in so much merchandising, a sequel was almost guaranteed in the future, but that thought also came with a lot of fear since Disney had consistently proven in the past that they usually fail in following up their bigger movies (an entire collection of sequels to their films have been labelled as a black spot on their entire brand). After the first trailer for the sequel showed itself to be darker, more realistic, and strikingly different from the first, people started to feel like this could work and possibly even be something. Once the public got to witness this follow-up, the final results were more polarizing than anything, which is saying a lot for a name that should’ve felt like a safety net. Back in the kingdom of Arendelle, sisters Anna and Elsa (voiced again by Kristen Bell and Idina Menzel) have gotten used to their roles as leaders of the kingdom, but Elsa has been hearing a voice calling out to her from a distant land that continually draws her attention. Once the elements literally start to tear apart their kingdom and force them to evacuate, she realizes that the voice is coming from an enchanted forest that houses an ancient war between Arendelle soldiers and a woodland tribe, one that holds a secret that stains a lot of their kingdom’s history. The sisters along with Anna’s boyfriend, Kristoff (voiced again by Jonathan Groff), and their living snowman, Olaf (voiced again by Josh Gad) travel to the enchanted forest to calm the elemental spirits to save their home as well as discovering the true reason behind Elsa’s powers. For a follow-up to Frozen, it made the expected amount of cash at the box office with a final total of $1.4 billion (making it one of the highest grossing animated films of all time), but from a critical standpoint, it doesn’t exceed anything from the first film, never reaching the same level of impact or even general appeal. The movie’s still home to a lot of wonderful visuals, well-composed songs, a very likeable cast and some really interesting ideas that unfortunately needed to be put together in a more structured way, but the poorly constructed narrative, awkwardly handled cast, and a tone that isn’t back with intelligence prevents this sequel from truly upgrading.

One of the more noticeable qualities of this film is that it feels quite different from the usual vein of Disney princess films, pushing aside the usually frilly and easy-to-grasp nature of the fairy-tale oriented stories in exchange for something down-to-earth and more akin to a young adult book. On the surface, this isn’t a bad change as the world is one that is open to this kind of exploration, Frozen as a name could explore darker themes in a manner that still related to children, and the idea of Disney evolving one of their brands into something a little more mature is a risky but cool idea if pulled off right. However, the film doesn’t handle this in the best and that all comes down the story and how muddled and backwards it truly is. The film feels like it has many great interesting concepts and pieces of a really interesting story written by the film’s directors, Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck, along with Marc Smith and Robert and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, but the pace of the film is not very good and doesn’t allow any of these ideas time to build or even come to fruition. This feels like a movie that has been severely edited down and gone through several rewrites and changes throughout its production history, which was the case as the film had a rough developmental stage with most audiences members having trouble connecting with the story on display (mainly children). In terms of the overall quality of the narrative, everything that is focused on Elsa is done well and feels the most complete; its simple and easy to comprehend, but still has a hint of maturity to it, it feels like it has a beginning-middle-end flow to it, and while the conclusion is a hint vague and slightly out of nowhere, it feels like a nice enough conclusion for the role. Whether its moment’s where she’s connecting with the various forest spirits, taking part in a legitimately great action scene involving a water horse, or even just having a quiet emotional scenes with Anna, all of these scenes are strong and emotionally connectable. Its how the film handles the rest of the cast (whether they be new or even old characters) where this film takes some major hits in terms of storytelling, with characters that feel unexplained at best and down right lazy at worst, personalities that feel too prominent for some and too diluted for others, and concepts and ideas with heavy undertones that could be explored like toxic dependency and even depression, but are never matched with enough dissection to make them interesting and having an overall tone that retreats on several decisions that should be permanent, resulting in a story that claims to be risky, but never goes through with anything. While the first movie did have narrative problems due to its fairy tale framework, it knew what it wanted to achieve and pulled it off, highlighted the characters in a way that still allowed to personality, and didn’t have to deal with realistic struggles and consequences because their world wasn’t run by true logic, whereas this film paints itself like it does, so it doesn’t get a pass. It does get some points for trying to go darker and heavier, but the failed execution just makes it look all the worst for it.

The old cast of characters are still pretty likeable when presented here, but most of their roles do feel pretty poorly handled. As previously mentioned, the movie is heavily split in terms of quality in regard to how Elsa’s story is handled and how the rest of the cast is handled. Elsa is the main focus, and her story is the better half of the movie; what they discover about her is a little vague and uncertain but effective enough, anytime it keeps focus on her journey and her outcome it feels like something is actually progressing and growing from the last film, and she’s just a genuinely interesting and awesome character to follow for this film. Most of the others don’t get the same amount of treatment and feel like they are included just because it would be insane not to feature them. Anna has elements that work in the story but otherwise isn’t allowed to do much outside of just worry about Elsa, Kristoff has so little to do in this movie outside of just asking Anna to marry him that its pretty pathetic, resorting a character who was simple but fine in the last film, into nothing but a one-note punchline who serves no purpose in the film at all. Olaf was a character that always towed the line between being charming and obnoxious in the first film, but he never overstayed his welcome, served the purpose he needed, had a few legitimately good lines and was refreshingly quiet which meant he was never too in-your-face shouty like other obnoxious Disney comic relief. In this film, there is no restraint on this character at all and he is as annoying as he could’ve been previously. His lines are rarely funny, Josh Gad is way too high-pitched and screechy now, and he has no role whatsoever, he could be written out entirely and nothing would’ve been missed. Most of the new characters introduced like Sterling K. Brown, Martha Plimpton, Jason Ritter, and Rachel Matthews could have led to something interesting, yet their inclusion is immediately dismissed once they’ve been introduced, being relatively pointless to the overall narrative which is strange considering how they are attached to what is supposedly the main crux of the plot.

The visuals have definitely taken a dramatic upgrade, featuring better textures, more realistic environments and a heavier dive into the fanatical element of the story as opposed to the more streamlined and glossy look of the first film. The movie has a lot of breathtaking visuals in parts and they are often connected to some of the stronger moments altogether, featuring a better variety of locations and moody tones as opposed to just a constantly snow-covered mountaintop. The colors are extremely bright and incredibly flowing, especially in the musical numbers, and when they get creative, the feast for the eyes is even more impressive. The mystical visuals feel both unique in the distinct coloration they have compared to the other locations, but they also feel grounded enough in reality that there’s a nice balance between grit and fantasy, creatures like gigantic rock titans and the water horse spirit known as a Nøkk look amazing in that aspect. The entire segment where Elsa is forced to fight this creature in a raging sea is easily one of the highlights of the film, with great energy to it, fun usage of their powers, and a look that could be blurry and dull, but is never distracting and always shows off the cool stuff effectively. Comparing the music from this movie against the original is almost unfair as the first is literally implanted in the human mind after how many times a majority of these songs were played. The film does have its highlights like two of Elsa’s ballads (which do feel like remixed versions of Let It Go, but it’s hard to ignore how successful that song and by extension these songs, were) and most of the of the others still capture that same mixture of Celtic ambiance with current Disney musical styling, but none are quite as memorable as any from the original, and some even feel hilariously out of tone (there is an 80s rock ballad in this film and it just feels so weird to listen to within the context and mood of this story). Even if Robert and Kristen Anderson-Lopez returned to write the music, it just doesn’t reach the same heights.

Frozen 2 was always going to face an uphill battle, but it’s a little saddening that it carried all its money down the hill as opposed to reaching top in success. Having to be different enough from the first to not be repetitive but be similar enough so that fans can get what they want, add more interesting elements to freshen up the concepts and go into a darker areas but not too far so that the image of everyone’s favorite characters aren’t broken, it was clearly a product held hostage by its towering company overlord, and because of that it only produced a good-ish sequel with a plentiful amount of faults. While it had some good ideas, a likeable cast, great visuals, and some effective songs, it’s not a great follow-up to something as large as Frozen, taking something that was big and game-changing and making its follow-up something simple and inoffensive. Kids who like the original Frozen will also get into this film for similar components like the music and the visuals, but not nearly to the same extent and the film itself isn’t necessarily bad, but as a whole, not the strongest follow up. Check it out if you’re a fan, just don’t get too freaked out when a herd of reindeer start singing like Queen.

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