Review of Frozen II (2019) by Friendzie — 02 Mar 2020

I think they were in an impossible situation with this film, and made a pretty good movie in spite of that. With how successful the first movie was, of course they would have to make a second one, but the first film had some qualities that makes a follow-up very difficult. The fact that Frozen is known for its music virtually forced them to make more music, but no other children's musical ever had a successful follow-up, did it? Usually the good follow-ups are movies that focused primarily on plot and world building like Toy Story. Frozen was never good because of its plot, really, it was always more of a spectacle of song and emotion. It also wasn't made to have a sequel, as nobody thought it would do this well.

In any case, what we got with Frozen 2 was more song, spectacle, and emotion. When people dissect movies, they often fall into the pitfall of judging a movie as if it were a novel. Of course most movies fail by this standard. If you look at the whole package of visuals, performances, emotions, and excitement, Frozen 2 has all of those things, and does them all as well as anything else.

Since I'm reviewing this well after its release, I can comment on some things I've seen in other reviews. In particular: I've seen people talking about themes with indigenous people. I disagree that these themes exist to the point that the movie's creators could tell me about it, and I'd still say they were wrong. The people from Arendelle are medieval, without much technology. The people decribed as being indigenous have powerful magic, and Arendelle is shown to be AFRAID of their power. This is power that obviously is very fearsome, which is the entire basis for this franchise. The magic in these movies can being a whole country to its knees. The magic from ONE woman can do that, in fact. That's the basis of the entire plot of Frozen. Therefore, Frozen II is more about the fact that killing people is wrong even if you have a legitimate reason to fear them. Not about being nice to natives or whatever.

Anyway, I'm taking off a couple points for the fact that the movie is a little bit confusing for kids to follow and that the plot could probably be a bit better. I considered giving it a 7, but I gave it back a point because I feel that the franchise is now in a much better position to continue with creating better stories, giving the sisters a more well definted identity and path in life going forward.