Random Movie Review - Frozen II

Back in 2013, no one knew if the first film would be great. At the same time, no one knew that it would become as big as it was and to this day, people still talk about it, sing the songs and invest in the merchandise while Disney are trying to make a stage musical despite the coronavirus. So naturally they had to make a sequel and after several short films, TV specials and an appearance in the Kingdom Hearts series, the sequel has finally arrived. Not as big of an impact as the first one, but with the big song this time being about entering the great unknown, of course we as fans have to check it out. So let us now go into the unknown:

The film starts with a prologue in which a previously unseen part of the sisters' story during their childhood, is shown. In it, the king and their father (voiced by Dr. Octopus himself, Alfred Molina) tells them of a time when Arendelle once attempted to establish a peace treaty with the Northuldra tribe by creating a dam in their homeland, the Enchanted Forest. But a fight broke out which saw the elemental spirits go into a fit of rage and disappear while leaving nearly everyone trapped in a wall of mist traps. Three years later following the events of the first film, Queen Elsa (reprised by Idina Menzel) celebrates autumn in Arendelle with her sister Anna (reprised by Kirsten Bell), Anna's boyfriend Kristoff (reprised by Jonathan Groff), their living snowman Olaf (reprised by Josh Gad) and Sven. But when Elsa hears a voice, she sets out to discover its origin only to unintentionally bring Arendelle to near devastation. Accompanied by her sister and friends, she sets out to discover the past and the origin of her powers as they venture into the unknown.

While the film is a good sequel, its not quite the phenomenon that the first film was in terms of music and story. The film faces the same problem that Toy Story 4 and Ralph Breaks the Internet had in that it spends more of its focus on two of the main characters while side lining the rest for either exposition, comic relief, both those things or just for a couple of scenes. Seriously Kristoff spends the whole film with a running gag of him trying to propose to Anna. While Olaf uses a combination of exposition and comic relief which of course is all improvised. I think in terms of the lesson Disney must learn here is that as great as it would be to see the two main characters, you need to give the other characters who played major roles in the first film a bit more to do than just being there for those things and to sell the merchandise. Other than that, the songs are good, story is OK, animation is top-notch and the new characters are good fun. Plenty to like if you ignore the character and story problems that Disney seem to be doing in their films these days. 8/10