Is it time for Disney to LET IT GO?
Six years ago, when the original Frozen film was released, I was one of many, many adults who absolutely loved it. Never mind that this magical tale of two princesses, a well-intentioned but slightly dim ice-gatherer, a reindeer and a walking, talking, not to mention singing, snowman was firmly aimed at little girls, it was five stars all round from me.
I loved the fabulous Disney animation, a beautifully crafted screenplay that was as witty as it was touching, and even I – something of a sceptic when it comes to musicals – could tell the songs were outstanding.
Now, along comes the hotly anticipated sequel and… well, it’s just not quite as good – nowhere near if I’m being blunt. Anyone hoping for the equivalent of a Toy Story 2, one of the best sequels ever, is in for a crushing disappointment.
Which is a shame given the effort that has clearly gone in to keeping the Frozen magic alive, with Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee returning as co-directors, Lee leading the writing team once again and the husband-and-wife composing duo of Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez providing seven new songs. But if there’s another Let It Go among them, I didn’t hear it – at least not at first sitting.
That all duly said, it will still make gazillions for Disney at the box office (globally, the original took more than £1bn), will definitely fill a rainy afternoon in the endless run-up to Christmas and will probably turn Olaf, the snowman voiced by Josh Gad, into an even bigger star than he is already. His high-speed reprise of the plot of the original is one of the comic highlights of the film.
With five such well-established and much-loved characters to play with, the central problem inevitably turns out to be the plot, which takes a long time to establish itself and turns out to be both familiar and so complicated that a stone troll has to be summoned to begin to explain it.
A distracted Elsa, the snowand-ice-dispensing princess so spectacularly voiced by Idina Menzel, is hearing a mysterious sound, a secret siren call, if you like. And it’s calling her to a strange land in the north where, according to a long introductory flashback, her grandfather once built a great dam as a gift to the local Northuldra people, only for there to a big falling out at the last minute. This resulted in the forest being put under a spell that meant no one could go in or out.
That, of course, is exactly where Elsa and the gang are now heading, in the hope of harnessing the four elements (air, fire, water and earth) and generally saving not just the day but Arendelle – the girl’s home fjord-side town – as well. But when Elsa gets into trouble, the other four have to set off to rescue her… which, of course, is pretty much the plot of the original.
There are some spectacular animated moments. I liked Elsa’s wave-skipping journey north, and the earth giants are fabulous. There are one or two nice moments of humour, too, not least when Olaf muses deliberately on the transformative nature of enchanted forests, purely so he can deliver the line:
‘I can’t wait to see what it does to each of us.’ That’s the next 45 minutes accounted for.
But this is a sequel that never recaptures the original’s magic and too often feels as if it’s made up of moments we’ve seen before. Accompanying parents (especially of the easily upset) will need to know not just that there’s one very sad moment, but that it’s eventually resolved in a way they might expect.
The same could be said of the entire film, which lacks a convincing love story and where everyone eventually lives happily ever after so suddenly that it’s difficult keeping up or caring very much. So, not a disaster, but certainly not great either. Frozen III? I’d let it go.
It will probably turn Olaf into an even bigger star than he already is