Chilly reception for festive follow-up
The cultural phenomenon that was 2013’s Frozen almost passed me by – I actually didn’t catch the animated adventure until a DVD viewing a couple of years later.
While perfectly fine – and undoubtedly featuring infuriatingly catchy tunes – I felt it struggled to live up to the hype.
I certainly wasn’t clamouring for a sequel but given the original’s near $1.3 billion global box office haul, the arrival of this festive follow-up was inevitable.
The returning Anna (Kristen Bell), Elsa (Idina Menzel), Kristoff (Jonathan Groff) and Olaf (Josh Gad) leave Arendelle to travel to an ancient autumn-bound forest to discover the origin of Elsa’s powers.
Co-directors Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee are also back and just about manage to steer their sequel clear of cynical cash-cow accusations.
The animation is fantastic with the creative team lapping up the opportunity to go wild with Elsa’s superheroine-like displays of icy weaponry.
It was a brave move to deviate from the first film’s wintry visuals to a more murky autumnal palette but it keeps things fresh.
The voice cast is again impossible to fault with Bell and Menzel’s siblings further developing their relationship and Gad comfortably stealing scenes.
Many sequels have tried and failed to expand the original’s mythology but Frozen II does a decent job of injecting maturity and mystery.
Some of it, though, will go over many viewers’ heads and several loose ends suggest a trilogy-closer is on the way.
The script – penned by Lee, Buck and three other contributors – also doesn’t fare well when enforcing a sense of danger; you never feel the protagonists are in genuine peril.
And while the songs are catchy enough, I don’t think any will stay embedded within kids’ and adults’ minds six years later ala Let It Go.