Frozen sequel’s plot just melts away
FROZEN II
★★★✩✩
(U, 103 minutes)
Directors: Jennifer Lee, Chris Buck Voices: Idina Menzel, Kristen Bell, Josh Gad
HARRIET
★★★✩✩
(12A, 126 minutes)
Director: Kasi Lemmons
Stars: Cynthia Erivo, Leslie Odom Jr, Clarke Peters
OPHELIA
★★★★✩
(15, 107 minutes)
Director: Claire Mccarthy
Stars: Daisy Ridley, Naomi Watts, Clive Owen, George Mackay
OVER THE past 25 Christmases or so, Disney has been knocking out easy-to-wrap follow-ups to its animated hits. Straight-to-video sequels Lion King 2: Simba’s Pride,the Return Of Jafar, and Ariel’s Beginning were cheap, occasionally cheerful and largely forgotten by Boxing Day.
But no fairytale royals have made the Disney Store tills ring quite like Queen Elsa and Princess Anna.
With pencil cases, lunch boxes and duvet covers riding on this sister act, Disney wasn’t going to let them go quietly.this follow-up to 2013’s mega hit ($6billion with merchandise), sticks to a winning formula. Frozen II boasts Broadway-style show tunes, mild peril, knockabout comedy, merchandisable new characters and frocks that are tailor-made for princess-themed birthday parties.
Returning Oscar-winning songwriters Kristen Anderson-lopez and Robert Lopez haven’t come up with anything as catchy as Let It Go (which is sort of a relief), but their seven new songs are probably memorable enough.
It’s funny enough too. Olaf the scenestealing snowman (voiced by Josh Gad) still knows how to tickle young funny bones with his goofy brand of slapstick. I suspect, however, they might be scratching their heads at the overly-fussy and slightly underpowered plot.
Where the first film was about a sisterly bond, this is a conventional quest which, like many modern children’s films, touches on environmental and anticolonial messages. In a flashback we learn of an enchanted forest where Elsa’s father was involved in a battle with its vaguely Native American inhabitants.
Now the Ice Queen Elsa (Idina Menzel) is hearing a “siren call” from one of the forest’s elemental spirits. In the best ballad, Into The Unknown, she wonders if this mysterious voice could explain the origins of her iceproducing powers.
So she heads off with Anna (Kristen Bell), Olaf, Sven the reindeer and bighearted but feebleminded Kristoff (Jonathan Groff). Entering the forest, they are buffeted by a wind spirit, cueing up a breezy ditty,when IAM Older, during which Olaf is amusingly baffled by the supernatural goings-on.
It’s about now that parents may be trying to remember the original. But, the scene-stealing snowman is here to help.when they meet the local tribe, he helpfully acts out the entire plot of the previous film.tellingly, it’s the best bit. Other highlights include an encounter with boulder-throwing stone giants,anna and Olaf whitewater rafting and Elsa riding a foamy horse on a wave like she’s advertising Guinness. These are all eye-popping sequences that demand to be seen on the big screen. But the bitty plot feels like something you’d read on the back of one of those Christmas DVDS.
Harriet, a long overdue biopic for slave-turned-freedom fighter Harriet Tubman, doesn’t seem at home on the big screen either.this was never going to be dull, but Kasi Lemmons’s unadventurous direction and the uninspired dialogue make it feel like it was made for a history teacher’s TV rather than the multiplex.
It begins in the 1840s with young slave Araminta “Minty” Ross (Cynthia Erivo) having one of her funny spells.these were probably a result of brain damage suffered at the hands of her slave master, but Minty – later to rename herself Harriet Tubman – saw them as visions.
Sadly, these visions are the only attempts made to get inside her head. Lemmons’s project is more about recognising a historical hero rather than human drama. Still, this Africanamerican Joan Of Arc led a dramatic life. After fleeing her plantation, we see her chased to abolitionist Philadelphia.
Minty isn’t content with ditching her slave name.visions from the Lord compel her to head back to the South to rescue friends and family. Dressed as a man and wielding a flintlock, this 5ft, illiterate woman becomes known as Moses, the most feared slave liberator in Maryland.
London-born Erivo is terrific, putting in a compelling performance. Hopefully, the next Tubman biopic will be directed by someone with her sense of adventure.
Ophelia tells the story of another unlikely heroine. In this clever spin on Shakespeare’s tragedy, director Claire Mccarthy and writer Semi Chellas recast Hamlet’s seemingly mad girlfriend (Daisy Ridley) as the lead.the Prince Of Denmark (George Mackay) is now a supporting player in a feminist drama about a plucky lady-in-waiting who has to suffer a misogynistic court.
Thankfully, it’s not quite as serious as it sounds.a bewigged Clive Owen has great fun with the evil usurper Claudius and there’s a playfulness about Chellas’s smart dialogue which coins new Shakespearean witticisms and imbues the original lines with fresh meanings.
A dual role for Naomi Watts (Queen Gertrude and a new character) means we’re never sure how this will play out.