Disney’s Frozen 2: Review
After the first Frozen broke box office records back in 2013 as the highest grossing animated film of all time, it’s no surprise that Disney would want to revisit the Kingdom of Arendelle for another magical adventure with Anna, Elsa and the gang. At the time of writing, Frozen 2 has already made over £350 million dollars worldwide.
The film has a lot to live up to with its predecessor being made up of characters, a soundtrack filled with a great collection of memorable songs and some gorgeous animation. But does the sequel continue the success from the first film and deliver the follow up that fans have waited six years for?
The film opens up with a flashback to Anna and Elsa with their parents as they recount a lullaby of how a tribe in Northuldra and their grandfather’s soldiers’ battle made the spirits of the forest enraged and hid it away from the world. We then jump to the sisters after the events of the first film alongside Olaf, Kristoff and his reindeer Sven, as their Kingdom gets thrown into chaos once again after Elsa hears a voice calling to her. It’s up to Elsa, with the support of Anna and the others, to bring peace to Arendelle while solving the mystery of the spirits and how she fits into their world.
Throughout the film the story unnecessarily becomes complicated as it tries to cram in a lot of themes and side stories around the main plot. As Elsa tries to uncover the secret of why the spirits hid the forest of Northuldra from the world, everyone else isn’t given that much to do. Kristoff tries to arrange the perfect way to propose to Anna with some comedic scenes with Sven and yet we don’t really see them have a developed relationship between each other. The new characters introduced do have some tension at the start among each other, but it seemingly gets resolved without too much build up.
Even Anna and Elsa’s relationship doesn’t appear to be that strong as Elsa seems too focused on her adventure while Anna tries to protect her. It’s great to see them together throughout a majority of the story, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of development from them together or separately that the first film managed to do so effortlessly.
One thing that can’t be argued is how stunning the animation is! Disney has always managed to improve on the quality of their craft and the team should really be proud of their efforts as no one could argue against its visuals. From breath-taking backgrounds and set pieces, to amazing weather and environmental effects that almost seem photo realistic at times, the film does a brilliant job at capturing a wide range of emotions from the characters as they go through the beauty of this new magical world that they have entered.
One of the biggest strengths of the first film was how beautifully shot the musical scenes were and they do a great job at trying to bring something new by bringing in ways to use darkness and light as well as colour related to the Autumn season (that the film is set in) and Elsa’s ice powers. It’s just a shame that some of the songs on the soundtrack aren’t as strong as it doesn’t help that some of these musical scenes aren’t as memorable as they could have been; while the first film had both great songs and well-crafted scenes to go along with it.
Despite the quality of animation reaching the high standard that we can expect from Disney, I can’t quite agree with the narrative and character relationships. Frozen 2 is certainly a film with more style than substance and it’s disappointing that the film could not quite live up to the hype and expectations that cinema-goers may have expected.