Frozen 2 is worth it if you have never seen the sci-fi thriller Annihilation staring Tessa Thompson and Natalie Portman, but you don’t have the time to see a movie because you have to watch your kids but your kids are too young to watch Annihilation. Wife and I watched the 1st Frozen for the second time on Monday to prep for this film. For the record, I’m in favor of “Love is an Open Door” and “In Summer” as being the best songs in the original. I also like that the trolls ask Elsa’s dad if she’s “born or cursed” with her magic, and he very nonchalantly responds, “Born,” which resolves what to do immediately. To complicate things, Elsa herself perceives her powers to be a curse when she comes into her own as an adult, so there seems like some ambiguity to her at least.
Beyond this point, it’s worth saying these are all spoilers. Frozen 2 concerns itself with posing dumb world-building questions and then not answering them in the most obvious way. What is the “fifth element” after wind, water, earth, and fire? The fifth element is obviously love and anyone who says it’s “ice” is a fucking asshole who didn’t listen when we said the second element was water.
There’s a Red Herring scene with the ship of Ana and Elsa’s parents that feels more Star Warsy than is actually merited and nothing is really resolved on that front beyond a discovery that doesn’t tell us very much to move the plot along.
The climax of the movie lacks stakes and could have easily cost more without going dark. Wife says she was a little confused about why Ana is able to solve the problem she does in the way that she does without being more directly connected to Elsa’s solution.
But beyond all of that, there’s a big elephant in the room that no one seems to be talking about and it’s that this film is mostly borrowing its aesthetic and plot from Annihilation, even the siren song, without the “weird bear” (Friend says) or the grenade scene at the end (or at least the grenade is replaced with a more thematic shot for Frozen).
Note the shot-for-shot remake:
These are from two different movies:
Note that both films borrow the same flower image at their winter sequence:
Finally, Olaf, in an apparently homage to a scene from early in Annihilation, sees a scary face of a monster in the water of the magic forest:
Little Charmander, the part where Olaf tells a story, and how low key explicates the meaning of the entire movie are all quite good gags. Olaf also has the best song. So all in all, this feels like a big win for people who came to this movie to watch Josh Gad reprise his role as the most charismatic secondary character of the film, but a bit of a donkey kick to the face for anyone hoping to see Sterling K Brown.
