Frozen II: Shouldn't have been thawed

Frozen II (2019) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated PG, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.22.19

I want to know what this film’s writers were smoking.

Granted, this sequel to 2013’s Frozen has its moments, almost exclusively those involving Josh Gad’s hilarious supporting performance as the relentlessly loquacious snowman, Olaf.

Having just penetrated the strange mist that conceals an enchanted forest, Elsa (foreground)
continues to hear a mysterious voice, although her companions — from left, Sven, Olaf,
Kristoff and Anna — do not.

The rest, however, is a mess.

Folks with a chronic aversion to musicals — and their numbers are legion — generally don’t shun classics such asThe Wizard of Oz, Singing in the Rain or West Side Story, or later genre refinements such as Cabaret and La La Land. No, such folks hate bad musicals: 1969’s Paint Your Wagon, 1975’s At Long Last Love, 1982’s Grease 2 and many others too numerous to mention.

Musicals with wafer-thin stories that usually make no sense, and which are interrupted constantly when the orchestra swells, an actor or two pauses in mid-sentence, stares heavenward, and we recoil with a sotto voce “Oh, gawd; they’re gonna sing again.”

Musicals with truly atrocious songs, not one of which is memorable enough to linger beyond the end credits.

Frozen II is a bad musical. A very bad musical, with genuinely awful, unmelodic and instantly forgotten tunes. Some of which are heard (endured?) more than once.

Songwriters Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez clearly felt they had to match the success of “Let It Go,” their inspirational, Academy Award-winning ballad from the first film. Ergo, most of these seven new tunes are similarly overcooked and overwrought power anthems, not one of which comes within shouting distance of “Let It Go.” The absence of musical variety — particularly during the film’s second half — becomes unbearable.

You could hear the clanking of eyeballs rolling in their sockets, during Monday evening’s preview screening, each time viewers muttered, “Oh, gawd; she’s gonna sing again.”

There’s such a thing as trying too hard.

The songs might have been less annoying amid a more coherent narrative, but co-director Jennifer Lee’s screenplay is equally unsatisfying. (She shares story credit with co-director Chris Buck, Anderson-Lopez, Lopez and Marc Smith, but the final screenplay apparently is hers alone.) Frozen II is something of an origin story for ice- and snow-wielding Queen Elsa (again voiced by Idina Menzel), a premise that gave the writers an excuse to concoct an elaborate mythos for the realm outside her kingdom of Arendelle.

Alas, the story’s kitchen-sink approach to this retconned back-story clumsily blends a mishmash of familiar archetypes: peaceful “native peoples” who are “at one with the land”; elemental beings of earth, air, fire and water; and a “surprise” betrayal that feels like it wandered in from Game of Thrones. All of this has been cutesy-fied with a blatant disregard for plot logic, continuity and credible character development.

Sigh.

We open with a flashback to sisters Elsa and Anna (Kristen Bell) as youngsters, during a bedtime interlude with devoted parents King Agnarr (Alfred Molina) and Queen Iduna (Evan Rachel Wood). The former, believing his daughters old enough to know, recounts the mysterious, long-ago circumstances that caused a nearby forest — and its inhabitants — to become imprisoned behind a magical mist that repels all visitors.

Iduna then sings the girls to sleep with a lovely lullaby — by far the film’s best song, in great part because of its softness and sincerity — that tells of a magical river dubbed Ahtohallan, where “all answers can be found.”

We then hop to the present day, with Elsa now ruling the kingdom. Anna remains devoted to Kristoff (Jonathan Groff), who can’t find the right moment to propose, despite considerable encouragement from his reindeer buddy Sven. This little gang includes Olaf, the magical snowman initially made by Elsa; he now can enjoy even the warm seasons, thanks to a permafrost coating.

Despite everything seeming to be perfect, Elsa is haunted by a beckoning, chanting voice from far away. The call proves irresistible, much to Anna’s concern; she and the others therefore join this quest. The voice leads them to the mist-enshrouded forest, where Elsa’s power grants them entry; they soon meet the Northuldra people of Agnarr’s still-remembered bedtime story. These forest folks are led by Yelana (Martha Plimpton), who regards the visitors warily.

We later discover that Yelana has ample cause for suspicion, but no matter; in an implausible moment or two, everybody becomes Best Buds. Which is truly ludicrous.

The core “dire peril” is revealed after subsequent encounters with the elementals: the water spirit, which takes the form of a stallion; the unseen wind spirit, dubbed (ahem) Gale; the massive, rocky earth giants; and the havoc-wreaking fire spirit, which appears as a tiny salamander. (Why, you may wonder. Because he’s so adorable, of course. Not that that makes much sense.)

Elsa’s apparently insurmountable magical powers are up to pretty much any challenge … until, suddenly, they aren’t (and boy, that’s an arbitrary moment).

These scattershot escapades are fueled by the aforementioned power ballads, in some cases coming rapidly enough to make this film feel like an operetta. To be fair, Menzel has a stunning voice, as always has been the case; it’s just a shame the songs themselves aren’t up to her delivery. Bell may not have Menzel’s vocal chops, but she holds her own during Anna’s solo on “The Next Right Thing.”

Which brings us to this film’s most ill-advised, outrageous song sequence: “Lost in the Woods,” a flamboyant glam-rock anthem performed by Groff’s Kristoff, accompanied by — I. Am. Not. Making. This. Up. — a chorus of reindeer.

No doubt Lee, Buck and the songwriters intended this to be funny. If so, they missed by the proverbial mile; it’s actually jaw-droppingly, flee-the-theater dreadful. Rarely has an animated musical sequence been so grotesquely miscalculated.

But the filmmakers don’t completely lack artistic savvy. Early on, Olaf provides a lightning-quick synopsis of the first film’s events, for the benefit of the Northuldra (and any viewers not up to speed). It’s this film’s genius highlight, thanks to Gad’s riotous delivery and Jeff Draheim’s superb editing; I’ve no doubt this segment, once isolated, will become an Internet meme.

Monday’s aforementioned screening was laden with former little girls-turned-tweens, no doubt hoping for more of the 2013 predecessor’s “princess power”; they were joined by a healthy percentage of new little girls undoubtedly raised on home video reruns of that first film.

They all deserve better than this clumsy, mismanaged sequel.