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.

Veronica Mars: Back on the case

Veronica Mars (2014) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rating: Rated PG-13, for profanity, sexual content, drug content and violence
By Derrick Bang

Rob Thomas obviously is an honorable fellow, and he deserves considerable credit.

Veronica (Kristen Bell) is surprised to discover that yet another intimate video of Logan
(Jason Dohring) and his recently murdered girlfriend has been posted to the Internet,
further swaying public opinion into believing that he's guilty of the crime. But this begs
the more pressing question: Who shot this footage, and how?

Mindful that his big-screen Veronica Mars project owes its very existence to the crowd-funded Kickstarter campaign that raised $5.7 million, Thomas — as director and co-scripter, sharing the latter credit with Diane Ruggiero — did his very best to deliver a film that meets fan expectation and smoothly updates events from the cherished 2004-07 TV series ... while also functioning as a self-contained adventure that (hopefully) is approachable to first-time viewers with no reference to the original show.

A tall order, and one that Thomas mostly pulls off.

Full disclosure demands that I acknowledge being one of the 91,585 Kickstarter backers, from 3,655 different cities in 88 countries, who pledged some $$$ to help create this film. It made perfect sense to me, since I’ve also (for example) supported PBS programming with pledges since being old enough to write checks.

As one of the show’s longtime fans — star Kristen Bell refers to us as “marshmallows” — I’m quite pleased by the results. That said, this big-screen Veronica Mars looks and feels less like a full-blown movie, and more like a two-part television episode granted a bit more budgeting juice. I recall, back in the day, that several of the 1960s Man from UNCLE two-parters were re-cut and released theatrically, particularly in foreign countries; this Veronica Mars update shares that pedigree.

Back during Hollywood’s golden age, this would have been a respectable B-feature. Nothing wrong with that; indeed, many so-called B films are remembered far more fondly today, than the higher-prestige A pictures with which they shared billing.

By way of contrast, the many Star Trek films that followed the original show’s three 1960s seasons definitely look like big-screen spectaculars quite far removed from their humbler TV origins. Joss Whedon’s Serenity, as well, granted impressively opulent closure to the short-lived Firefly, which had gone off the air several years earlier.

It’s an intriguing distinction, perhaps having something to do with the modest, easily relatable sensibilities that made Veronica’s television adventures so approachable in the first place. Veronica also owed her quick popularity, in part, to good timing: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (also from Whedon) had just gone off the air, and Thomas’ plucky high school heroine — and the coterie of friends, frenemies and enemies she gradually accumulated — admirably filled the niche left empty after Buffy had staked her last blood-sucker.

Frozen: Thawed a bit too soon

Frozen (2013) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rating: PG, and quite needlessly, for action and mild rude humor
By Derrick Bang

Disney’s animated films haven’t been such a much of late, with little of note since 2010’s Tangled. The studio’s traditional animation department has been overshadowed by its Pixar colleagues, who’ve demonstrated a far better understanding of good storytelling.

As Anna searches for her sister, she's first joined by Kristoff and his loyal reindeer Sven;
they then encounter a loving snowman named Olaf, who has been brought to life via
the same magic that has brought a life-threatening winter to the entire land.

I therefore was delighted by the opening act of Frozen, which evokes pleasant memories of the Broadway-esque musical atmosphere delivered so well by Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and the next several features that contributed to Disney’s lock on the 1990s. The prologue of Frozen feels much like Beauty and the Beast, as it establishes key character relationships and the underlying fairy-tale curse that will propel the plot, and this new film also offers several lyrically clever tunes by Tony Award-winner Robert Lopez (The Book of Mormon, Avenue Q) and Kristen Anderson-Lopez.

Best of all — at least, at first — these vocals are well integrated into the action, smoothly supplementing the drama in a manner that feels natural.

Alas, that deft marriage of story and song becomes increasingly contrived as we move into the second act, by which point each new tune is greeted with resignation. (“Seriously? Another one?”)

Director/scripters Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee — with an assist from Shane Morris on the story — also lose their narrative’s dramatic heft as we skate into the climactic third act. The suspense wanes, in part because their story lacks a stylishly conniving villain in the mold of Gaston (Beauty and the Beast) or Jafar (Aladdin); this film’s simpering Duke of Weselton hardly qualifies.

(Yes, I’m well aware of the climactic twist. But it’s too little, too late.)

Instead, the drama’s primary threat emanates from one of the heroines, who undergoes a reluctant transformation very much in the mold of Elphaba, in Wicked ... which may not be a coincidence, since that Broadway role was played by Idina Menzel, who also voices the character under discussion in Frozen.

Déjà vu, anyone?

Fairy tale fans who fondly recall Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen will be hard-pressed to find anything familiar in this narrative, except (to a degree) the core premise. Not necessarily a problem, of course, as long as the re-invention is similarly imaginative.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall: Mildly memorable

Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008) • View trailer for Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Three stars (out of five). Rating: R, for profanity, nudity and sexual content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.17.08
Buy DVD: Forgetting Sarah Marshall • Buy Blu-Ray: Forgetting Sarah Marshall [Blu-ray]

As guilty pleasures go, this one's pretty funny.

Occasionally tasteless and frequently vulgar, but undeniably funny.

The resort isn't that large, so this result was inevitable: Peter (Jason Segel,
center) and new companion Rachel (Mila Kunis, left) arrive at the hotel
restaurant at the same time as Peter's ex-girlfriend, Sarah (Kristen Bell) and her
new boyfriend, Aldous (Russell Brand). Worse yet, only one table is
available. And if the women are looking daggers at each other, that, too, is
inevitable...

Forgetting Sarah Marshall is another scattershot burlesque from Judd Apatow and Shauna Robertson (The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up and Superbad), the producers who seem determined to build an empire on romantic disaster comedies, the way John Hughes cornered the sensitive teen market back in the 1980s.

I'm not sure this is a particularly lofty goal, but it seems to be working for them; one cannot argue with box-office results.

And, truth be told, Apatow and Robertson's films, for all their crassness, boast several key elements wholly absent from the similar oeuvre of, say, the Farrelly brothers (who most recently uncorked their gawdawful remake of The Heartbreak Kid). Apatow's suffering male protagonists always remain sympathetic, despite their lesser qualities, and they try to do right by the women in their lives (even while frequently screwing things up).

Most important, though, the women in Apatow/Robertson comedies aren't mere sex toys, nor are they crippled by belittling and offensive character traits. They're just as sensitive and sympathetic, if equally inclined to make a bad situation worse. (Honestly, watching a Farrelly brothers relationship train wreck, I always get the impression the filmmakers hate the fair sex.)

Recall the hilarious, often misplaced dignity that Steve Carell brought to The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and you'll have a good sense of what to expect in Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

The star this time is Jason Segel, one of Apatow's familiar repertory players, going all the way back to TV's Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared. Segel also wrote the script, which he clearly fashioned to his own strengths.

He plays Peter Bretter, a conflicted musician who has made the most of a six-year relationship with way-famous Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell, late of the still lamented Veronica Mars), star of a successful TV series titled Crime Scene: Scene of the Crime.

The occasional glimpses we get of this obvious riff on the CSI franchise, as Bell and on-camera co-star William Baldwin wisecrack their way through various ghastly murder investigations, are a stitch.