by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2019 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved
Last night Charles and I dined on Thanksgiving leftovers and
watched a DVD I had just picked up at Vons: the 2013 Walt Disney Enterprises
mega-hit Frozen, which got reissued
because the sequel, Frozen II,
just hit theatres. The current Disney formula for these big computer-animated
films seems to be to pick a remote and fairly exotic part of the world around
which to build traditional stories of young people on quests — they’ve done
Polynesia in Moana and Mexico in Coco and this time, as the title suggests, they did
Scandinavia. The inspiration for the film came from Hans Christian Andersen’s
“The Snow Queen” but it got filtered through lead writer Jennifer Lee (who also
co-directed with Chris Buck — Buck also gets a co-writer credit for the story
with Lee and Shane Morris, though Lee is credited alone with the actual
screenplay) into a tale of sisters Elsa (Eva Bella) and Anna (Livvy
Stubenrauch). They’re the two daughters of a king and queen who rule a castle
in the northern but still reasonably temperate country of Arundel — it has a
major port city and trading ships routinely sail in and out of there in the
summer — but Elsa is a sorceress with magical powers while Anna is just a
normal girl. The two are playing — Anna is constantly imploring Elsa to come
outside and build a snowman with her, and Elsa keeps begging off — when Elsa
inadvertently unleashes her magical powers and knocks Anna unconscious with
them. Their parents decree that Elsa will never be allowed to use her powers
again, and she must always wear blue gloves that neutralize them. Then three
years pass and the king and queen disappear from the story — presumably they
both died, since the story resumes on the eve of Elsa’s coronation as the new
queen. She’s rescued by a knight in shining armor from a remote monks’
community who rides in on a boat drawn by a swan that’s really Elsa’s brother
in disguise — oops, wrong Elsa. Elsa (now voiced by Idina Menzel) is about to
be crowned queen of Arundel when her sister Anna (now Kristen Bell) upsets her
by saying she’s just met a prince from the southland named Hans (Santino
Fontana) and wants permission to marry him. Elsa, making the rather sensible
objection that Anna has just met the guy and knows nothing about him — not even
his last name — refuses, and she gets so mad that she shows off her sorcery
powers (she had to take off the protective gloves to receive the orb
symbolizing her power as queen — Charles joked that they were doing a
coronation ceremony without a crown; instead they just stuck something that
looked like a Christmas-tree ornament on top of the gold headband she was
already wearing).
Driven from the Arundelian court by a group of people shocked
to find that their new queen is a sorceress, Elsa flees to the mountains and,
while singing the film’s big hit song “Let It Go” (sung powerfully by Menzel
here and even more powerfully by her on the 2014 Academy Awards telecast —
needless to say, it won Best Song — there’s also a version by Demi Lovato over
the end credits but even Lovato, whom I normally like as one of the better
baby-divas around today, was totally outsung by Menzel), she uses her powers to
freeze virtually everything in
her path, condemning Arundel to perpetual winter and freezing the port so
Arundel is cut off from all its sources of trade. Hans, whom Anna appointed as
regent to rule Arundel while she chases off after her sister, distributes blankets
to the people and does what he can to help them stay alive through the
perpetual winter, pissing off Arundel’s 1-percenters who lament that if they’re
forced to give stuff away they’ll have nothing to sell when the harbor opens up
again. The film has been rather slow going through all this exposition, but
when Elsa flees and leaves a trail of icicles behind her — all set to a song
that sounds like a coming-out number along the lines of Jerry Herman’s “I Am
What I Am” from La Cage aux Folles
and Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” — and Anna follows her into the wilderness, the
movie gets a lot more interesting. Along the way Anna picks up the obligatory
helpers, including guide Kristoff (Jonathan Groff), who isn’t as hunky as Hans
but is far more lovable (and it’s no surprise that Anna has transferred her
affections to him by the fade-out) and his reindeer — there’s even a spoof of
animation conventions when Kristoff drops his vocal register during some of his
songs and makes it seem like the reindeer is singing. (Of course, this is an
animated film — and a Disney one, at that — so there’s no reason they couldn’t
have had the reindeer really talk and sing.) There’s also a snowman named Olaf
(Josh Gad) who’s to this film what the comic-relief “droids” are to the Star
Wars movies, who is apparently the creation
of Elsa from back when they were kids, who’s grateful to Kristoff for giving
him a carrot for a nose. Eventually they track down Elsa’s palace — there’s a
nice scene in which Anna tries to climb up the mountain it’s on and gets only a
few feet up before Olaf points out that just around the corner there’s a frozen
staircase and they can just walk up.
Olaf hangs out in front of a fireplace and
enjoys the sensation of heat without realizing that will be ultimately fatal to
him (I couldn’t help but joke, “Olaf, step back from that fire! Does the name
‘Frosty’ mean anything to you?”), and he even sings a bizarre ode to the joys
of summer. Finally Anna and Elsa embrace, her sister’s love frees Elsa’s
doubtful mind and melts her cold, cold heart (apologies to Hank Williams) as
well as the frost she’s put all around Arundel (ya remember Arundel?), and the two sisters send Hans (ya remember Hans?) packing as he tries to kiss Anna and they realize
he’s just another male creep — think Harvey Weinstein in a hotter bod — and
Elsa, Anna and all the Arundelians presumably live happily ever after, while
Kristoff gets not only Anna but the concession to be Arundel’s official ice
seller (a business he’s been in since he was a kid but which was killed after
Elsa “froze” the country). If Mutiny in Outer Space was the sort of frustrating bad movie that seems to
have a good movie struggling in it trying to get out, Frozen is the sort of good movie that just misses greatness
because it all seems too familiar. The writers take us down all too well-worn
roads and don’t seize the opportunity the plot gave them to create truly
conflicted, multidimensional characters. Instead the aspects of the characters
just clash: Elsa seems like she’s burdened by her special powers but also seems
liberated by them — Charles compared her to the X-Men — even though her
“liberation” also casts her country into seemingly endless darkness and cold.
And what are we supposed to make of Hans, who in the opening reels seems like
Prince Charming but has to show an asshole side so Anna will virtuously dump
him for Kristoff, who’s nice-looking enough but has all the glamour and
romantic appeal of the boy from Scooby-Doo.
I liked Frozen well
enough to overcome my usual distaste for the overall look of computer animation
— those stiff, blocky figures have neither the flexibility of real people nor
the imaginative quality of drawn animation — and the banality of the songs by
Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez (“Let It Go” is a great power ballad in
the modern style, but the other songs sound so dated one could imagine them in
a Walt Disney movie made during Walt Disney’s lifetime). It’s a fun “watch” but
frankly I was more entertained by the oddball post-credits sequence, which
featured an early (1929) Walt Disney Mickey Mouse cartoon called Get
a Horse! (in which a heavy-set Bluto type
kidnaps Minnie Mouse and drives away with her, leaving Mickey and Goofy behind
to figure out how to give chase and rescue her) remixed by a crew led by Pixar
founder (and #MeToo witchhunt victim) John Lasseter into a crazy fantasy in
which Mickey, Minnie and some of the other characters bounce back and forth
between black-and-white and color, and between Disney’s original screen and ours,
in a quite delightful way. The DVD also featured videos of “Let It Go” sung in
English, Spanish, Italian and a mystery language by various singers — indeed
the disc begins with a screen that makes it easy to select what language you
want to see the film in, since with animation it’s not that difficult to dub a
movie since the character’s lip movements aren’t going to be that exact anyway.
Frozen is a film of quality that
deserved its mega-success (and “Let It Go” is a great song!); it’s just that
while you’re watching it you’ll have the feeling that you’ve seen it all
before, and it’s hard to imagine without having seen Frozen II just how they got a sequel out of it while still
doing justice to people’s memories of the original film.
