{"id":45437,"date":"2019-11-25T09:18:35","date_gmt":"2019-11-25T14:18:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=45437"},"modified":"2019-11-25T09:19:08","modified_gmt":"2019-11-25T14:19:08","slug":"frozen-ii-movie-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2019\/11\/frozen-ii-movie-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Frozen II movie review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Bob Garver<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

            There\nwere things about 2013\u2019s \u201cFrozen\u201d that instantly made it a Disney classic: the\nspectacular ice-and-snow animation, the engaging princesses Anna (Kristen Bell)\nand Elsa (Idina Menzel), and of course, the rightfully iconic Oscar-winning\nmusical number \u201cLet It Go.\u201d And yet, the film only got Two and a Half Stars out\nof Five, the equivalent of a B-, from me. I certainly wasn\u2019t missing what other\npeople were seeing in the film, but I did feel that I was seeing what other\npeople were overlooking. Elsa\u2019s powers were poorly defined and at the mercy of\nthe whims of the screenplay, one villain was introduced in about the laziest\nmanner I\u2019d ever seen and another seemingly turned heel just for the sake of\nturning heel, and the Rock Trolls\u2026 should have stayed rocks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            But\nover time, those detractions melted away. These days I have no problem\nmentioning the film alongside contemporaries like \u201cMoana\u201d and \u201cCoco\u201d that I\nfelt nailed it from the very beginning. And it\u2019s with future hindsight in mind\nthat I think I should see \u201cFrozen II.\u201d Sure the movie still has a loose grasp\non Elsa\u2019s powers, the third act is mostly magical hooey, several new characters\nhave no need to exist, and a laughable cover of one of the standout songs by\nPanic! At The Disco plays over the credits. That doesn\u2019t mean that my takeaway\nisn\u2019t going to be the better-than-ever animation, the chemistry between the\ncharacters, the funny jokes, and the addictive songs that form the ice-ing on\nthe cake. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The\nstory sees Queen Elsa forced to evacuate the kingdom of Arendelle due to a\ndisruption that has something to do with a sound that only she can hear. She\ngathers her sister Anna, Anna\u2019s ready-to-propose boyfriend Kristoff (Jonathan Groff),\nKristoff\u2019s reindeer Sven, and eager snowman Olaf (Josh Gad, once again\ntiptoeing as close as he can to the precipice of Annoying without losing his\nfooting), and the team investigates a long-forgotten forest that hosts a dam\ncapable of wiping out Arendelle if it bursts. The forest also hosted a peace\ncelebration gone wrong a few decades ago. The good news is that the incident\nwas not as deadly as initially thought. The bad news is that the sisters don\u2019t\nhave the whole story about how it started. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            So\nmany things are excellent about this movie. The animation is, if anything,\nimproved from the original. The scenery is as beautiful as ever, but what\nreally struck me this time around was the facial movements of the characters.\nThere must have been some new form of motion capture going on, because Anna\ndoesn\u2019t just have Kristen Bell\u2019s voice, she\u2019s Kristen Bell. I don\u2019t know if the\nsame thing goes for the other characters because I don\u2019t watch those actors\nfrom week to week like I do with Bell and \u201cThe Good Place,\u201d but Anna\u2019s body\nlanguage matches her mannerisms exactly. And the movie gives us not one, but\ntwo Idina Menzel spotlight songs that I\u2019d say have a good chance of competing\nagainst each other at the Oscars. Disney is pushing the first, called \u201cInto the\nUnknown,\u201d but I preferred the second, \u201cShow Yourself.\u201d Whichever one \u201cwins,\u201d\nthe real winners are Menzel and her fans. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            To\nbe sure, there are just as many things that don\u2019t work about \u201cFrozen II.\u201d I\u2019ve\nalready listed a few, but there\u2019s also Olaf taking on a new philosophy that\ndoesn\u2019t quite fit his character, new human characters not being particularly\ninteresting, and a third-act heart-wrencher that comes off as manipulative and\nunearned. A love ballad that heavily involves Sven I\u2019ll call a draw. The point\nis that even though I couldn\u2019t ignore those issues, my gut tells me that all\nI\u2019ll remember six years from now is that this is the movie that gave us \u201cShow\nYourself\u201d and Elsa testing her powers against the mighty sea. Oh, and the Rock\nTrolls are barely in this one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grade: B<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFrozen II\u201d is rated PG for\naction\/peril and some thematic elements. Its running time is 103 minutes. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bob Garver             There were things about 2013\u2019s \u201cFrozen\u201d that instantly made it a Disney classic: the spectacular ice-and-snow animation, the engaging princesses Anna (Kristen Bell) and Elsa (Idina… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":45438,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45437"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}