We all know that Frozen II was a cash cow. The story of Frozen was not begging to be continued via a sequel, but the successful box office and craze that it spawned pretty much made a sequel obligatory. With that in mind, does that make Frozen II bad? Here are my thoughts.
Mild spoilers ahead!
Frozen II takes place a few years after the events of the first film wherein Queen Elsa (voiced again by Idina Menzel) constantly hears a mystical voice calling her from the forest, a voice only she can hear. The forest is one wherein their grandfather built a dam to unite their people with the Northuldra people of the forest.
When Arendelle is threatened, Elsa heads out on a journey into the forest to seek answers along with Anna, Kristoff, and Olaf (voiced again by Kristen Bell, Jonathan Groff, and Josh Gad, respectively). While Elsa seeks answers, Anna deals with emotions of being overprotective of her sister, Kristoff tries to propose to Anna in the best way, and Olaf embraces the ideas of “maturing” and “growing up”…somewhat.
The biggest disappointment with this film is its storyline. The plot is incredibly generic dealing with the four elements: Fire, Earth, Wind, and Water, a plot we’ve seen multiple times before and this film doesn’t do it any differently or better. Not much really happens in the film as most of it is about dealing with emotions rather than events occurring. Heck, the film doesn’t even have a proper villain!
All the subplots seem padded and many plot elements feel retconned. Like, you would think Anna and Elsa would mention this forest and the Northuldra people at least once in the first film! The overall product just feels like the studios knew they could get away with any mediocre story and still make over a billion dollars at the box office!
Having said that, I do like the film. The voice acting by the old cast is as good as the original. And the new additions including Evan Rachel Wood, Sterling K. Brown, Alfred Molina, Martha Plimpton, Jason Ritter, Rachel Matthews, and Aurora, do great jobs too.
The singing performances are also amazing. Most of the songs are honestly forgettable, but two stand out for me: Into the Unknown and Lost in the Woods. Into the Unknown is the Let It Go of this film and a song I love way more than Let It Go; it’s just so much fun to sing!
And Lost in the Woods is an incredibly pointless song clearly made just to give Jonathan Groff something to sing. But man, it’s a lot of fun and pays tribute to ’80s/’90s rock ballad music videos!
The animation is gorgeous as you can expect! One particular achievement that stands out is a sort of water/ice horse creature that features in the film.
All in all, I liked the film fine, but the weak storyline really prevents it from being a masterpiece. I’m glad that the film didn’t get nominated for a Best Animated Feature Oscar, and I really hope there won’t be a Frozen III, but based on the box office performance of this film, who knows?
The Animation Commendation 
I actually liked the film- more than you. I never saw the plot to be boring and many of the songs did serve a point in the musical film, including “Lost in the Woods”. Usually musical sequels struggle, but this one worked in my opinion
I wouldn’t say the plot was boring; I just found it to be very generic.
And while I do feel some songs were pointless, my issue with most of them were mostly their forgettableness.
I’m glad you enjoyed it more than me though!
You pretty much covered all of my feelings about the film. It is also weirdly forgettable, despite it’s large box office results.
Yeah, it’s all because of the generic plot, in my opinion.
Yeah, I pretty much agree with this – the plot was meh but I still enjoyed the film overall for the other elements. I love Lost in the Woods!
Such a fun song!
I went to the theater to see it, but I made a mistake taking a shortcut through a country road. I found myself lost in the woods.
Honestly I have not seen it yet (I will borrow it from the library at some point), but I have really enjoyed that song on youtube.
I see what you did there.
Yeah, it’s worth a library borrow.
I still haven’t seen SCOOB yet
Same 😦 .
You know, for all the shit that Wish has been getting, this really did make me appreciate it a lot more. Because maybe it’s just that I borrowed it from the library and I literally can’t afford to see Wish again, but I would honestly love to watch Wish a second time, and I can’t imagine sitting through Frozen 2 again, at least for a very long time.
I honestly think saying that the plot is mediocre because they knew they could shove anything into theaters under the title and still make billions is unfair, though. There’s an entire documentary series on Disney+ about the making of the movie, and clearly the people who worked on it put a lot of thought, time, and effort into everything, including the storyline.
And it shows – there are individual sequences that I really like, the animation is great, I even enjoyed Kristoff’s song as you did (the songs really are stronger than in Wish, though it’s curious to me how all the Disney songwriters these days seem to be cobbling music together awkwardly, perhaps because the 101 Dalmatians logic of “melody first, and THEN the lyrics” has gotten them confused on how songs are actually supposed to be structured?). And I liked all of the character work with Elsa and Anna, but Kristoff’s arc was just a retread of The Rescuers Down Under (is that why the animators didn’t use their characters in the credits for Wish?) and Olaf was so insufferable that I found myself wishing Timon and Pumbaa would show up and put him out of his misery. And nothing really coalesces – it has the same feeling Ralph Breaks the Internet often had, of creative ideas and attempts to do anything challenging with the characters being clumsily cobbled together to a half-assed plot that can’t support their weight. There are payoffs without proper build-up, and nothing feels earned. The movie feels like it’s tugging on our heartstrings when the work it did to get there never even got off the ground floor. Everything is simply a way to get the movie to be on, because there was never the germ of an idea to justify the film’s existence.
That’s something no creative work can hide, and all their efforts are simply wasted. And as interesting as the plot line of warring cultures was (and people have spent a lot of time dissecting it with real-life parallels), even that was of little interest to me because the same thing was done so much better in Raya and the Last Dragon, which I had already seen.
And I know that film came later, but it just shows how Disney really has finally come to the point that Don Bluth believed they were at in the 70s, where the canon is maintained under the philosophy of “Churn ’em out” and it just feels as if they’re making the same movie over and over again.
People have been hard on Wish for that, but at least that film was a genuine tribute to and celebration of the formula – I couldn’t help but appreciate it on that level – but upon wondering what would in fact be the laziest way of simply repeating and devaluing that formula, I clearly had to look no further than Frozen 2.
I haven’t seen Wish yet, but yeah I’ve been hearing the complaints about it.
I can relate to you regarding wanting Timon and Pumbaa to appear.
I also think you described this period perfectly as the Don Bluth-adjacent “Churn ’em out” era!