Wednesday, November 27, 2019

Frozen II

All twelve of us went to see it. Everyone liked it, but the two eight-year-old girls liked it best.

The music had a very mid-70s to mid-90s feel, and Kristoff's song in particular sounded as if it could have been done by Todd Rundgren. There were echoes of Billy Joel and Elton John, and Weezer covers one of the songs in the closing credits.

It is darker than the first one, heavily dependent in its narrative on powerful nature spirits who are not necessarily evil, but are dangerous.  There is an unfortunate symbolic PC moment of how terrible Western Civ has been to innocent and misunderstood indigenous peoples, but it passes.  Once moviemakerrs have refused to be even a little bit Christian anymore but want to portray power, and good and evil, they've rather boxed themselves in what they can draw on. FrozenII has too much of the foundation of believing in yourself and your own power, but they at least do a good job of showing how that can go wrong, and teach a morality of simple decency that is unobjectionable.  Artwork and animation amazing.  Ben was commenting how hard it is to do things with water in animation, and they did stunning work. The Disney cuteness of subsidiary characters is present, but greatly reduced compared to most Disney Princess movies.

Some very heartwarming moments about Anna and Elsa, which was expected, but also a great deal about their parents' deep and tender love for them, which impacts the plot. There is a plot twist that will be a joy to younger sisters everywhere.

No comments: