After watching the first Frozen, did you imagine a sequel? What would have been the story? I didn’t think that a sequel was needed, and I guess the only storylines that I imagined would have been snow queen Elsa defending her kingdom of Arendelle from outside attack, or something connected to the unexplained maritime death of Elsa and sister Anna’s parents. We kind of got both of those with Frozen 2, but unfortunately, the movie also suffers from a slapdash quality that prevents it from fully making sense or fitting what had previously been established. It feels a bit like a cash-grab (as most Disney sequels seem to). The new threat that our heroines (plus ice-seller boyfriend Kristoff, faithful reindeer sidekick Sven and adorable snowman Olaf) are facing involves a magical/cursed forest that is apparently not very far from Arendelle (but inexplicably never mentioned before). The story almost feels like it had been written for other characters and reused for this movie by substituting Elsa, Anna, and all the other main characters into the lead roles of that story.

Events stem from an incident that happened between their grandfather (who had been king of Arendelle) and the local indigenous people. The story is lazily politically-correct: a cliche “white guilt” fable, with the expected heroes (earthy, nature-loving indigenous) and villains (the “civilized”, city-dwelling “Europeans”). The story seems contrived for me because I had thought that Frozen was set in a pseudo-Denmark or Finland, where Caucasians would have been the indigenous ones. Where, all of a sudden, did these new Inuit-looking folk come from? Also inexplicably, there’s all kinds of magical forces in these forests that have never been discussed before. Frozen 2 becomes set in an even more fantasy-based world than before, when it was only Elsa and the trolls who had magic. It seems strange (and tacked-on) that none of this had ever been mentioned in the first movie. If the world around Arendelle was so full of magic, why did the citizens all react so puritanically to Elsa’s magic, and essentially accusing her of witchcraft?

Putting aside the dubious story and believability gaps, the movie is still fun (though not as epic as it might have been). There is a lot of action, and some sisterly bonds are strengthened. Olaf once again steals a lot of his scenes with his quirky personality (though now that he’s been blessed by Elsa with a permanent state of non-melting, he’s not obsessed with heat and summer). Josh Gad does a great job in the role and I’m curious to know how many of his lines were improvisation. Kristoff (voiced by Jonathan Groff) is as aw-shucks charming as ever. He gets the B-story in the movie: he repeatedly attempts to set up a perfect marrage proposal to Anna (since Disney is keen to resist the paradigm that women are rescued by men, and so they do not need him to play that role). All good fun. The animation continues to be top-notch, with impressive scenery and very realistic effects with water, snow, wind, fire, etc. The humans look good, but I still find myself occasionally snapping out of the illusion to realize how oddly proportioned the characters really are (especially the female ones).

The music (especially the songs) are clearly trying to hit the bullseye again (even if they may not have another “Let It Go”-style megahit). You can feel that they are trying to parallel the mix of songs from the original movie. Unfortunately, while each song does have some high-points, none of them are as memorable as the songs from the original (even to those of us without kids and were not forced to watch the first movie hundreds of times). Also, perhaps it’s because the storyline and events of this movie seem a bit more epic and adventurous, the songs seem to come out of nowhere and don’t seem to integrate as smoothly into the various scenes. I always felt a bit caught off guard by them (“Oh yeah, I had forgotten that this was a musical!”)

Overall, I’d say this is movie is moderately enjoyable (which is par for the course with Disney sequels — or maybe even a bit better than average since I didn’t watch many of the direct-to-video sequels that have come out in the past). If you have kids in love with the first movie, you may not be able to avoid seeing this anyway; but if you don’t, then I would not say this is a must-see by any stretch. (3.5 out of 5)