Why Frozen wasn't that good

This isn't going to be a comprehensive post on why Frozen, to me, failed as a movie, as I've only seen it one time. However, I think I'll be able to adequately explain why I didn't really like it. It will contain spoilers.

First of all, I didn't really feel like any character was really developed well. The main characters - Elsa, Anna, Kristoff, and Hans were introduced in a moment and it felt like I was expected to know them really well without any real work done in helping their character grow. They establish that Elsa and Anna are good sisters, then introduce her parents just so they can kill them. Despite that, I feel like we never really get to know either Anna or Elsa. Sure, they each get their song about becoming the person they always wanted to be and getting to be free, but it's not really a big revelation to me because the movie has like 15 years pass (at least) where I don't see any real development happening [While on the wikipedia page, it was re-clarified to me that only 3 years passed. How old are these girls? 18 and 13? Maximum?]. To me, Elsa's character was like a less developed Rogue from X-men. Afraid to touch anyone for fear of killing them. Anna's character was even less believable. She still maintained this ABSOLUTE desire to be with her sister, and never really rebelled or questioned the state of the castle being nearly empty for her whole life. She alternately treats Elsa as a bosom buddy and unapproachable authority figure whenever the script requires.

Did I mention I don't like Olaf? He's horrible. Yeah, he's there because it's a kid's movie and kids enjoy the kind of stupid antics that Jar-Jar... I mean Olaf exhibits. Unfortunately, I stopped liking him somewhere around the second or third joke about catching his butt. What happened to the comic relief of old in Disney movies? Where are Timon and Pumbaa? Where are Cogsworth and Lumiere? Heck, not even of old! Where's Mike Rosowski? Or Russel? Or any of a HOST of secondary comedic characters that appeal to children and adults? Olaf was a sad attempt at injecting comedy and interest into a movie where there was none. In adding him, the writers made it clear that the movie was only meant for kids, and not for their parents. This saddens me a little, because it's usually something that Disney accomplishes really well.

They have an ENTIRE SONG with young Kristoff and his family (?) about ice but that angle is never really developed. I think it's only in there because the movie is called frozen. Then they throw it in later like - hey, this ice crisis is affecting this little boy we met for a moment in this song because he sells ice! He scoffs at and scolds Anna for becoming engaged to Hans after only knowing him for a day because hey, that's the funny trope that all Disney movies follow. BUT THEN HE FALLS RIGHT INTO IT. Both he and Anna (and Olaf, who is terrible) suddenly believe that after maybe 2 days that's where the true love is. Sure, I get it. That's not the love that ended up saving Anna, but they still fell for it, and the "love" continued through the end of the movie.

Speaking of false love, Hans' betrayal did definitely come as a surprise. I'll give you that. (even if it was so much of a surprise as to be sort of cheap.) But am I to believe that there were NO other guards on the princess? There was no one around at all to help her? No doctors, physicians, apothecaries, or anything? No priest prepared to give her death rites? Furthermore, in Arendelle, apparently it's enough to say that you shared marriage vows with the dying princess with no witnesses, officiants, documentation, or any proof of any sort and people will just believe you and treat you like you're the king. Forget the regular line of succession, and anyone else that may have a claim to the throne, this guy said he and the princess spoke marriage vows. Pack it up, people!

There are also these cool, little, magical stone-trolls that are introduced twice as a little gimmick and deus ex machina. That's cool I guess. But we see them twice and that's it. They don't even get to maintain an air of cool mystery and magic. That's ruined by their ridiculous song.

While I'm on the subject of songs, this movie really felt lackluster. I don't really know where they were going. The movie didn't really seem to have a style. It just felt really poppy, and the songs didn't really serve a purpose. It failed to strike a balance between moving the plot forward and giving us an insight into the character's feelings. It was really either one or the other. The snowman song was used to cover an insane amount of time, and it was a bad choice to do so. All it did was show me that Anna's character (remarkably) didn't change a bit over 3 years.

Let's get back to Elsa, because I have another point that revolves around her: her powers. I have no idea how her powers are supposed to work. She has no way of controlling them at first, then she does, then she doesn't, then she does. There's no real reason, or epiphany, or training that I see happen. I was hoping maybe she'd go with the stone trolls for a while to learn, or maybe she spent a lot of time in the mountains learning how to control her power. But NO! One moment, she's inadvertently and randomly freezing everything with abandon and with no control. Then she sings a song about how instead of being sad that she's cast out, she's happy because she's free... even though she's just as alone and isolated as she was in the castle. Except more so. (by the way, and I know this is a movie, and I know it might just be nitpicking, but how in the WORLD did she survive up there? Can she just live on ice powers? There's no food, no water, no ANYTHING... but she's fine.) After she sings her freedom song, she can suddenly create an incredible, structurally sound, architectural masterpiece just by wanting it. That's an incredible step forward in the use of her abilities. Then, she claims that she can't just control her powers. Then, she does, by creating a huge ice golem. Then she claims that she can't again while in prison. Then she totally stops the big freeze, just because she wants to. My problem is that there's no continuity to her ability. There's no training, there's no learning. She just ends up feeling her way through using her powers however the script requires.

Also, she's probably a terrible queen. Who was running the country before she was crowned? Did she even care? There was no obvious second in command in the movie. Also, at the end of the movie, she cuts off ALL TRADE with Weasleton, her biggest trade partner, because the ambassador was a douche. Talk about throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Why not just punish the dude who sent people to kill you? Why punish all of your citizens by cutting off a major opportunity to make money, and cutting off whatever trade goods his country had that you don't have access to in Arendelle? It's celebrated as a major victory in the movie, when it's really just death sentence for a lot of her subjects.

Finally, this movie was utterly predictable. I will add that I can see why ladies might enjoy it more than boys. This is definitely a story about strong female-female relationships and I don't really have a personal connection with that experience. But it was easy to see from the talk with the stone-trolls about true love that it was really going to be the sister-sister bond that broke the spell and not male-female romantic love. Also, it was clearly going to be some sort of hug because of Olaf's incessant rambling. You could call this good foreshadowing, but I just don't think it was subtle enough to really count as foreshadowing.


Anyway, if you've read all this, thanks! It was a long ramble on a cartoon, and I'm glad you took the time to read it.