Frozen II (2019)

Like most of the Disney sequels that have come out over the last handful of years, “Frozen II” (2019) was almost as good as “Frozen” (2013). Like... 95% of the way there. 
There was the magic of novelty the first time around that you simply can’t recreate when building on a story already told with the same characters and storytellers.
It wasn’t bad by any means, and I’m positive I’ll be seeing it again and listening to the soundtrack ad-nauseam, it just wasn’t quite as good. 

I think the bit that rubbed me the wrong way most was too much Olaf (Josh Gadd). He had a hilarious montage and had a handful of perfect one-liners, but they gave him too much screen time. I found him equally grating in the first movie, but at least in that one he didn’t exist from the get-go.
At one point Olaf mentioned feeling angry, which is a great character development angle for a perpetually-happy snowman. But that didn’t go anywhere. It was barely more than a throwaway line.

Speaking of the first one: I felt like there was an inordinate amount of time referencing the events and content from the first movie, sometimes just including copy-pasted film. It makes me wonder if they think that somehow we forgot what happened in the original.

The driving plot device felt very much like an afterthought - worse than Prince Hans’ good-to-evil flip last time. One characters’ misdeeds were revealed in pieces throughout the story, culminating in an explanation for why the plot/quest was happening. While the behavior was certainly malicious, there really wasn’t a reason for it to be; it could have just been someone making a well-intentioned mistake that backfired that Anna and Elsa needed to resolve it. It made the perpetrator cartoonishly evil in a way that I would qualify as a MacGuffin instead of good story telling.

Canonically this was set 6 years after the original, which matches the real-life release date differences of 2013-2019. The only reference to this was one time when Anna (Kristen Bell) mentioned the ‘original’ King and Queens’ death, which was the impetus for Elsa (Idina Menzel) getting coronated at the start of the first movie. Not much felt like it changed in Arrendelle, so it was impossible to determine the time-differential until that one quote. While Anna went from 16-22 (or 18-24, depending on how you feel like counting), that’s not an age range that usually produces lots of visual changes, so there wasn’t anything animated to make that age change obvious. Frankly, without that one line, this movie could have been set days or weeks after the first and we would have been none the wiser.

At one point, a character stated that they were reading a new book by a “Dutch author.” This leads to many bizarre questions about where Arrendelle is and what society/culture is living there. The maps they showed didn’t match any real-life coastlines, and by identifying “Dutch” by name, asked the adult audience to play with a different level of fictional escapism. Had the character said “I’m reading a new book by my favorite author, Christian Andersen Hans,” it would have been an equally effective Easter egg without being a misplaced callout.
Equally weird was that there was a map with Roman numerals in the corner. Unfortunately, I was too slow to register what those numerals were, so I’ll have to pause the scene when the DVD comes out. This not only means we have a rough idea when Frozen takes place, but even more proof that it happened on our Earth.

There were two black people in the entire population of Arrendelle, which felt incredibly jarring. I’m not against inclusivity, but while Arrendelle was clearly a parallel to Hans Christian Andersen’s era of the Netherlands (mid-1800s), and while there were probably Moors or Ethiopians or some other group of ethnic travelers who visited to trade, they wouldn’t have been part of the local population or in any positions of authority in the local government. The fact that Arrendelle apparently exists on the same planet as the real Netherlands makes it even weirder.

Roughly half of Elsa’s dialog felt stilted, as if they wanted her to only say “deep” things throughout. This had the unfortunate effect of feeling like a mostly-more-human version of Bran from the last two seasons of “Game of Thrones.”

Elsa got a handful of new dresses (hello Disney merchandising!), one of which was created by spontaneously willing it into existence. How many of her outfits were magic pseudo-ice creations? Can she create clothes for other people, or only herself? Can she control any natural fibers, or only the ones that are shades of blue and white and fitted to her body?

Anna was inexplicably paranoid and unconfident in a way that didn’t make sense or match her character development from the first movie, assuming there weren’t any cinematic-level adventures between these two films. And, since nothing came out “in between,” I’m going to assume there wasn’t.

There was a chunk of completely unnecessary story added to the original King and Queens’ backstory. It didn’t feel like it paid off to Anna and Elsa completing their quest or anything regarding Arrendelle and the royal lineage; it was simply a “Look at this! We added character development to the two dead parents!” moment, as Disney had a rare chance to play with the ‘dead parents’ trope that their other movies/sequels gloss over.

Christof (Jonathan Groff) and Sven seemed to have gotten the same amount of screen time as they did last time, which was used well. I have no particular comments about either of them.

Fortunately the Trolls had all of three lines, so they didn’t get to be weird this time around.

Ritter and Honeymarin were introduced as two new characters, in the way you’d introduce someone who was meant to be important.
And then… nothing. They just went on to be irrelevant side characters. I suppose they could have a large role for a “Frozen III,” but it was a weird way to introduce them here.

The CGI was good, just like the first movie was. No major comment there, as it’s hard to make CGI look bad in a movie where everything is animated anyway.

But you didn’t go to see the movie, or bring kids to see the movie, for the CGI; you want to know about the music.
I liked the music in this one more. There wasn’t anything quite as powerful as “Let it Go,” but Elsa’s new number “Into the Unknown” was a pretty good follow up. I liked the soundtrack, collectively, more than the first. There were no cutesy duets like “Love is an Open Door” though.
Unfortunately they gave Olaf two musical numbers (a solo and a duet), which was two more songs than I wanted to hear him in, but I can overlook that. 
Anna got a song called “The Next Right Thing,” which felt like her version of “Let it Go,” but Bell simply doesn’t have the pipes that Mendel has, nor were the lyrics as powerful.
My favorite song was, without a doubt, “Lost in the Woods.” It was Christof’s power ballad set like a 1980’s rock/love song.

I realize I commented on a lot of things above, and it might sound like I disliked it. I didn’t. Despite the fact that I’m giving it a 3-Claw rating, I’ll still recommend you see it in theaters - it was a lot of fun.
The reason I’m not giving it a 4-Claw is because Disney dropped the ball on the story line/character development. I get it, it’s a kids’ movie and I’m not the target audience, but we all know that Disney can craft a good storyline (strong villains, good motivations, etc) to keep the adults/parents intrigued without going over the childrens’ heads - “The Lion King” (1994) is a perfect example - while here I felt like they tried to do a bit too much over-explaining to justify the story they wanted to tell.
Definitely go see it, just remember that you’re there for the musical numbers.