No, I’m really not.
This post has been brewing for a long time, but today, when I woke up to “Let it Go” blaring out of speakers unknown (in my house? on the street? from a cruel poltergeist in my imagination?), I knew the time had finally come. To everyone who plays “Let it Go” at pregames or on any occasion other than while watching Frozen: this post is for you. I hate Frozen. I know I’m not the only one, because when I was looking for good clips on YouTube, the second search suggestion was “frozen worst movie ever,” followed by “frozen worst parents ever.” Amen.
Let me be clear: I have no particular attachment to strict reality. I love cartoons and animated movies, even princess movies, but Frozen is a bad princess movie. I understand that a certain amount of realism has been abandoned, that abandoning realism is actually kind of the point. Yay magic! Still, even after accepting the premise of a fantasy kingdom in which one of the princesses shoots ice out of her hands, the plot doesn’t work.
First off, why are ice hands such a big deal? Don’t they sell ice anyway? I can think of many powers that would be a whole lot more destructive. Fire hands, for instance.
Ok, so the kids are playing and Elsa accidentally hurts Anna and she ends up in an ER manned by trolls. This is not particularly out of the ordinary. Lots of little kids get hurt playing with their siblings, and it’s scary for their parents but it usually turns out ok.
Anyway, the parents handle this incident in the worst way imaginable, by locking one daughter up and erasing the other one’s memory so she has no idea what’s going on for the rest of her childhood. We can’t let the kids learn from their mistakes!
Finally, in typical Disney fashion, they kill off the parents, because, as we all know, you can’t come of age unless your parents are dead. In this case, I wasn’t too sorry to see them go, but they really couldn’t do better than a shipwreck on a random voyage of unknown motives? Where’s the escaped rhinoceros when you need it?
Maybe I could have forgiven the gigantic leaps of logic in the backstory if the film improved from there, but it didn’t. It blows my mind that, in 2013, someone still signed off on a story in which the two main characters are women and yet almost all of the major plot moves are driven by the actions of the men around them. Elsa strikes out on her own. Go Elsa! Anna decides to follow her. Go Anna! Only, once she leaves the castle, Anna can’t manage to do anything without Kristoff’s help. Also, rather than leaving her trusty castle staff in charge, she leaves her entire kingdom in the hands of an almost-stranger, who she trusts because he told her she’s pretty and stuff. Because women will do anything if you make them feel special, amiright?
Just when I thought Frozen couldn’t get any worse, it turned out that the only way to save Anna was through true love. I realize this true love thing is a classic fairytale device, but can’t we bury it already?? Some things really are better in the 21st century. Never mind that emotions come from the brain, not the heart (old news, I know).
I’ll leave you with this: you know it’s bad when the highlight of the movie is Olaf, the character most blatantly designed to sell merchandise ever.
…But I make a great bobble head!
Images via.