Frozen II Play-By-Play

A few weeks ago we saw Frozen II for Beck's birthday. We loved it, minus the plot holes I'd been warned about. Here are some of my thoughts on the experience. Spoilers, because these are thoughts ABOUT the movie.

• Opening Credits: YES they are starting it with the same song as the first Frozen. I feel at home.
• Of course Beck insists on sitting in my lap at age 4. That's fine. It's sweet. Should probably cherish these moments. Would love to not be touched right now.
• A back story! So we're not finding out what's happened in Arendelle for the last...however many years. Here are the parents. A bedtime story! That is real? That Mama doesn't know if they should hear. Yes, yes, definitely do the "they need to know" talks right before bedtime. What could go wrong? Oh, here is the one black person they added from the first movie. Tres diverse.
• Four Elements. Is there going to be a ... Fifth Element? Bruce Willis? Will there be a cruise and a blue opera singer?
• OH I GET IT colonialism. Ideal for a 4 year old. Jay whispers "that dam's gotta come down, guarantee it."
• First song! All is Found. Lovely. Haunting. Beck already knows all the words.
• Ideal that the movie theater recently started selling beer. ...is it recent? I have been two two movies this year, Lion King and now Frozen. 2020 goal might be to see a grown up movie in a movie theater. That sounds exhausting.
• OK, present day! ....whispy singing in the distance. Probably the Fifth Element. Mila Jovovich? It appears to be scary.
• Another song! Some Things Never Change. And obviously the whole movie will be about things changing. I'm so good at kid movie plots. This is a nice kind of welcome back to Arendelle flash mob situation. Ending in the square together discussing family game night, perf.
• People keep telling Anna to do the Next Right Thing. Like in AA. Is this...rehab?
• Charades! Olaf BOOM GOES THE DYNAMITE v funny. Love Josh Gad.
• Do children understand this back and forth funny-ish plot line of Kristoff not being able to propose? It feels misplaced to me but what do I know, heteronormativity must prevail in all things, I suppose. ...is it funny, though?
• Ok, weird adult sister sleepover. Appeals to kids, sure, unrealistic expectations about adulthood, check. Elsa randomly "I just don't want to mess things up" with no evidence whatsoever that anything is concerning or wrong or she's done anything wrong. Did I miss like 8 scenes? We're 10 minutes in and have a LOT of pieces of information so far. Time to sleep. Anna drooling again, throwback to first movie. Elsa can't sleep. Weird whispy voice again. Is this just all about anxiety and insomnia? Does Elsa have a therapist and medicine?
• Here's a big Idina song! Into the Unknown. I like it. Big adventure song, but why are we considering following the voices in our head into the literal unknown? This is v strange and ill-advised. Do not attempt. Good thing for overpriced Mich Ultra. End of song, ice crystals suspended everywhere. Interesting.
• This has caused a natural disaster. Earthquake? Marshmallow returning from first movie? Everyone is hustling out like they know this is a thing, royals casually in the middle of everything. They're now on a cliff five seconds away from Arendelle, but everything's fine on the cliff. Sure. Fine. Ok.
• OK THANK GOD THE TROLLS are here to explain this. The spirits of the enchanted forest are pissed. Probably about the colonialism. So they took away the four elements and now Arendelle is dark and cold and sad and scary, but the cliff is still fine. Elsa is going to go...fix things? apologize for the colonialism? Anna refuses to let her go alone, obviously, as the entire movie is about sisters conquering the world together with trusty sidekicks.
• Ok, so the adventure is beginning! That was...quick, tbh. Just dropped popcorn on Beck's head, whatever. She dropped some in my purse, will likely forget about that until attempting to write humorous blog about this experience.
• On the way to the enchanted forest, also the geo tag my brother in law gave their last house. Memories. Unclear whether or not anyone actually knows where this forest is, but there's a lot of back and forth over where to go (no clue), what is safe (literally nothing), who is going to be involved in which parts (I have to do this alone! I'm not leaving you! Exhausting).
• Olaf has learned to read this movie and is full of fun facts. HE is age-appropriate for the kids I know that love Frozen. I love Olaf the most, v funny updated storyline.
• OK WE HAVE FOUND THE FOREST. But it's ... locked? Like a dome that you can't get in without magic? Is this The Truman Show? Ok they get in and it's more like Armageddon now, the terrain is mainly familiar but there is a lot of unmanageable weather. Tornados, wind (heh, Olaf names a gust Gale), a lot of things just like on the asteroid.
• Olaf's song! When I am Older. He's going nuts in a forest dome asteroid by himself and believes that when he is older he will understand all of this. ...I don't know, man. I'd lose my shit if my life turned upside down like this, but good for you for thinking everything is probably fine, you just don't understand it yet. I yearn for that kind of inner peace.
• Oh ok I get it these weather issues are the FOUR ELEMENT SPIRITS, duh. Beck seems to have completely grasped this concept as well. She has also consumed about as much popcorn as I have and some candy brought by my sister, vaguely concerned about being the person with a puking kid in the theater. It's fine. Mich is here with me.
• Oh, people are here in this dome asteroid Truman Show situation! Some brown people and some white people and the token black person, mmkay. It's the voice of the dude from This is Us that I love. I'm sure he has a name. Sterling K Brown. There it is.
• Honestly unclear who is who and if anyone is friend or foe, but everyone seems to agree that the spirits are the worst, and NOW EVERYTHING IS ON FIRE. Definitely Armageddon. Where is Ben Affleck and the gross sexy animal crackers. The fire then turns into...a lizard? It's cute? Elsa loves it? What is literally happening. Elsa and the salamander fire pet are now besties and honestly at this point it's been half a beer but how is anyone keeping up?
• There is something else scary now. Earth Monsters? They look like that Fantastic 4 character made of rock. Whatshisname. Is there some kind of licensing deal going on here? Is this a parody?
• Ok, every time something dangerous happens some ice sculptures appear. They are...memories? Scenes from the past? Part of the mystery? We now know that the girls' mom was a native person and the dad was one of the colonizers. Seems fittingly white-tastic that this was kept from them, or somehow no one knew until the ice memories? Shameful brown heritage, got it. But now everyone is friends because Elsa and Anna are part native part colonist. I see the tidying starting to happen for the movie to end in the next million years.
• Everyone is now doing their own thing in preparation for coming back together one more time for the final battle. Or maybe they'll each have their OWN final battles and then everything will be fine? Kristoff is planning yet another proposal with the help of a literal stranger, what could go wrong there, here's his song! Lost In The Woods. V 80's, cackling with my sister over how cheesy they made it. Intentional, indulgent in a good way, and very funny to adults. Also neat that K's lost without a GIRL, not the other way around for once. Still v dependent, but the gender swap is something.
• Anna, Elsa and Olaf have found ruins of their parents' ship. This is NOT where they allegedly died, turns out they were looking for deets about her powers. Again, therapists, people. Deadly adventures not necessary. Turns out Elsa needs to go somewhere ELSE to save the forest and cure the colonialism, and THIS she will do alone. Ok.
• Another Idina song! Wait, is this the new Let it Go or was that the other one? This one is very confusing. She's on a ... horse ... of some sort, riding over water. Is she Jesus? Is she the Fifth Element? Ok she's in a movie theater now or like a planetarium. It's like Minority Report basically. Lots of screens and OH IT'S HER MOTHER singing with her. Proud of her. I'm not crying it's fine. The song tell us what, though? That Elsa is the savior? Or her memories are? Or her mother is? This has been a long time so some solution is coming, I just really don't know what the problem is that needs to be solved. Honestly a complicated childhood relationship with her mother is probably the cause of all of this. Therapist.
• Ok there are men in this memory, thank God now we can get some REAL information. Elsa follows them to watch her grandfather murder someone in cold blood, v age appropriate, but follows them so far that she freezes? I thought she was the savior. It is the magic equivalent of "it's fine little girl, let the men handle this." Fine.
• Meanwhile, Anna and Olaf are on a DIFFERENT mission to save the world and Olaf starts to deteriorate. Because Elsa is dead-ish, and Olaf is made from her magic, he will now die too. Thanks, perfect, let's not shield them from anything else. Your best friends will all die!
• Here's Anna's song. OH it's also called The Next Right Thing. So her theme is definitely rehab. Or anxiety. Or present moment. Same thing. So to her the next right thing is singing while being sad that her bestie is dead and that means her sister is dead but it's fine she CAN still walk through what is kind of a small cave and doesn't even seem that hard to get out of. Maybe it's a metaphor for crawling out of her grief, but it's a lot like the first movie where she's climbing SO HIGH but then the camera angle reveals she's like 6 inches off the ground. Same thing but with death and sadness. Time to grow up, life's not fair.
• Ok so now it turns out ANNA is going to save everyone, realizing that the dam has to be broken to restore the water supply to the natives (there's a name it's just not a real word and hard to type not being racist about brown people in a movie promise) and ... fix things. So she wakes up the Earth Monsters, risky little game, they chase her and are heavy enough that they break the dam. How this has been avoided for ALL OF THIS TIME is beyond me but I do not write movies. Kristoff is now here helping her. Saving her, but with better, more feminist language than some movies.
• Ok perfect here's our wrap up. The breaking of the dam saves everything and everyone forgives and forgets AND Arendelle isn't ruined which was the concern the whole time so literally doing the right thing had no consequences so that's fine neither did the colonialism apparently besides the murder but that was a long time ago.
• But now Elsa is abdicating the throne? To stay in the forest? So she will be like the native side of their heritage and Anna will be the new white queen of Arendelle and they communicate via snowflake or something? And Anna proposes? And they recreate Olaf because the point of this movie is that Elsa is perhaps Jesus, water has memory, there are no consequences to anything, and sisters are forever. More charades evenings are planned, definitely first thing to hold onto after major life changes and trauma, God forbid we get a therapist now.
• Was hoping Elsa would get a lady lover in this one, but she's still single.
• The end.
• Credits: Panic! At The Disco sings Into the Unknown, which Beck now refers to as "the Into the Unknown that the dude sings," or "Into the Unknown that Kristoff sings." It's fine.
• Time to go home for cake. And puking.