Frozen 2 (Spoilers / Language warning)
Cert: U / 103 mins / Dir. Jennifer Lee & Chris Buck / Trailer
With much fanfare and much expectation comes the first, full-length, sequel to Disney's 2013 smash, Frozen. And it's fine. To be clear, compared with a lot of other animated content around at the moment, it's pretty great. But for a tentpole Disney production - it's fine. The animation is fantastic and the voice-performances are note-perfect, but the storyline is slight and more than a little fairytale-autopilot, while the songs just aren't as finely crafted this time round (although they're mercilessly over-produced all the same, and feature more key-changes than a drunk locksmith*1).
Jennifer Lee pens the screenplay and is assisted by co-director Chris Buck with the story. But they're also joined by three other writers for that story, and that shows. Mainstay characters from the first film are relegated to supporting-status, with other smaller roles drafted in as points of familiarity. It never 'doesn't work', but feels as if it's not really putting in the effort, like a Disney writers-room trying to hit all the same notes as last time without stopping to consider what made the song so special to begin with. Olaf - the comic-relief character - has the most touching moment of the whole movie.
If you were to stack up all the amazing Disney standalone and part-one movies even from the last decade, then make a separate pile of comparable follow-ups, how close to 'even' do you think they would be? And so it proves. Coasting on charm and visual gags, this latest seat-warmer is enjoyable enough in a disposable way, but it's definitely a bolted-on sequel rather than a narrative continuation. Disney are better than this and Frozen deserves more. Either stick to spin-off shorts or just give Olaf his own feature-length adventure, you cowards.
And is the repeated (and apparently demonstrated) insistence from certain characters that "water has memory" a message to impressionable children from a US-based global media giant pertaining to the wonders of homeopathy? You can fuck right off, Bob...*2
Well, y'know, Frozen.
If you have padawans tugging your sleeve, sure.
It is.
Nah.
Likely.
There isn't but that default hawk-screech is there.
*1 And credit where it's due, Christoph's Peter Ceter-a-long number 'Lost In The Woods' with its accompanying power-ballad video is hilarious - one would hope intentionally so. But the bottom line is that it's not even as catchy as Cetera's songs. [ BACK ]
*2 Seriously, I tried to frame the homeopathy thing like a joke and it doesn't really read like a joke and the more I think about it I don't even care. That is the vibe I kept getting from the film. Repeatedly. [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Okay, I'm very late to the party with this one, but Strange Magic didn't get a particularly robust release in the UK, least of all around these parts. Lucasfilm's first standalone animated feature had already been through the critical mill when it finally arrived on these shores six months after its US release; a reputation which saw it relegated largely to weekend-morning showings, a slot it's still sporadically filling now (hence me finally catching up with it).
It's no secret round these parts that I'm a firm advocate of the godfather of Star Wars, but even I become hesitant when one of the film's marketing lines is "from the mind of George Lucas". Because so was the Holiday Special, as well we know. Strange Magic is a tale of good and evil, love and sorcery, all filtered through the medium of hi-res CGI animation and the jukebox-musical. Yeah, you were onboard until that last bit, weren't you? Hmm. The story centres around two fairy-princess sisters trying to find happiness in the magic kingdom, while the Bog King tries to "ban love" (familiar?) by destroying all the forest's Primrose flowers, which are used to make the Love Potion™ (the mystical equivalent of hypnotic-Rohypnol apparently, so not necessarily a bad thing in itself).
The film bears all the stylistic hallmarks we've come to expect from the fantasy-genre, gorgeously rendered in pixels with lithe voice-acting to match, courtesy of Evan Rachel Wood, Meredith Anne Bull and Alan Cumming (along with many others). But a one-track story interspersed by heavily-produced pop songs makes the film unwatchable. The arrangements aren't necessarily bad in themselves, but the disconnect between polished-musical and the narrative-genre just isn't bridged by the film which wants to wield them both. It's not even that the film doesn't make much sense, but that it's not interesting enough in the first place to try and make sense of.
The final product plays out like 2013's Epic locked in a karaoke bar with only absinthe and Haribo Tangfastics to keep them going. Each time the inhabitants of Dingly-Dell launch into Sugar Pie Honey Bunch you'll be wanting to punch your own face off.
A fantasy tale with as little ambition as it has imagination, this bad Disney fan-film is the dad-dancing equivalent of a West-End rock-opera*1 refitted for a provincial theatre.
As much as it pains me to hate on a Lucasfilm project, Strange Magic is dreadful.
Oh, I have no idea. I'd normally cite Dark Crystal or Willow, but I don't want to drag them down by association.
No.
No.
No.
Depends entirely on which aspect we're disagreeing on.
But, yes.
Didn't notice one, but I spent a lot of time trying to punch my own face off.
Level 1: Ungle George's pawprints are on this project.
*1 Although to be fair, that's a charge which can be levelled against most rock-operas; especially when paired with the 'jukebox' format, the laziest of all musicals whereby the writer doesn't have to actually write any music.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Oh, come on, I'm a middle-aged man that used to have hair longer than Randy 'The Ram' Robinson's. How am I supposed to concentrate on Marisa Tomei lapdancing when they're playing Firehouse over the top of it? So much of the film's 1980s soundtrack is either from my youth or my recent years playing GTA, that a film about a confused man living in the past seems less like the character study of a nostalgic narcissist and more like a secretly-filmed documentary…
Joking aside, the use of handheld cameras throughout the film does lend The Wrestler the feel of a fly-on-the-wall diary, bringing a sense of intimacy to the point of claustrophobia, particularly in the quieter scenes. It's these moments where Mickey Rourke's performance is at its strongest. The portrait of a faded pro-wrestler working the amateur circuit, The Ram is a man who can't let go of his glory days, not because he believes it to be better as such, but because he pretty much has no present to return to. Outside the ring, his existence is punctuated with links to his former life; the action figure of himself he keeps in his van, his licensed Nintendo NES game he's always got on standby ready to play in his trailer, or the collection of TDK mixtape cassettes next to his bed.
But aside from the character-building, The Wrestler is of course a film about a wrestler, and that's where we parted ways. As someone who fails to grasp any sport at even the most fundamental level, I found it difficult to give a shit about something I have absolutely no frame of reference for. The fact that pro-wrestling*1 is essentially a performance art anyway, only made things worse, not better. The lines between good acting, good wrestling and bad bit-part acting all blurred together a little too easily for me, and rapidly turned into something I just couldn't get involved with. The film is certainly well made, but I'd have been more interested if it had been an actual documentary (although again, with the notorious levels of showmanship involved in the sport, it may as well be).
Even with the scattershot subplots running into Randy's personal life, the pacing is a little too slow and disjointed for my tastes, and feels like a 70 minute film padded out for too long with b-roll footage.
Despite everything that Aronofsky skillfully throws at the viewer, I just couldn't connect with The Wrestler. Maybe I just prefer my fakery to be a little less real?
Nope. I was all poised to see it at my local cinema (it actually played there), then didn't quite get round to it for whatever reason.
Well, I'd be hard pushed to say I really 'enjoyed' The Wrestler, but it interested the fuck out of me, on film-making level.
Only if you're looking for something a little challenging that's not exactly deep, but definitely has more going on under the surface.
Didn't hear one. Although it's not that kind of movie, I suppose.
Mickey Rourke starred in 2006's Stormbreaker, as did Ewan McGregor from the Star Wars prequel trilogy and Andy Serkis from the Star Wars sequel trilogy (well, The Force Awakens at least).
*1 ie the spandex/arena type wrestling as opposed to the olympic type wrestling shown in Foxcatcher. Although to be fair I struggled to give a shit about that as well.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
