frozen: did I miss something?

SPOILER ALERT:  this post contains spoilers.  :)

Since everyone was raving about frozen, Tyler and I decided to just go ahead and buy it.  This is a big deal- we don't ever buy movies and we've never seen it, but we figured it wasn't much of a gamble since everyone said it was so good.

People, what is the big deal? This whole movie is really sub-par for a DisnePixar.  Compare to: Finding Nemo, Cars, Tangled, Brave, Toy Story, Up....basically all other Disney/Pixars.  Normally, they give us a solid story base and a deeply involving set of characters.  I thought Frozen lacked both.

Issue #1: Too much, too fast.  I had a hard time becoming seriously involved in the characters.  I just didn't love them enough to get in to the movie.  This was largely due to the way that the movie covered 10 years in about 3 minutes and one song.  I know they wanted to get moving to the main portion of the story, but I feel like they cheated us a little bit and made the story cheap somehow.  Not to mention the opening scene contributed nothing to the story (more on that in a second).  Tangled and Brave both had similar intros- a quick childhood overview leading in to the main story.  Disney nailed it in the past, giving you enough information to start the story and make you love the characters.  Not so much here.

Issue #2: They never explain where Elsa got her power from.  I have a hard time suspending my belief for movies as it is, so when they never offered an explanation, it frustrated me.  I would have been satisfied if the explanation was that her parents had powers, or that she was visited by her fairy godmother or something, but instead she just suddenly has powers and nobody knows why?  Lame.  Disney can do better.

Issue #3: Whats with the trolls?  Kristoff getting adopted by the trolls was, like, a 0.5 second scene that would be easy to miss, especially for little kids.  When I saw it, I actually thought "oh no!  The evil trolls are stealing him away from his mother!"  They needed to make it more clear that he was an orphan or that he let the trolls adopt him.  

Issue #4: All the sudden, at the end of the movie, Elsa realizes that love can help control/undo her magic (not sure which).  So....does that mean she never felt love during her childhood?  I thought she loved her parents and definitely loved her sister.  I thought Anna getting summer powers or something would have been a much cooler resolution.  

Issue #6: Olaf the snowman-the creator subplot that didn't happen.  When Elsa realizes she created Olaf, there is a little moment where she seems to realize that her powers can be beautiful, and used for good to create good things.  I was hoping this would turn in to a subplot/offshoot where she learned to harness her powers for the good of the people.  Note: creating a giant skating rink does not count as the good of the people.  Instead, she creates a giant evil snowman who tries to kill her sister.  Which leads to....

Issue #7: Character inconsistencies.  Elsa would never hurt her sister on purpose.  Yet, she sends a giant evil snowman (named marshmallow, btw) after her and lets the snow monster throw her sister off a cliff.  Also, she seems like a confident, calm women often one second, but suddenly melts down into a self-concious girl with no self control the next.  Why bother with the 'confident' front if, really, she is supposed to be unsure of her self?  Come on Disney, get it together.  And what about Olaf the snowman?  He is funny and cute, but he bounces back and forth between being a naive goofball and being a serious helper who knows what's going on.  And what was with the "I don't have a skull!" comment? That wasn't funny, and it didn't fit into the scene at all.  He was cute, but a poorly utilized character who really ended up being a plug-in when they needed something and didn't have a better character on hand.

Issue #8: Hans plays the good guy too well.  This is another character inconsistency.  When Elsa was about to kill the two thugs, why would he stop her?  Why not just let her kill them to add beef to his treason charge?  Why keep up the charade, even when Elsa was locked up in her cell?  Side note: him being a bad guy was a pretty predictable plot twist.  Tyler says he didn't guess it, but you knew he had to be bad news.  The biggest clue-in was the 12 older brothers.  Older brothers means no throne, and people without thrones are always trouble.  

Issue #9:  The whole opening scene.  If the song was supposed to foreshadow the dangers of a frozen heart, why bother repeating that with the trolls later?  The only real purpose seemed to be to introduce Kristic, but he really didn't need the intro.  He stood on his own without it, and is one of the few characters I thought was well developed.  He would have been just as well developed without the weird opening scene.  I would MUCH rather have that time introducing Elsa and Anna, whose character development was weak since the attention was split between them.

Also, to throw in my two scents, it definitely seemed like the two men at the trading post were a gay couple to me.  Just saying.  Another personal opinion- I love the song "Let it Go."  I do. But the very first time I heard it (which was before I saw the movie) I was rubbed the wrong way by the lines "No more rules for me/I'm free."  Kindof sends the wrong message, don't you think?

Well, sorry to be a buzz kill.  I still think that, overall, the movie is cute and fun.  I would probably still buy it.  It's just my least favorite Disney/Pixar movie.  Except maybe Planes.  Planes was just a waste of production effort.