Is it truly as good a "The Lion King"?

Rating: 3/10 (11 May 2014)

Frozen is one the more frustrating movie's I've seen in a long while.
I never wanted to like a movie more then Frozen. Everything seemed set for a true master piece of beautiful story telling, classic characters and unforgettable musical numbers. Unfortunately what we got was a story that tried to hard for its own good to be clever. Glaring character inconsistency and plot holes that snowballed up until nothing any of the characters did made any sense at all. And lackluster song writing that has no idea what it wants to be. We get everything from an African style chant, to an a Celtic sounding number, to what sounds like a country music balled by Carrie Underwood.
Many critics and fans alike have called Frozen the best Disney film sense "Beauty and the Beast", "The Little Mermaid" and even "The Lion King" Is it truly as good as these classics? No. Not even close. Frozen isn't even in the same Galaxy as "The Lion King".
The story follows two young princesses, Anna and Elsa. Anna is completely normal and only longs for true love, and Elsa who is Well...not so much. She as the ability to manipulate and create ice. Both sisters have spent the better part of a decade on apostate sides of Elsa's locked door do to an icy accident, a rock trolls completely worthless advice and the worst parental guidance imaginable. On her coronation day, after Elsa comes of age to be crowned queen, she accidentally looses control of her powers and flees into the wood and builds an ice castle to sulk unaware that her fear as manifested itself into an internal winter that threatens the entire kingdom. Anna now must go into the wilderness to find her sister and convince her to put an end to the weather. The side characters that surround our two princesses during this journey are all, for the most expendable to the plot. The character Hans should have never existed and is only present for a big twist at the end that completely negates his characters personality in the first two thirds of the movie. The character Kristoff could have been dropped all together and it would have changed the ultimate out come very little.  Olaf, a walking talking Snow man is the only side character that really needs to be here and is arguably the films main marketing draw. The film is literally humorless until he shows up a full hour into the movie. He gets is own nifty song about how he only longs for Summer, but doesn't know the consequences... It's funny because he's a snow man... but after that he's pretty much sidelined to quirky one liners and sight gags.  Now we come to the music. Supposedly The best since "The Lion King"!
There's five songs in "The Lion King with a running time of 88 minutes.
There are nine different musical numbers in "Frozen", at least two never should have made it passed the editing room, and with a running time of 102 minutes, almost a full half hour is dedicated to musical numbers leaving a brisk hour and ten minutes to tell the story. 5 songs take place in the first half hour alone. It is perfectly okay to donate so much time to your songs as long they are fun, classy and help move the story and develop the characters. Frozen's Songs does very little of that.
Here we get clumsy lyrics like "I don't know if I'm elated or gassy but I'm somewhere in that zone"
To
"Is it the way that he runs scared? Or that he's socially impaired? Or that he only likes to tinkle in the woods?"
Yeah... classy! I guess one could argue that "The Lion King" has its moments of goofy bathroom style lyrics as far as Pumba's flatulent related back story goes. But I refuse to except that as a legitimate argument as long as "Fixer Upper" still exists in our society. This song will forever by a black stain on Disney's musical legacy.
The exception, of course, is "Let it go", the only song that feels like true effort was put into it. Idina Manzel sells the heck out of it, even though I never thought her voice really matched her character model. (Being more then 20 years her characters senior) But even that song falls flat do to the writers refusal to allow Elsa to fully embrace her new found self worth and freedom she has so passionately been singing about. The next time we see Elsa she's the same scared, weak, volatile character she was before she belted out her "Girl Power" song.  Plot inconsistency abound! For example. When Anna finds Elsa in her ice castle Elsa tells Anna that she ran away in order to protect her and everyone else from her powers. But when Anna presses the matter Elsa, in what appears to be a very deliberate act, creates a giant ice monster to attack Anna and Kristoff.  Way to protect, Elsa! Also, Elsa doesn't seem to know that she's cursed her kingdom with eternal winter, despite all the land being covered in two foot of snow in the middle if Summer. Could she not look out the front door of her castle and see?
Then there's the Rock Smurfs. Oh my god the rock Smurfs! Clearly a by product of the writers getting yellow with envy over the success of the minions in "Despicable Me"
The best part of this movie by far is it's visuals. The movie is absolutely gorgeous to behold. But ice candy alone can not save a film who's heart clearly froze somewhere in its creation.