Hmm... not that good actually

Rating: 6/10 (15 August 2016)

I belong to the minority that doesn't believe Frozen is a masterpiece. I don't hate it, I just find it extremely overrated, and given more credit than it deserves. It is supposed to be "feminist", but it's not.
1. The villain.
Hans, a prince so far down in the line of succession he made a plan to marry a princess and then rule through her. A very good plan, actually, but why go after the spare and not the heir? Why didn't he leave immediately after he saw Elsa was no interested in him and find a female heir that was, which would have been way easier than seducing the spare (Anna) and then plan to have the queen removed? Also, he hopes to take full of control of the kingdom after he lets Anna die... how? He's completely unrelated, and his status as prince can't give him the throne. He isn't even the heir's consort - he never married Anna (he should have waited until he married her), and a scenario where he lies about marrying Anna, with no witnesses and no consummation seems a very unlikely one to be believed. And his revelation as the villain was a cheap move for shock value, as well. There was no building-up to the reveal, no foreshadowing, nothing. It appears as if the third act was rewritten in the last minute, with not much thought thrown in it. Disney has given us some wonderfully abusive villains, but Hans was a superficial and lacking one.
2. The pacing.
Two many plot lines. Elsa wants to protect everyone from her, Elsa wants to control her powers, Anna wants to find Elsa, Anna wants to reconcile with Elsa, Kristoff must learn to love people as well, not just reindeer, the weasel duke wants to take over Arendelle (with a very obscure and puzzling plan), Hans wants to take over Arendelle... too many (unresolved) plot lines. A book can have many plots running at the same time, so does a TV series, but a movie? Not that easy. In the end, everything feels rushed, and no story-line was explored enough, not even the important ones. The songs are another example of bad pacing as well.
3. The protagonist and her sister
Anna is not a feminist character. First off, what does Anna do that's so feminist? She sets off on an adventure where she's saved by men, one way or another. Hadn't it been for Kristoff, she would have never made it out. And despite Elsa's "You cannot marry a man you've just met", Anna does the very same thing by the end of the movie, a movie that's supposed to criticize that behaviour found in the earlier films. So why does Frozen endorse something when they made fun of it earlier?
Anna is no good character either. Namely, she has no character development. She starts off as an over-excited lady, and ends up as an over-excited lady. Her morals aren't tested, she doesn't go through some existence-doubting quest or anything, she remains the same. No conflict in there. Elsa should have been the main character. A princess whose own self is her burden, who wants to protect everyone she loves not from an eternal factor but from within, from herself, who needs to control her powers but can't, who isolates herself out of fear... a perfectly written character. Instead, they gave her a song and shoved her to the background, in an icy castle, and showed us her wacky sister's snow adventures, which include Anna getting saved by a man, being helped by a man, being led by a man, all the time. And in the end, the only choice Anna makes is to get in Hans' sword's way, which is very sweet, but comes too late. Anna is a sweet, one-dimensional character that does nothing but being stupid.
4. Fictional kingdom vs realism
I am no expert on such subject, but the ruling of Arendelle is treats as no big deal in this movie. The queen and king died when Elsa was 18, so why wasn't she made queen right away? Why did it take three years before she was crowned? Who ruled Arendelle this whole time? Also keep in mind, Arendelle needed heirs. If Elsa was out of question, then the king and queen should find a match for Anna as soon as possible. Instead, they shut her in. And then, Anna just abandons the kingdom, leaving Hans, a man she does not know, in charge. OK, Anna is naive, but why should anyone accept that? I imagine there must be a head in the castle's household (that Kai guy for example) who would question Hans' fitness to rule. And again, a female character is dependant on a male one, which makes me wonder again, "Why is this movie considered feminist when women rely on men to help them and save them all the time?" You'll notice it's never the other way round. Also, Hans attempts to slay the queen and lies about the princess' status, and gets away with that? Surely, he gets a punishment from his bros... to clean the stables. Usurping a kingdom, and attempting to slay its rightful ruler (and the rightful heir) should have him executed, if I were writing the script. And because sometimes I tend to expect the worst from anyone, if I were Elsa, I'd be wondering whether this wasn't an attempt of the King of Southern Isles to usurp my kingdom through his son, but perhaps that's far-fetched.
At the end of the day, I don't think Frozen is as great as everyone wants it to be. It's amusing, it's fun, but not complex at all, with shallow characters, unnecessarily long musical numbers, and too many subplots to find out what the real story is, and explore it.