Hello & welcome to the final Christmas review for A Look at Disney, this year. Frozen is everywhere these days, there's a stage musical, a ride, a Lego special, Olaf guest starred on Sofia The First. There's even Frozen cereal.
There are also books, including a series of chapter books starring Elsa and Anna. And just two years ago, Disney Publishing released a take on The Night Before Christmas starring Olaf.
Frozen is one of Disney's biggest cash cows. To put it simply, just as the sun will rise in the morning, Disney will find a new way to market Frozen. And that brings us to what we are looking at today, Olaf's Frozen Adventure. Olaf's Frozen Adventure is a Frozen Christmas special that was originally made to air on ABC but John Lasseter felt that it was too cinematic to not be in theaters, so they had put in front of Coco. Okay, that's no biggie, what's the running time for this thing?
Okay, that makes things a bit different. As most theaters play an onslaught of trailers that take up 20 minutes before the movie starts. So, people were waiting 41 minutes to watch the movie, they wanted to see. Now, I've heard people make the argument that a Disney Christmas classic was also attached to a movie, when it was released and is actually longer than Olaf's Frozen Adventure. Only by 5 minutes though.
There are a couple of differences between Olaf and Mickey here though as well, for all intents and purposes, Mickey's Christmas Carol feels like something that should be viewed in a cinema whereas Olaf's Frozen Adventure feels like, what it is, a TV special. There is also the fact that at this point in 1983, the last time, a Mickey short had been seen in theaters was in 1953 with The Simple Things. So, there was a 30 year gap there. Whereas with Frozen, it's all over the place nowadays and the last time, Frozen was seen in theaters was with Frozen Fever in 2015.
So, only two years ago. I love Frozen, it's one of my favorite Disney movies but even I think this is a bit excessive. Something else that I noticed that no one else has seem to brought up is that only the cast and Christophe Beck returned to work on this. As the DisneyWiki points out.
This is the first animated Frozen project not to be directed by Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck (though they were consulted), produced by Peter Del Vecho, or to feature music written by the Lopez couple. Christophe Beck did return to compose the music score with uncredited composer Jeff Morrow, however
So, you don't have the directors that ensured Frozen was as great as it was helming this project and you don't have the people that gave you Let It Go writing the music for this. I remember hearing about this, while this was in production and that was one of the biggest red flags for me going into this.
I hate being really hard before, we even get to the review as I wanted to give this the benefit of the doubt. I mean people have called this Disney's Star Wars Holiday Special. Which it's not that bad and Disney's Star Wars Holiday Special is the Star Wars Holiday Special as they own Star Wars. Or maybe, Too Smart for Strangers, if you want something truly awful with Disney characters. With this long-winded introduction outta the way, let's begin.
The Plot
The introduction for this blog was so long because for this, being a 21 minute special, it feels like not a whole lot is accomplished. It starts off simply off as it is Christmas Time in Arendelle. And we see the ringing of the traditional bell, to ring in the holiday as everyone heads home to celebrate with their family traditions. Olaf is excited to find out what Anna and Elsa's family tradition for Christmas is. And Elsa realizes that they don't have one. And Elsa blames herself for this. Three years ago, I looked at the Disney Christmas Storybook Collection and that included a story about Elsa trying to make up for lost Christmases for Anna.
At the time, I didn't care for much for this story as it only seemed to focus on Elsa but in his comment, The Second Opinion brought this up.
I can’t believe I’m saying this, especially after your review, but… this story actually sounds really good. Having Elsa want to make up for lost time and inadvertently driving a wedge between them again sounds exactly like the kind of sympathetic Elsa moment you’d expect after what happened, and from the pages you posted, it seems like they do a good job keeping Anna’s presence looming over the story, building up the potential crash. And ending with Anna getting Elsa to give it up and spend the entire afternoon in a snowball fight with her was an adorably perfect Anna moment. It reminded me a bit of Elsa singing “Let it Go” right when we thought the hard feelings were going to get the better of her. (If nothing else, this story knew that we really want to see both of them happy together.)
And after having watched this special, I think that story handled the idea of how to tell a Frozen Christmas story better. The only slight complaint I could see against a Frozen special doing something as this for a Christmas special is that some might consider it derivative of Frozen Fever. But, I'm not arguing that they needed to adapt that story directly but I don't think that would've been a bad idea. After all, Mickey's Christmas Carol was an adaption.
Would it have been risky to adapt a story that people may not be familiar with? Possibly, but it'd give Elsa and Anna more to because as it stands, they are barely in this thing. I get that Olaf's name is in the title but of there is one character that people have grown tired of, real fast from Frozen, it's Olaf. Without Anna or Elsa to balance to the naivety/stupidity of Olaf, his shtick gets old real fast.
And that brings us to the main crux of this featurette, it's nothing but Olaf going through Arendelle looking fro various traditions through one overlong song. We get a montage of Olaf experiencing different holiday traditions.
We get our big climax, when Olaf goes to see Wandering Oaken and learn about his holiday tradition and that involves a sauna and he gives Olaf, a sauna type box as a Christmas present to give to Elsa and Anna. With hot pebbles still in it, and this causes the sleigh that Olaf was using (It was Kristoff's btw) to catch on fire.
Back at the castle, we actually get a good moment as we see the sisters think back to their childhoods as we see them go through their chest of stuff from when they were kids. And there are two great things about this moment. We see that Elsa's chest is full of gloves and she had a stuffed animal growing up.
Why do I bring up the stuffed animal as a good thing? It goes a ways to humanize Elsa, even more beyond what the movie did. It's a small touch but it is one that I admire.
After Kristoff's sleigh catches on fire, Sven comes back and tries to tell Kristoff a la Lassie that Olaf is in trouble but he doesn't seem to understand him. Really? But Anna does and they go find Olaf, after he had been attacked by group of wolves. Sorry, snow and wolves makes me think of Beauty and The Beast. The Royal Sisters find a defeated looking Olaf as he feels that he failed in finding a tradition for them. Oh, and as I watched it on TV, apparently, there was a scene cut.
When aired on ABC, the brief montage of Anna and Elsa gathering the citizens of Arendelle to search for Olaf was cut.
It didn't effect the story that much. From what I think, but if I catch it in the future, I'll let you know. When Elsa shows Olaf, a box of things that Anna made that looked like Olaf as a kid. Leading them to say that Olaf is their tradition. Alright, that's kinda sweet but it does seem to go against the total isolation that was on display during Do You Want To Build a Snowman. And it ends with a really good song. Which, we will talk about in the music section.
I don't outright hate this special but having said that, there was no reason for this to be in theaters. Perhaps, my opinion would be different, if I had seen it in theaters but I did not as I watched it on ABC. Let's move onto characters.
Characters
Just a sidenote, Kristoff appeared in this but did less than even Anna and Elsa, so I won't be looking at him.
Main Character
Olaf voiced by Josh Gad
Olaf is not a character that should be the lead character of a story that goes beyond 5-8 minutes. Let me put this way. In the past, Pixar has released two movies that are sequels that put a supporting character in a starring role. One takes a supporting character and develops her beyond what she was in her first appearance and gives more a concrete backstory for why she is, the way she is. While keeping true to her character. The other is Cars 2. If you hadn't figured it out, I'm talking about Finding Dory and to me, Finding Dory is the pinnacle of how to build a story around a supporting character from a previous movie. Olaf's Frozen Adventure leans more towards the Cars 2 area of giving a supporting character, a starring role. Granted, it's not as bad as Cars 2 but I was reminded of that during this special. The biggest thing that I took away from this special was that Olaf should never be left unattended.
Supporting Characters
Elsa and Anna voiced by Idina Menzel & Kristin Bell
Ugh, I so wish that this had been a Frozen Christmas special about Elsa and Anna's relationship. That's a more fascinating dynamic to explore than just Olaf doing silly things. Elsa and Anna are two of the most interesting characters that have come from Disney in quite a while and have one of the best sibling relationships, I've seen from Disney. And to sideline them like this is just disappointing. As I would rather see something centering around them doing something for the holidays. Heck, even something along of the lines of doing The Gift of the Magi with Anna and Elsa could make for a really good Christmas featurette/special. We've already seen Disney do a good job with O. Henry's story with Mickey and Minnie.
Yeah, it's a little harder considering that they're royalty but anything to shift the focus back to where it belongs, when it comes to Frozen would have been nice.
Music
Yeah, this song isn't too bad. It does a good job of setting up the mood and atmosphere of Christmas spirit. And it does put a smile on my face but that's probably hearing Idina Menzel sing.
Much like Kristoff in this special, this song is pointless. Okay, maybe that's not entirely fair as it's about the trolls' holiday traditions but while I don't like Olaf's song, this one just stops the special straight.
Again, this song infuriates me that this special isn't about Elsa and Anna as it is so good and makes you feel for Elsa in this short amount of time as she looks back on Christmases past.
This song would never shut up. It just keeps going and going and going and going. I just wanted to tell Olaf, I want a Silent Night. And I don't have anything against Josh Gad but the way, she sings this is just grating. I liked In Summer but this song really tests my patience.
The reprise is a little better as we've not seen this side of Olaf before and it's mercifully shorter.
This is the song that Disney has been using to promote this special and this song is better than the special that it comes from. This song does a better job of conveying the love of this family of Arendelle, than the special tries to show. This song gets the love and bond that Elsa and Anna, and yes, Olaf have. This song is just so good and I had to download this song as soon as I saw this special. I fell in love with this song as soon as I heard it because this is going to be a holiday classic for me. I'll most likely listen to this song more than I ever will return to this special.
My Final Thoughts
This special did not need to be in theaters. If it had just remained, a TV special, I think that it would have fared a little better. To me, there are Disney Christmas movies that miss the mark more than this.
But beyond that, I think the biggest issue was putting the focus on Olaf was a mistake from the get-go. I like, er tolerate Olaf because I like Frozen. He's fine as a supporting character and could possibly work well in a short film format. I think, if this had been a Christmas special focusing on Anna and Elsa's relationship, this could have been a stronger special. Ah well. Merry Christmas.
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