Jennifer Lee
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Filmography
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Connections, in both directions
While it’s interesting to see a Disney sequel borrow parts of its plot from The Fifth Element, of all things, Frozen II ultimately doesn’t go anywhere we don’t expect it to.
Jokes aside about Elsa being a perfect candidate for Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, someone in the writer’s pool was a clear fan of Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element and various Indiana Jones movie stunt pieces.
Strangely, the plot of Frozen II takes some unlikely inspirations, as there are echoes of The Fifth Element, last year's Annihilation, and the Three-Eyed Raven concept from Game of Thrones.
It takes effort to appreciate how unusual it was for Star Wars to treat spaceships like rusty jalopies, that E.T. shoehorns in a prolonged homage to The Quiet Man .
Both the under-appreciated Brave and the cracking Moana did it better.
Transparency and inclusivity, on and off screen, is only beneficial here – as mentioned above, Lee is the only female director to ever work on an animated feature film for Walt Disney Animation (Brenda Chapman co-directed the 2012 Disney/Pixar film, Brave).
In myriad ways, “Frozen II” feels more like a follow-up to Pixar’s “Brave” than it does an extension of Disney’s earlier (very loose) adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen.”
If there was one thing we learned from Coco in 2017, for those still scarred, is that a little bit of Olaf certainly goes a long way.
Once we’re in the woods, a land magically barricaded from the outside world, Disney’s prettiest landscapes and characters since 2017’s “Coco” come to life.
If not anywhere as bad as the screechingly unwatchable short Olaf’s Frozen Adventure that Disney foisted on us before screenings of the 2017 Coco , it could still stand to slow down, if only for a minute.
Ever since Jennifer Lee directed 2013's hit "Frozen" and was later named chief creative officer of Walt Disney Animation in June 2018, viewers have watched a different type of Disney lead, one who puts family and friends ahead of a love interest ("Frozen") and who has deeper communities ties ("Frozen II," "Raya and the Last Dragon").
This is Disney’s second animated movie of the year after Raya and the Last Dragon, but this is their first musical since 2019’s Frozen II.
[READ MORE: Our review of Disney’s ‘ Frozen II ‘ starring Idina Menzel and Kristen Bell]…
Raya and the Last Dragon (2021)
Directed by Carlos López Estrada
influenced by Frozen II (2019)
Plot
Similar to Moana (2016) and Frozen II (2019), Raya ’s adventure flows from one moment to the next without force or happenstance, enabling the adventure to pull you in slowly before you’re off to the races.
At its best, this is an unsatisfying follow-up to Frozen , already the least artistically successful of Disney's 21st Century princess musicals (the others being 2009's The Princess and the Frog , 2010's Tangled , and 2016's Moana ).
Restoring order in a fictional land is a popular Disney trope of late, exemplified best in Moana back in 2016.