Almost a musical

I’m on a bit of a Disney kick at the moment, so you’ll either have to ride it out with me or come back later when I’ll be obsessing over something else.

I’ve been trying to work out exactly what it was about Frozen that left me feeling a little flat.  I mean, apart from the panic about an “eternal winter” that didn’t even last a whole afternoon before people were forming possies.

I think it was because it disappointed me as a musical.  It started of with so much promise:  An ensemble piece, the solos, the duet… It looked like it was shaping up to be a worthy companion to Beauty and the Beast.

But then it dropped the ball, musically speaking.  I couldn’t help but feel it was missing a few key numbers.  Where was Elsa’s song about wishing she could love and be loved?  Where was Kristoff’s song about “man this girl is annoying, but she kind of grows on you”?  Where was a nice big number (either a solo, duet on ensemble) about how real love can make a real difference (if not earlier in the piece, it totally should have been in that part where Anna works out what an act of love is all about and Elsa realises how to thaw the kingdom).

Yeah, the “fixer-upper” song was kind of that… only it really, really wasn’t.

What was with that waste of an ensemble?  We had the ice song at the beginning (good start), then the trolls’ number just past the half-way mark, but what about a nice, juicy “hey, it’s beginning to snow!” from the townsfolk at the start of the *cough* eternal winter and a nice big riff on the “do you want to build a snowman” theme at the end?

Can you imagine what the film would have been like if it had ended with the entire cast and ensemble singing “come out and play?”

Have you ever seen the stage version of Beauty and the Beast?  Unlike other adaptations of movies to stage musicals, nothing much needed to be altered to take that film from the screen to the stage.  The original animated film was just a well crafted musical and, because of that, it translated really well from one medium to another.

You wouldn’t be able to do that with Frozen – or with Tangled for that matter.  As much as I loved Tangled, it was also pretty undernourished as a musical.

Quite frankly, I think Pocahontas was a better musical than any of the more recent Disney films.  That’s not meant to imply that I think poorly about Pocahontas and am comparing the more recent stuff with something unfavourable.  I loved Pocahontas so much I actually bought the sound track, and still occasionally burst out with “I look once more – just around the river bend – beyond the shore…”

But that movie is almost 20 years old.  Name one Disney animation from the past two decades that could hold a candle, musically speaking to Pocahontas, let along be in the same league as Beauty and the Beast or The Lion King?

I think Frozen could have done it.  It showed promise.  And then it didn’t live up to that promise, which is such a bummer.

I know it sounds like I hated that film, but I was really just disappointed by it.  It had moments of being almost great, but it was never actually as great as it could have been.