It's at this point I am starting to think that Disney has just kind of settled. They seem to have managed to hold on to a bit of what made the old classics work so well, but they don't seem interested in creating anything great anymore. The last couple of reviews I did were pretty positive, but Tangled has pretty much fallen into the category I fear it would, time is quickly removing the finer details of the movie. Frozen is a movie I have seen before, and could largely have told you every major aspect of the movie, but at the same time, a lot of it faded from memory. It's not surprising, because thinking back almost all of the hype around Frozen was focused on three things: Let it Go, Do You want to Build a Snowman, and the twist about True Love at the end. And sure enough, those are the only things that are remembered in detail years later.
I am not saying Frozen is a bad movie, I do still quite like it. But there are a lot of problems this movie had. The idea is sound, the King and Queen try to keep Princess Elsa isolated while she learns to control her powers to keep her and everyone safe. This ends up backfiring, and when they pass away in an accident and Elsa is to be queen, she loses control and doesn't know how to handle it. Her sister goes off to find her and get her to fix the eternal winter she caused in the Kingdom. The sister, in this case, is the main character, who also was isolated growing up though doesn't have any powers herself. She just wants to see her sister again like when they were kids.
The problems creep in when you realize how much extra stuff is in this movie that doesn't need to be there. The Hanz villain turn was not necessary for the story, Olaf is an entirely pointless joke character that just adds a weird question of 'Wait, her Ice Powers can create life? What?”, and pretty much every song past the two mentioned at the beginning is entirely ignorable. I would go on a tangent that people largely seem to miss the point of Let it Go as well since I think it's a more depressing song than people seem to think, but that's a bit unrelated.
That said, the movie does have a charming cast all the same. Seeing Christopher talk with his deer and even doing the deer's voice in their conversations was a lot of fun, and he plays well of Anna and her high-energy naivete. He has just enough cynicism about the world to temper her down without feeling overbearing. All the characters play well off each other. Elsa herself is also a very likable character, and the movie does a good job of balancing her desire to be able to live her life with the fear of what her powers can do. It all builds up to a very satisfying conclusion (Even if I still argue Hans going evil was entirely pointless to the whole ordeal).
Disney as the creator of classic and timeless animation has long since come to an end by this point. The things people get excited about on Disney Plus aren't the new releases and original ideas, when it was announced Gargoyles was going to be put on the service people were talking more about Gargoyles itself than Disney Plus. I know this is kind of a point that has been beaten to death over the past few years, but Disney just isn't Disney anymore.
