In my family, I have a reputation for hating movies. To some extent this is humorous exaggeration, but it has been a noticeable pattern since my teenage years. What is true is that I do not go out of my way to watch many movies. I only watch a few per year, usually as part of a family outing. And the part of movies I enjoy the most is talking shit about them afterwards. When I have shared this trash talk online, it’s not always well-received, because people love their darlings, and my reasoning is not necessarily well-founded. But I also enjoy reading imdb reviews and laughing at all the weird reasons people like or dislike movies, so it’s only fair that you get to laugh at my weird reasons.

What I have here are a small collection of reviews of musical sequels. In all of these cases, I only saw the second movie, I did not see the first. You are welcome to think that this is the improper way to see them. But it seems like all the movie industry makes anymore is sequels (fact check: sequels are about 40% of the movie market). So isn’t this just the logical conclusion?

Frozen 2

I’ve heard that Frozen was very good. I heard that a whole cohort of kids would play its music on repeat, much to the irritation of their parents. My bonkers opinion about Frozen is that “Let it go” is pretty good, but it’s even better when the vocals are modified to be one step out of key. I would inflict this video upon you, but it was taken down so I’m afraid you’ll have to imagine it.

Anyway, I actually liked Frozen 2. The story was whatever, completely forgotten in the six years since. But the music! Wonderful.

My favorite song is “Into the Unknown“. The song introduces a mysterious voice as a musical motif, which continues to appear throughout the movie. Now one of the big problems with Frozen 2, is that it’s not clear what the mysterious voice represents, and yet it is used as the main motivating force for the adventure. Rather than explaining how a mysterious voice could possibly suffice as a character motivation, the movie leans on “Into the Unknown” to musically communicate the voice’s emotional weight. And it does a pretty good job! “Into the Unknown” features some compelling modal mixing between a major key and its relative minor. The mysterious voice pushes towards the minor key, representing uncertainty, danger, longing.

My second favorite song is “Lost in the Woods“. I just love how the whole thing is cut like a cheesy 90s love song music video. I love how they say “North is south” (looking left and right) “Left is right” (looking up and down), that gets a laugh out of me every time. Now the role of this song in the movie is basically to give Kristoff (from the first movie) one chance to shine before he gets completely sidelined. The nice thing about skipping the first movie, is that I have no attachment to this character, and I don’t care that he gets sidelined.

Often, my problem with musicals is that I love music enough that generic unmemorable music just doesn’t cut it. Frozen 2‘s music was a clear step above, and that makes it a good movie even if the rest of it was bad.

Moana 2

My understanding of Moana 2 is that it was originally planned as two episodes of a television series. When it became clear that the television series would never be made, they cut their losses by turning it into a crappy movie, which nonetheless grossed a billion dollars, because of course it did.

What I remember about Moana 2, was that it had an ensemble cast, but gave us barely any time to actually get to know the characters. The whole thing is bloated with action scene after action scene with barely any character moments in between. So we’re left with a bunch of flat archetypes, very boring.

The music was also very unmemorable, as in I could not remember a single song the moment I stepped out of the movie theater.

But I will partially defend the soundtrack, in particular the Polynesian influences. Now I have no familiarity with Polynesian traditions, and lack the background to identify or appreciate it. But I can certainly tell when the soundtrack strays from western tradition into something unfamiliar and interesting. This was most noticeable in the “filler” songs that nobody really talks about, such as “Tulou Tagaloa“. I have learned after the fact that this was the work of Polynesian artist Olivia Foa’i, and her group Te Vaka.

I often think back to the Sideways video where he talks about how Avatar originally wanted an alien soundtrack influenced by indigenous musical traditions across the world. Sideways was extremely disappointed that this soundtrack never materialized. My reaction is, yes that would have been cool, but I don’t think audiences would have liked it. Case in point, Moana 2 has Polynesian influence, but all anyone can say about its soundtrack is that it’s forgettable. And when they say it’s forgettable, they’re mostly talking about “Beyond” and “Chee-hoo” rather than the Olivia Foa’i songs, so it’s like people have even forgotten to forget!

The thing about unfamiliar musical traditions, is that appreciation is substantially gated by experience. You might get some weirdos who happen to like the new and unfamiliar, but their appreciation really isn’t the same as native enjoyers. I may like the Polynesian influence, but I also have trouble remembering any of the details after the fact. I can’t judge the difference between “good” Polynesian music from “bad” Polynesian music. If you swapped it out for African traditional music, I would never know. But appreciation to Moana 2 for doing it anyway, in a movie that is otherwise lacking.

Mufasa: The Lion King

Mufasa is the sequel to The Lion King‘s live action reboot, which to my understanding was critically panned. Somehow, my family didn’t know this, so they were expecting something on the level of the original animated The Lion King. When we stepped out of the theater, my family’s disappointment was palpable. Everyone was silent, until someone quietly murmured, “That wasn’t very good.” And I declared, “It was better than I expected.”

I thought the movie showed some interesting character motivations to Taka (who eventually turns into Scar, the villain from the original movie). Basically, it’s toxic masculinity, of course I like that as a theme. But it’s toxic lion masculinity. Taka is raised by his father who feels the appropriate role of a lion king is to laze around while the lionesses do all the work. Meanwhile Mufasa is treated as second class, and forced to hunt with the lionesses. As a result, Mufasa actually acquires some practical skills. I like that part of the story.

The music wasn’t very memorable, although I remember the villain song. “Bye Bye” is hard to forget because it repeats over and over that silly line: “I’ll make you go bye bye.” That line doesn’t serve the movie well; the villain is supposed to seem dangerous and menacing, not silly! Despite this, I think the song is alright. Kiros is basically doing the gay-coded villain archetype, and I like how they translated this into musical and vocal styling. Although it definitely doesn’t live up to any of the classic Disney villain songs.

So here I am, saying some positive things about a movie nobody liked, after having declared myself a disliker of movies. What contrarianism! I think all the stuff people say is bad about the movie is still bad. The animation looks very expensive, and yet sits in an uncanny valley where it is neither realistic, nor capable of being expressive. The whole animation style seems ill-conceived and a waste of money.

Wicked: For Good

When I was a kid, my mother would play CDs with soundtracks from stage musicals that she had seen. One of these soundtracks was Wicked. I thought the Wicked soundtrack was dead last, the very worst of the bunch. Yes, even worse than Rent! It exemplifies all properties that I dislike in musical music. Songs acting as delivery devices for lyrics, while lacking the ambition to do anything musically interesting. Sorry but “Defying Gravity” just sounds like generic pop stylings to me, while also being so thoroughly programmatic that it fails to make sense outside the context of the musical. (Of course, my opinion is colored the fact that I didn’t see the musical, so “outside the context of the musical” is the only lens I have available to judge.)

Predictably, I did not like the music from Wicked: For Good. And it doesn’t even have any of the well-known songs from the musical, since those were featured in the first film! So it was both unpleasurable and unmemorable. And obviously I have pretty idiosyncratic opinions about music, but I will add that my normie family didn’t seem to love the music either.

My general reaction to the movie was that not a single character motivation made sense, throughout the entire movie. Aha, you might say, the that’s because you didn’t watch the first movie where character motivations were established. And this is true. For example, I was quite confused by the very first scene where Elphaba gleefully attacks a caravan, and then later I’m made to understand that all the accusations against her are complete slander. Someone later explained to me that she wasn’t just attacking people for violence sake, she was trying to free the talking animals. At that point in the movie, I did not know the talking animals were a thing!

The biggest issue was, I really didn’t understand the relationship between Elphaba and the Wizard of Oz. They’re very on again off again. She hates his guts but refuses to do any violence (as she seemed willing to do in the opening scene), then she just wants to talk, then she hates his guts again. I’m sure I already got some of that wrong, it’s hard to follow. The story gets resolved when the Wizard finds *big reveal* a bottle, which convinces him to leave Oz and let the heroes win. What’s the significance of the bottle? I had to look it up because it’s never explained, and it still doesn’t make sense to me why the Wizard would concede. So that’s the entire main conflict of the movie rendered illegible.

Yes, obviously, the reason the characters don’t make sense is that Wicked: For Good is a sequel that doesn’t function as a standalone. To this I have no defense, except to say that I obviously wouldn’t enjoy the first movie either, so this is a problem that can be acknowledged but not solved.

Conclusion

So the obvious way to conclude this collection of four silly movie reviews, is to make some social commentary about why Hollywood is so plagued by sequels. As if I, self-declared movie disliker, have the slightest idea. God, I don’t know, they are not movies that I myself enjoy! But I still gave them money, so at least I get to be part of the problem.