Barbie

Year of release: 2023.     Directed by Greta Gerwig.             Starring Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, America Ferrera, Kate McKinnon, Will Ferrell, Michael Cera, and Helen Mirren.

If you saw the first teaser for Barbie, you may have thought the 2001: A Space Odyssey tribute was a one-off gag filmed just to promote the movie. You would have been wrong. Not to spoil the best surprises of the film, but the prologue telling the history of the world from the perspective of the Barbies is both hilarious and an ingenious homage to Kubrick’s masterpiece.

The homage is also thoroughly appropriate given the film’s epilogue where stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) enters a new chapter of her life not at all dissimilar from man’s rebirth as the space child at the end of 2001. To drive the new life idea home, the final line is a funny zinger about the ability to do just that.

What if I also said there’s a “beach off” among the Kens that plays extremely similarly to the pie fight that initially ended Dr. Strangelove? Or a proud proclamation of the same dolls’ identities reminiscent of the most famous line from Spartacus? And what if in fighting the villain of patriarchy, two women communicate mentally, and one of their daughters refers to it as “shining?”

I am convinced there must be more Kubrick references in Barbie, and I’d happily see it again just to catch more of them, but the film delivers on so many other levels as well.

Gerwig and Baumbach’s story does almost nothing that I expected, and while the trailers hinted at similarities with The LEGO Movie, it is very much something different. When stereotypical Barbie discovers her perfect pink world with arched feet and hot, waterless showers falling apart with thoughts of *gasp* death, weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon) informs her she has to travel to the real world and find the child playing with her who has clearly become troubled by something, thus repairing the rift between their two worlds. Stereotypical Barbie just has to choose the Birkenstock over the pink heel, which to be fair, is a choice that not many Barbies would want to make.

If stereotypical Barbie is apprehensive about going to the real world, she is reassured when the other Barbies remind her that the invention of Barbie empowered young girls, letting them know they could be anything they want and not just mothers, and now as a result women hold all positions of power in the real world. And women everywhere will probably want to run up to her and hug her for initiating feminism and fixing all women’s problems.

“At least,” Helen Mirren’s narrator tells us, “That’s what the Barbies believe.” Helen Mirren also delivers my favorite joke in the film, turning an expected breakdown from Robbie’s Barbie into something hilarious, but I’m not spoiling that here.

The slap of cold water that is the real world shocks and appalls stereotypical Barbie while making Ken (Ryan Gosling) feel empowered and respected. A crash course on patriarchy thrills Ken, which he eagerly takes back to Barbieland to inform the other Kens on how they’re supposed to be subjugating the Barbies, riding horses, drinking beer, and watching The Godfather.

As an inverse of the real world’s patriarchal structure, Barbieland is a world where the Kens cannot be president, cannot have Supreme Court appointments, cannot hold high paying jobs, and exist purely for the edification of the Barbies. Since the Ken dolls were created by Mattel to be a companion for Barbie, it’s a very clever twist that demonstrates the toxicity of patriarchy that has plagued the real world for centuries. It reminds me of Aamer Rahman’s comedy bit about reverse racism only being possible with a time machine that would enable Africa to colonize Europe and inflict the abuses on white people that they inflicted on Black people for centuries.

I suppose it needs to be said given the absurd hatred Barbie is generating from right-wing incels for its wokeness, but a film that says we should build a society where women and men are treated equally with equal opportunities is hardly what I’d call woke. Although in a post-MAGA world, general human decency often is woke, so I suppose the label is not wrong, but the film’s basic feminist message is a beautiful thing that would have widely been accepted had not the alt-right gained so much traction in recent years. Nonetheless, the film’s box office success and glowing reviews are reason for hope.

Like Gerwig’s two previous films, Barbie is another example of Graham Greene’s maxim that movies should depict the world as it is and as it should be. While the subject matter here may seem far removed from Lady Bird and Little Women, there is a common thread of hope and decency that celebrates the beauty of love for what is true, noble, and good in the midst of an imperfect world.

Between Barbieland and the real world, there is so much good, and to the extent that the film has any villain at all, it is patriarchy. Patriarchy claims victims of the Kens, the Barbies, America Ferrera’s mother and secretary for Mattel, and Will Ferrell’s CEO of Mattel, who is not a villain copied from The LEGO Movie as the trailers suggested, but a well-meaning executive who wants to help girls and women while not realizing the ways he’s accepted patriarchal norms.

Ferrera’s third act speech that sets up the climax of the movie may be on-the-nose, but it exhibits the same passion a five-year-old girl has for her make-believe land with Barbies, and as a mom reconnecting with that same childhood passion, I thought the speech worked brilliantly.

Several reviews have commented on how Gosling steals the movie, but honestly, Robbie is just as good and gives him an equally clueless character to play off of. The two of them make for a great duo for a road trip movie that takes hundreds of unexpected turns.

Returning to Kubrick, Gerwig and Baumbach wrote a movie about human progress and relationships where our own inventions (patriarchy instead of HAL) plague us and hinder that progress until we can overcome them. It makes the 2001 framing story all the more fitting, and it shows how we can appreciate that journey through an obelisk and light show or a polarizing doll.

Personal recommendation: A-

The Little Mermaid

Year of release: 2023 Directed by Rob Marshall.             Starring Halle Bailey, Jacob Tremblay, Daveed Diggs, Awkwafina, Jonah Hauer-King, Javier Bardem, and Melissa McCarthy.

When the first teaser for Disney’s live action remake of The Little Mermaid dropped, the soundwaves surrounding it quickly became dominated by racist morons complaining that Ariel was no longer white with red hair. A part of me can’t believes I had to type that sentence in 2023, but here we are. What that toxic discourse covered up was how bad the teaser looked. I’m cynical enough to think Disney would not be above starting such racist bullshit as a marketing ploy, but regardless, the first focus on the film was the casting of Halle Bailey.

For the record, she is phenomenal and probably the best live action Disney princess to date. She’s substantially better than Emma Watson as Belle in the Beauty and the Beast remake, partially because her singing isn’t autotuned into oblivion, and partially because she captures the longing of a teenage mermaid for the unknown human world quite well. I look forward to seeing her in the adaptation of The Color Purple musical in December. It is also very nice to see a Disney princess and mythological creature portrayed as a person of color, and Disney and Rob Marshall deserve credit for her casting.

What Disney does not deserve credit for is the ableist rewriting of Howard Ashman’s lyrics. (Also the straightening of them, but more on that later.) In “Kiss the Girl” Lin-Manuel Miranda provides some “sanitized” words that stand out like a sore thumb, because apparently Disney executives correctly realized it was predatory to kiss a girl who can’t consent, but erroneously decided Ariel couldn’t consent because she can’t speak at that moment.

I’m very sorry to hear that executive at Disney are so out of touch with reality that they are unaware that sign language, gesturing, writing, and other forms of non-verbal communication exist. And that they seem to think that people who cannot speak are broken, inferior beings who can’t fall in love or express that. To make matters worse, Ursula erases Ariel’s memory so she doesn’t realize she needs to share true love’s kiss with Eric before three days or she reverts to a mermaid. For the supposed awareness around consent, that deviation from the original makes Sebastian, Flounder, and Scuttle’s forcing of the romance far more cringeworthy than anything in Ashman’s original lyrics.

As to why that deviation from the original film was added to a movie that mostly adheres to the original slavishly, I don’t know. It might be explained by the bloat that permeates the entire movie. Rob Marshall’s overriding attitude seemed to be “Why do something in two minutes, if you can do it in eight?” The only thing Ursula’s memory erasure does is add extra dialogue making the on-land romance between Ariel and Eric take longer.

At just over two hours, the movie is unquestionably too long. The first hour of it moves along passably, with “Under the Sea” being the one scene that doesn’t look like it was shot by a camera with a black nylon stocking over it. It is the best song in the score, and it deservedly won Menken and Ashman their first Oscar in 1990. Daveed Diggs was a fantastic choice to play Sebastian, and he delivers it beautifully. Marshall’s cutting to a school of dolphins for “down here all the fish is happy” was a bizarre choice, as the emphasis on the word “fish” with the imagery of dolphins took me right out of the song, but Diggs pulled me back in quickly, in spite of some other visual choices on Marshall’s part that make no sense.

Excuse me, but I need to get this out of the way.

THEY CUT THE BEST VERSE OF “POOR UNFORTUNATE SOULS!!!!!!!!” LIKE, WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK WERE THEY THINKING WITH THAT??????

Okay, now on to the moment where the movie really began to derail. Melissa McCarthy is fine as Ursula. She’s no where near as menacing or flamboyantly queer as Pat Carroll’s Sea Witch was, but I really don’t think that’s her fault. Her first two scenes before her big number are almost verbatim quotes of Carroll’s lines, which pales for anyone who enjoyed Carroll’s delivery.

More problematically, Marshall’s odd visual choices really came to a head in “Poor Unfortunate Souls.” When Ursula sings “Now it’s happened once or twice, someone couldn’t pay the price” she shows two merfolk being punished in the animated film. Here she holds up eight skulls of merfolk, which is substantially more than once or twice. The relentlessly dark palette of the film is probably most offensive in this song, with the dark blue being punctuated by bursts of orange, which is so uninspired color-wise that it’s depressing.

Even more problematically, the missing verse is the one about communicating without words and saying women are better silent anyway. Apparently the filmmakers decided a villain giving villainous advice was a problem, so they stripped the villain of some of her most iconic lines, which contribute to “Poor Unfortunate Souls” being the best Disney villain song. (Yes, I will die on that hill. Don’t argue that with me.) The other problem with omitting that verse is that the lyric and dramatic foil that Ashman set up between “Poor Unfortunate Souls” and Ariel’s wish in “Part of Your World” is gone too.

Ariel sings, “Bet you on land they understand, bet they don’t reprimand their daughters.” When Ursula sings, “Yes, on land it’s much preferred for ladies not to say a word, after all, dear, what is idle prattle for?” it not only shows the Sea Witch is subverting Ariel’s dreams while pretending to answer them, but it also forms a dramatic development through the song lyrics. Cutting that was honestly unforgivable.

One of the best aspects of the Disney renaissance was the way almost all the villains resurrected the queer coding of the 1940s and ‘50s. Pat Carroll’s butch, drag queen-inspired Sea Witch, has obvious lesbian undertones, of which McCarthy’s Ursula only has a faint reminiscence. The new revelation that Ursula is King Triton’s sister contributes to the straightening of the character by making her an evil aunt of the protagonist and not the flamboyant outsider she was in the 1989 film. The makeup copies the animated character, so the queerness is still there minimally, but the desire to control and manipulate a young woman is gone along with the missing verse of the villain song. This Ursula is only a power-hungry witch willing to use her niece as a pawn; the predatory and sexual undertones are eradicated.

Releasing The Little Mermaid on the last weekend before Pride Month, with its cuts and alterations to the lyrics of an iconic gay song-writer who died from AIDS was certainly a choice. That his song-writing partner had to write new songs that drastically pale in comparison to the work that largely started the Disney renaissance adds insult to injury.

For the record, I will also die on the hill that Alan Menken has never partnered with a lyricist as great as Howard Ashman. Steven Schwartz came close, but everyone else Menken has worked with is a notable step down. Menken and Miranda have written three new songs for this version of The Little Mermaid. Eric’s solo, “Wild Uncharted Waters,” is fine, even if it garners a deserved eyeroll for its introduction of on-the-nose similarities between Eric and Ariel by making them both rebellious teenagers from their opposite sex parents.

“The Scuttlebutt” is a fifth-rate Hamilton remix and an affront to humanity that is so jarringly different from the rest of the score that it feels like a painful slap in the face reminding us that Ashman died and Miranda does not even have half of his talent.

Ariel has one new solo, “For the First Time,” which makes no freaking sense at all. I am willing to overlook giving Ariel a song after she loses her voice and is supposed to be mute until she breaks Ursula’s necklace, since she can obviously still think. However, the lyrics are all about adapting to life on land, how difficult it is to walk because of gravity, how hard it is to wear a corset, and how uncomfortable shoes are. I’m sorry, but if Ariel still thinks a fork is a dinglehopper and you use it to style your hair, how the hell does she know what gravity, corsets, and shoes are, and how could she be singing about them? It would be as if Eliza Doolittle, after mastering the speech inflections of a British lady, sang a song about attending a ball and how wonderful it was without ever having been to a ball.

“Part of Your World” was an I want song that was largely responsible for launching the Disney renaissance. “Under the Sea” cemented it as a fabulous show-stopper, and “Poor Unfortunate Souls” made a clichéd villain a menacing, three-dimensional character while giving representation to the LGBTQ+ community at the height of AIDS. Nowadays Disney is largely devoid of original ideas, and while their desperate cash grabs usually have enough great material from their source to be watchable, they’re a far cry from the original that many people loved.

For the record, I never loved The Little Mermaid. I adore the score and might argue it’s the best work Menken and Ashman did for Disney—it’s really close between that and Beauty and the Beast—but the absurd happy ending that contradicts Hans Christen Andersen’s tragic fairy tale of longing for unattainable love was a weak point for me as soon as I was aware of it. There was a brief moment in the 2023 Little Mermaid when I thought a quasi-tragic ending might actually occur. (If it had occurred, I’d have written a very different review.) Unfortunately, Disney is afraid to take any risks and do anything that would alter the products they built their name on.

Around half-way through this movie, I felt bad for Halle Bailey. She was cast as a Disney princess, gave it her very, very good all, only to be stuck in a lifeless cash grab that bastardized the best aspects of the original film. I even felt a little bad for Rob Marshall, because most of the lousy creative decisions obviously came from higher up executives.

Ultimately, I was angry and sad to watch an iconic queer-coded character neutered, to watch a famous gay lyricist have his lyrics likewise neutered, and to watch yet another bloated, soulless remake from Disney that neuters the story of a gay author writing about his forbidden love who married a woman leaving him alone. If Disney wants to neuter anything as a force for good, perhaps they could neuter the careers of racist and homophobic fascists like Ron DeSantis and Trump instead of churning out remakes like this.

Personal Recommendation: D

Matilda the Musical

Year of release: 2022.                     Directed by Matthew Warchus.                 Starring Alisha Weir, Emma Thompson, Lashana Lynch, Stephen Graham, and Andrea Riseborough.

The two most important songs in Matilda the Musical are “When I Grow Up” and “My House.” Thankfully, in Matthew Warchus’ adaptation of the stage show he directed, those songs are beautifully filmed and performed, packing the emotional wallop they should.

Unfortunately, other than those two tearjerker moments, the emotional stakes are shockingly low, as this watered down version of Roald Dahl’s book and its musical adaptation receives a functional film adaptation. To be clear, nailing the two aforementioned songs places Matilda the Musical a league ahead of Rob Marshall’s disastrous dismantling of Nine, but several leagues behind Spielberg’s brilliant cinematic re-envisioning of West Side Story.

As to other recent Broadway adaptations, I preferred The Prom and Into the Woods, but Matilda over Les Misérables and obviously Dear Evan Hansen (though in the case of the latter, much of the fault lies with the equally offensive stage show).

I think most readers know that I love musicals and am deeply familiar with many of them. However, I know Matilda the Musical better than most shows, not only having seen it, but also having accompanied and directed the pit for a 2020 community theater production. (FWIW, I also read Dahl’s novel as a child but never saw the 1996 film.)

It’s an overused truism that what works on stage doesn’t work on film, and vice versa, but Warchus’ directing, which brilliantly created Dahl’s world of wonder and terror through a child’s eye on stage, feels sadly unimaginative on film. (It’s much better than Phyllida Lloyd’s attempt at recreating her stage direction of Mamma Mia! in the 2008 film adaptation, but that’s not a high bar.)

For instance, take the opening song, “Miracle.” The vibrant colors of the hospital as parents croon over their newborn infants feels like something out of a Dr. Seuss story, but the Wormwood’s home, Ms. Phelps’ traveling library are not much different. Even the supposedly intimidating school run by the sadistic Miss Trunchbull looks like a drabber version of the same thing. Given Tim Burton’s streak of misfires over the past decade, I won’t say Matilda the Musical would have been better had he directed it, but even at his worst, it would certainly have looked better.

Speaking of Burton and musicals, say what you want about the singing and cutting down of the score, but his Sweeney Todd captured a gothic Victorian world much better than Warchus’ very cheerful, brightly colored palette captures any of Dahl’s world, which is equal parts menace and wonder.

As to the staging of the numbers, there’s no consistency at all. “Miracle” welcomes us to a show about admiring parents as contrasted with the neglect and abuse of Matilda Wormwood at the hands of her parents. Eventually, it breaks into a fantasy performance complete with sequined costumes and microphones, not that different than Roxie’s fantasies in Marshall’s adaptation of Chicago. Then, Matilda’s “I want” song, “Naughty,” takes place as a dance across her home as if it’s happening in her world and not some imaginary fantasy. There is nothing wrong with either approach, but nearly every song shifts from one to the other. It’s sloppy and undermines the poignancy of Tim Minchin’s score (which is very good).

Perhaps Warchus was trying to set up the mix of childhood dreams versus realities that occurs in “When I Grow Up,” which is the heart of the show. As the children leave school after a day of witnessing horrific child abuse (more on that in a moment), they dream of the world as it is and as they know it should be. This is the strongest number in both the stage show and the film, and their naïve dreams of adulthood are effectively moving in their innocence, sense of wonder, and hope of escape.

As to the child abuse itself, the film is rated PG for “exaggerated bullying,” which initially seemed like an odd euphemism to describe the physical and psychological torture of children that Dahl wrote, but it’s really not inaccurate. As Miss Trunchbull, Emma Thompson is strangely miscast, and the sadistic headmistress is so unhinged that it is obvious from the beginning Matilda is going to get the best of her.

I love Emma Thompson and think she is one of the most talented actresses alive. There are several reasons I don’t care for her in this role. First, the role was written for a man in drag on stage, and while I’m not sure that suspension of disbelief would have worked in a film, the lower, darker range for which Trunchbull’s songs were written is lost with Thompson’s mezzo voice. Second, Thompson’s acting coupled with Warchus closeups of her is too subtle for a role that was written to be an eleven in terms of scenery chewing. I think of other similar villains (Jim Carrey’s Count Olaf, Robert Helpmann’s Child Catcher, even Thompson’s Baroness in Cruella), and they all were comical and menacing. The Trunchbull here is just comical.

As to the other villains (Matilda’s parents), Stephen Graham and Andrea Riseborough are largely wasted. They both have solo numbers in the stage show, which were cut from the film. Matilda also has an older brother in the show and novel, whose purpose is to show the blatant favoritism of their parents. He is also cut. All of this makes Matilda’s home life an underdeveloped afterthought that makes the neglect and emotional abuse of her parents seem like a joke. It also makes the antics of “Naughty” seem wholly unwarranted.

The lack of stakes for Matilda makes Dahl’s morbid world of corrupt idiot parents, evil authority figures, kind but frightened teachers, and scared children all shockingly dull. The outcome is never in doubt, even if one is not familiar with the story. To be sure, it’s a powerful story about standing up to the monsters in your life and building a family of love when your blood relations neglect their responsibilities, and the moments of tenderness highlighted in Minchin’s songs still come through, but it disappointingly lacks the emotional wallop that other versions of this story have.

One scene that does pack the emotional punch that it needs to is Lashana Lynch’s rendition of “My House.” As Miss Honey, Matilda’s tender yet timid teacher Lynch is easily the best of the cast, and she is given the most to do, despite her act one solo being cut as well. The casting of her parents makes that mystery obvious way too far in advance, but the “reveal” is still poignant without the surprise.

Regrettably, the filmmakers felt obligated to go for best original song Oscar and wrote a new finale for the movie. First, it takes the focus of the story away from Matilda and shifts who the protagonist is without any setup for such a shift. Second, like most attempts at that Oscar added to musical adaptations, the song is mostly forgettable. Third, the finale of the stage show is perfect, and it ruins that.

It is worth mentioning that this new finale is not the first time Warchus’ directing steals the story away from Matilda. Her act two solo, “Quiet,” is brilliantly sung by Alisha Weir, but editing the Trunchbull’s threats throughout it takes the moment of growth away from Matilda.

I would not deny that the stage version of Matilda the Musical has its flaws, but the energy and emotions packed into that production are some of the most moving and heartfelt, making it my favorite musical centered around children. Sadly, the film remains too much a shadow of that story to bring Dahl’s creation to life the way the musical did on stage.

Personal recommendation: C+

Little Women

Year of Release: 2019      Directed by Greta Gerwig.  Staring Saoirse Ronan, Florence Pugh, Emma Watson, Eliza Scanlen, Laura Dern, Timothée Chalamet, Chris Cooper, Meryl Streep, and Tracy Letts.

One of three scenes from Greta Gerwig’s first film Lady Bird that I think about frequently is the final exchange between Saoirse Ronan’s titular senior and Sister Sarah Joan, the principal of her Catholic high school, when they discuss Lady Bird’s college essay. The nun sees through the rebellious teenager shtick and directly tells Lady Bird that her attention to the minute details of life in Sacramento reveals just how much she loves her home. Via Sister Sarah Joan, Gerwig posits that one way to show love is to pay attention.

There is so much Gerwig pays attention to in Little Women—the relationships between all of the March sisters, the music that Beth plays, Amy’s paintings, the filters and lighting for different timelines, the ink stains on Jo’s hands, the delight of children on discovering a beautiful story. All of this conveys a love of sisterhood, family life, movie making, art and literature, women authors, and above all her characters, her actors, and her audience.

Gerwig loves her audience enough to respect their intelligence. She assumes that most people in 2020 have some familiarity with the source material either through reading the novel or seeing previous film adaptations. Instead of remaking Little Women for it’s fifth silver screen adaptation, she reimagines the story in ways that highlight often overlooked elements from previous adaptations, strengthening the bonds between each of the sisters and giving each one of them their own arc.

She achieves this through her nonlinear telling of Louisa May Alcott’s famous story. This decision has earned her some criticism. To be fair, the reordering of the chronology with frequent flashbacks and crosscutting within the same timelines could be confusing for someone not familiar with the story. However, the bond among all the sisters is strengthened by Gerwig’s presentation, and her lighting and filter choices always make it clear whether we’re in the earlier or later timeline.

The earlier timeline begins with the ball at which Jo (a perfectly cast Saoirse Ronan) meets Laurie (Timothée Chalamet), and it starts seven years before the later timeline that opens the movie. The earlier timeline is always lit with a soft golden hue, contrasted with the lack of filters for the later timeline, suggesting a fond recollection of earlier years, which will serve as inspiration for the later years when Jo writes her novel.

That novel is Little Women, and Gerwig plays up the quasi-autobiographical aspects of Alcott’s novel making it clear that Jo is a stand-in for Alcott. The opening shot of Jo as she stands outside the publishing office ready to stride in to offer her first short story for publication makes clear the film’s celebratory attitude toward women succeeding in male-dominated fields. Considering film directing is another field in which women are woefully underrepresented, Gerwig’s recent Oscar snub for best director is all the more painful.

The published with whom Jo collaborates is Mr. Dashwood (Tracy Letts, an actor Gerwig clearly loves working with), and the exchanges between Letts and Ronan are as delightful as they are different from their scenes in Lady Bird. The scene that changes his mind on the quality of Jo’s writing is wonderful, and that alone makes the quasi-biographical approach worthwhile.

Following this first scene focused on Jo, the film cuts to Amy (Florence Pugh) in Paris with Aunt March (Meryl Streep) when she runs into Laurie for the first time. This juxtaposition is brilliant. First of all, it sets up Amy and Jo as dual protagonists allowing each of them to grow with one another from their more contentious times as children to their full support for one another when they’re older. Secondly, it references Jo’s rejection of Laurie’s proposal while simultaneously foreshadowing Amy and Laurie’s marriage, which is a plot point that often feels like a hurried afterthought in other film adaptations.

The nonlinear approach enables Pugh to play both the younger and older Amy, since her exact age is never specified. It’s wonderful to watch Pugh’s gradual transition from playing cavalier and immature to responsible and supportive, and she is equally believable as both.

The other sisters are introduced immediately after Jo and Amy. It’s easy to miss that Gerwig does that, but it’s a great way of highlighting the unity of the March family. Beth (Eliza Scanlen) is first seen at her piano, her passion and the thing that helps her overcome some of her shyness when she later plays Mr. Lawrence’s (Chris Cooper) piano. The acts of kindness that lead to that scenario are what temporarily extend her life. Meg (Emma Watson) is shown to have become a Marmee herself, even as she used dream of fashion and high society until that dream was replaced by another one, even if it was hard for Jo to accept that.

We meet Marmee (Laura Dern) a little bit later when Laurie takes Meg and Jo home from that first dance and meets the entire family. Dern plays the matriarch with quiet grace and compassion, but she also captures Marmee’s controlled anger and frustration that is often not included in adaptations. Dern’s balancing of emotions enables the four actresses to play off her and the safe home she provides. Gerwig once again shows the importance of a mother’s influence and relationship with a daughter or daughters.

If there’s any particular scene where the nonlinear approach pays off in spades it’s Beth’s scarlet fever and later sickness and death. Gerwig freely cuts back and forth between both illnesses, comparing and contrasting the emotions of Jo and Marmee for the two different outcomes. It is always clear which sickness is onscreen due to the filters, but the pain of losing a loved one and the joy of their recovery are felt so strongly from the way the shots are edited together.

After watching this for a fourth time, the friend with whom I saw it said afterward, “I thought Beth’s death would be easier to watch a second time, but no.” I concurred that the emotions Gerwig captured only become stronger after each viewing. The richness of relationships, joys of success, and pains of loss are all presented with care and precision by Gerwig, and each scene plays out so perfectly that the entire film becomes a celebration of the ways we, and the characters, show and live their love.

 

Personal recommendation: A+

Frozen II

Year of Release: 2019      Directed by Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee.  Voices of Idina Menzel, Kristen Bell, Jonathan Groff, Josh Gad, Sterling K. Brown, Martha Plimpton, and Evan Rachel Wood.

The relationship with a sister is something to be cherished. That was the driving force behind Frozen, and it continues to be so for this originally unplanned sequel. The relationship between Anna and Elsa (Kristen Bell and Idina Menzel reprising their roles) receives more attention here, as the bond between them is once again tested in a journey into an enchanted forest, as fears of change, isolation, and issues of trust threaten to ruin their relationship once again.

If you’re saying, “didn’t they resolve those issues at the end of the first film,” yes, they did. However, since when has anyone just stopped a destructive habit after doing it for a lifetime? The unconditional love between the two sisters remains, and how they navigate threats with that as their foundation is where the sequel places its focus.

I loved Frozen when it came out. I saw it back to back days in the theater. At the time, I admitted that the secret villain twist was obviously an afterthought that didn’t work at all, but I thought everything else was fantastic, except for a couple clunker songs such as “Fixer Upper” and “Reindeer(s) Are Better Than People.” It was frustrating when Disney put all their promotions toward “Let It Go” as the best song, when it clearly was (and is) “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?”—a song about one sister begging the other for a relationship, which is the heart of the film. I can’t even hear the first notes of it without tearing up.

Some of the weaknesses have become more noticeable over time. I still enjoy Frozen immensely, although not quite as much as I originally did.

I love and appreciate this sequel more than I ever cared for the first one. The score is more uniformly excellent with fewer standout numbers, but a higher caliber of songs overall. None of them are as good as “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?” But almost all are on par with “For the First Time in Forever” and “Let It Go.” I really appreciated the way the songs set up one another and connect to the main themes of isolation and trust in the midst of life’s changes.

“All is Found” is a lullaby that sets the mood for the film that follows, promising a story of mystery and fantasy that also has a sense of tenderness in the midst of fear. “Some Things Never Change” functions similarly to “For the First Time in Forever,” but it introduces several subplots and grounds the characters in what’s most important to get them through the subsequent journey in which things will obviously change.

Elsa’s big “I want” song this time is “Into the Unknown,” which seems to be where Disney is (correctly) placing its Oscar hopes. For my money, it’s a stronger song than “Let It Go,” not only musically, but also for being the instigation of the plot and for having a satisfying dramatic answer in “Show Yourself,” which occurs in the second act of the film. Idina Menzel once again belts the demanding range with authority, transitioning from the insecurity of the verse to the confidence of the chorus.

“When I Am Older” continues the carefree shuffle from “In Summer” into another Olaf solo about learning to make sense of the world, while searching for Samantha, even if you don’t know anyone named Samantha. Josh Gad is every bit as funny as he was in the first film, and his new song here is at least as good. Olaf’s philosophical crisis is not only great comic relief, but ties into the plot nicely as well.

Kristoff (Jonathan Groff, returning) gets a longer solo than “Reindeers Are Better Than People” with “Lost in the Woods,” which is the power ballad ending the first act of the film instead of “Let It Go.” This is a brilliant idea on several levels. For most of the film the characters are literally lost in the woods and struggling to prevent themselves from becoming lost emotionally from one another. Taking the focus briefly away from the sisters appropriately heightens the conflict at the narrative center of the movie.

Anna has her own solo this time as well. Strongly emphasizing the heart of both this film and its predecessor is the relationship of the two sisters, it follows both of Elsa’s solos, indicating she cannot complete her journey without the aid of her sister. “The Next Right Thing” is also a powerful testament to finding your way out of depression and helplessness even when it doesn’t seem possible. Kristen Bell certainly does not have the voice Menzel does, but the intimacy and tenderness of her performance is a haunting complement to the virtuosity of Elsa’s songs.

As I said, “Into the Unknown” is the catalyst that sets the plot in motion. After Elsa hears a voice reminding her of her mother, she accidentally wakes up the four spirits of enchanted forest (earth, wind, fire, and water), endangering the lives of the people of Arendelle. She, Anna, Kristoff, Sven, and Olaf set off to the forest to find out what has upset the spirits and appease them before it’s too late. The main plot points are fairly obvious well in advance, but that plot is primarily a backdrop for the relationship between Anna and Elsa, which takes forefront here more powerfully than the first film.

Similar to Shakespeare’s As You Like It, the sins of the proper, civilized court are exposed and atoned for in the wild fantasy of the woods. Anyone who has seen any recent family films will probably be able to guess who committed the unatoned for sin, but once again, that’s not the main focus of this movie. The bond between sisters and friends forms the film’s center, and when people we trust betray us, monsters chase us, or any unknown confronts us, it’s those bonds that hopefully remain constant, and they form the roots from which we grow.

In the midst of his philosophical musings, Olaf asks if the enchanted forest will transform them. He then wonders what a transformation is. There’s a small one just after that when Elsa confronts the fire spirit with calmness and acceptance, making what was first seen as a monster into a cute harmless lizard. It’s a small act of kindness, which in turn foreshadows greater acts of compassion and love that allow the fears of the unknown to be a source of transformation and not destruction.

 

Personal recommendation: A-