November 19, 2017 2 min to read

Olaf's Frozen Adventure

I want the name and phone numbers of everyone who worked on this movie so I can ask them if they've ever seen a cartoon, or better yet a child before.

by Zach Saul

I realize there are things in the world much more worthy of my anger and attention, but I’d like to remind everyone reading this; that nobody forced you to click on this review. You saw a score of 7 and clicked anyway, so you knew what you were getting yourself into. On Wednesday night, myself, a very cranky group of four year olds, and a few work colleagues endured the worst 22 minutes I’ve spent in a movie theatre this decade.

A group of executives somewhere in California sat together in a room probably blazed out of their minds, and thought a good plot for a Pixar “featurette” would include a snowman crying over a piece of lost gingerbread, and a door to door “tradition drive”. Everything about this short is almost comically unimaginative, from the visuals, to the lazy narrative, to the curse preventing someone from having holiday traditions. To make matters worse - in the short each character Olaf meets sings him a different terrible musical number. Each number prompted me to have different Vietnam-style flashback to a mediocre karaoke song I’ve heard at a loud bar in the past month.

Despite what most overbearing adults think - it doesn’t take a whole lot to engage children, and Its not necessary to talk down to them. Kids will have an easier time engaging if things are made simple, but their more aware of being pandered to then you might think, and shorts like Olaf’s Frozen Adventure take rigid moral imperatives kids learn in school about Christmas, and traditions and shove them down their throat without so much as a warning that “the plane is, in fact….coming”. Did i mention the characters all look exactly like Barbies? I’ll allow these photos to speak for themselves:

Some of the more talented animators on earth are responsible for making this abomination and that’s why it’s so disappointing to me that a group of well paid and qualified animators pissed that talent away - and instead chose to make a twenty two minute piece of nonsense about a snowman who makes fart jokes on a quest to collect Holiday traditions.

Our youth deserve better. John Lassater who started Pixar - despite his personal transgressions - is one of the greatest animators who ever lived, and started a studio that believed in substantive storytelling and characters with dynamic emotional ranges. He is sitting somewhere quieting an uncontrollable rage that this was shoved in front of “Coco” a really cool new Pixar project. Olaf’s Frozen Adventure reeks of a group of employees uninspired, possibly being held hostage, and working for nothing besides an extra paycheck. Apparently - in Mexico people hated the short so much that several theatres refused to show it after complaints and after watching it I really wish the American chains had the testicular fortitude to follow suit.

(Animation nerds should look up “Lady and the Lamp” a very cool pencil drawn animated short Lassater drew in college.)