This post contains spoilers for the movie Frozen.

I wanted to like Frozen. Let me clarify: I don’t think Frozen is a bad movie. I loved both aspects I expected to tolerate: Olaf and the music. The characters and relationships were fun and relatable. So, why was Frozen disappointing? I had expectations that were far from met. I saw potential that was squandered.

Love Between Sisters

Finding one’s prince is an overdone Disney trope. A movie about sisterly love felt fresh and unique. To me, this movie failed to deliver on that message. The character growth I wanted to see:

1. Elsa overcomes her fear of her power by embracing her love for Anna. I wanted to see her love for Anna thaw her frozen heart.
2. Anna demonstrates that the love from her sister is more important to her than the love from any ‘prince charming.’

The ending, the grand climax of this movie, does not satisfy either of these moments of character growth.

Throughout the entire movie, Anna proves her love for Elsa. Through all the years of their separation, she tries to reach out to Elsa. She’s there for Elsa when their parents die. She undergoes an epic quest up a mountain just to prove she loves Elsa. Anna doesn’t need to prove her love. It’s already proven. Further demonstration of her love for Elsa is not character growth. Then, in the grand climax, Anna performs an act of true love to save Elsa. WOW. What Anna really needs is love FROM her sister, not FOR her sister.

Anna and Elsa became estranged because Elsa let her fear of her powers overshadow her love for Anna. She prioritized protecting Anna from her power over showing Anna her love. This is Elsa’s main character flaw that drives the conflict. It made Anna so desperate for love that she was easy prey for a prince pretending to love her. I wanted Elsa to demonstrate the sisterly love that Anna needed all along. I wanted Elsa to step up as a big sister, and overcome her fear for the sake of her younger sibling. Instead, her ‘character growth’ moment is being happy that Anna isn’t dead.

I wanted some grand final gesture from Elsa that demonstrates her love for Anna surpasses her fear of her powers. If only an act of true love could save Anna, it should have been an act of true love FOR her, not FROM her. Perhaps the male love interests try to save her. They think their love will break the spell, but their attempts fail. Thus, it’s up to Elsa. That is Elsa’s crucible. Only when Elsa has the courage to overcome her fear and perform an act of true love for Anna, only then is Anna saved, and only then is Elsa’s frozen heart thawed. Then, the world thaws as she embraces Anna after saving her life.

Let It Go

I expected to like the soundtrack of Frozen about as much as I liked that of Tangled, but from the moment the first song, Frozen Heart, began, I knew that this movie’s soundtrack was superior. I absolutely adore the music of Frozen. I’ve loved Disney music since I was a little girl. Unfortunately, before seeing Frozen, I’d become disenchanted. Frozen was a nostalgic reawakening, a reminder of the love I have for Disney music.

I love almost every song in Frozen except one, and it is the quintessential Frozen song. Let It Go. I hate Let It Go. Of course, hearing it a million zillion times doesn’t help, but it bothered me since the first time I heard it. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a reason Let It Go is so popular. The song is beautifully composed, the lyrics are great, and the singing is glorious. Even the intended message is important: Don’t let anything stop you from being yourself.

The reason I hate the song is entirely personal, but I have been unable to overcome my bias. I don’t hear ‘Let it go’, I hear ‘Screw you all.’ To me, the song glorifies selfish, irresponsible, and inconsiderate behavior. The message I hear when this song plays is not “be yourself no matter what others think”, it’s “do whatever you want without regard for others.”

Sure, you should be allowed to express your super magic ice witch powers, especially if you’ve been repressing them your whole life, but not at the expense of creating a never-ending nightmare winter for everyone else in the kingdom. Even the last lyrics are blatantly selfish: “Let the storm rage on. The cold never bothered me anyway.”

Those Stupid Trolls

And I gotta say, the trolls serve no purpose. Their designs aren’t exciting. They all look essentially the same. Their role could just as easily have been served by an old witch living in the woods. Their song was also the most forgettable in the soundtrack. The theme of “love brings out the best in people” should have been conveyed in another way.