For the vast majority of their existence as a company, Disney has sent sequels straight to home video, usually in some off-colored VHS package you’d find facedown at the discount bin in some Walmart or other. Prior to Ralph Wrecks the Internet, the only Disney sequel that ended up in an actual theater was 1990’s The Rescuers Down Under. Sequelitis simply was not the corporate mandate of the time. Not in the 40’s Golden Era or the 90’s Renaissance. That one exception aside, Disney Animation has long been in the original content game (debates about how original their Disney Princess collection actually is aside) but with the one-two punch of Ralph deus and Frozen II, expect to get a lot more sequels to Disney’s massive moneymaking franchises in the coming future. Forget Prince Charming, it’s time to bow down to King IP. Bob Iger’s mandate is cold hard cash, hand over foot. Thankfully, if the sequels are anything like Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee’s Frozen II, franchise-thirsty fans from Virginia to Vietnam are probably all in decent-enough hands showing up in droves to shell out to their Disney overlords.

A suiting continuation of events from the first Frozen, this six-years-in-the-making follow-up reunites Elsa, Anna, Kristoff, Olaf, and reindeer Sven with the veteran voice cast Idina Menzel, Kristen Bell, Jonathan Groff, Josh Gad, and Santino Fontana all returning behind the mic. While there was some hubbub early on about Elsa’s getting a girlfriend to play a significant role in the film, any such claims are purely untrue, as the Disney property refuses to touch Elsa’s sexuality with a ten-foot hockey stick. Which feels weird since the plot is driven by a sing-song female voice calling out to Elsa, drawing her away from the known to pursue something she knows feels right but cannot logically explain.

If that’s not a masked allusion to Elsa’s particular sexual predilections, I don’t know what is. But Disney bows out of anything with a whiff of controversy, instead redirecting the movie to be about lineage and communities coming together, with Elsa once again left out in the cold in any and all romantic pursuits and kind of all the more a tragic character for it. Disney has, in turn, made Elsa into a gorgeous incel; a closed-loop of unfulfilled desire who soaks up the sister cuddles as an alternative next best thing. Which wouldn’t be problematic were not the driving force of the narrative centered around Elsa’s attention being constantly redirected towards this siren call and her ensuing desire to explore beyond the known boundaries. The subtext is basically turned to pure text, maybe to sneak it under the nose of Ohio church-goers ready to throw up picket signs to “defend” their children against heinous representation of the otherwise-sexually inclined, but it still feels half-hearted and weak. A dog whistle that should have been a bull horn.

Leaving Arendelle with the crew intact, Elsa and Anna both go on a personal journey through their own family history by venturing north to a magical land, learning more about their parents and grandparents along the way, and having to face a difficult legacy that is (quite plainly) themed around the deceit and evils of American colonization. Frozen II is unafraid to go to darker territory, with the overall tone being much less sunny and upbeat than its predecessor, and is the better for it. Even the songs warble in a more minor key, with none quite living up to the mega-hit sensation of “Let It Go”, the cutesy ballad “Do You Wanna Build a Snowman” or even the tongue-in-cheek “In Summer”. The songs, for the most part, are forgettable musical theater-y numbers and without Googling, I’d be hard pressed to remember a single song title, much less a full lyric. That said, I’m not the target demo for these kinds of songs so I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if any which one of them started charting on Billboard.

Whereas Frozen shifted back and forth between silly and serious, Frozen II contains much fewer laughs and can be a seriously icy affair with considerable stakes that might throw the wee ones in the audience for a loop. I don’t want to downplay how somber this can be, though when everything comes full circle, none of the kiddos ought to go home anticipating nightmares. It is Disney after all, just a bit darker than they’ve been in a while, and it’s good to seem them tap back into those iconic Bambi mom sensibilities once more.

What else to say about Frozen II? Frankly, it’s a movie that largely speaks for itself. A too-big-to-fail animated venture just waiting to suckle the teet of the international box office, and unwilling to make the cultural statement many had (perhaps unfairly) foisted upon it. The animation is remarkable, the hi-tech improvements most notable in the admirably-rendered snowy landscape and sour seas, with Disney’s considerable resources put to the test perfecting each and every image. The problem remains that the biggest push here is not really about quality but quantity, and though Frozen II sure may look like a million bucks the question remains: can it make a billion?

CONCLUSION: The sure-to-be-popular Disney sequel checks pretty much all the boxes a good sequel should, going in a darker (though still highly risk-averse) direction in a follow-up that cannot really live up to its predecessor.