CK's Cartoon Corner

[Cmdr_King]

Brave

...

So this rewatch, unlike most which are just me going "I totally want to jabber about this thing", was inspired by conversation.  I found I was having an uncommonly low opinion of the movie.

...

This rewatch has only lowered my opinion.

So when you're basing your movie on a relationship, that is, of two distinct characters resolving differences and coming to a new understanding and sense of togetherness and stuff, as an audience I need to feel that both characters have a valid viewpoint.  Otherwise, when they compromise and come to a middle ground in the end, it doesn't ring true.  This is basically what I was talking about in Inside Out; the movie centered too much on the protagonist such that her foil wasn't presented as sympathetically as she needed to be.

So for this rewatch I figured something like this is why I remembered not really clicking with Merida and Elinor's relationship (in a movie where the Mother/Daughter dynamic is kinda the point).  And it was.

But what I didn't tune into the first time around is the degree this happens.  Elinor isn't just presented too much from Merida's viewpoint, she's... outright abusive.  Like, not just tyrannical.  A lot of their interaction int eh early going is Elinor as a tutor, which is fine.  But a princess must be perfect?  A princess must wear an outfit she demonstrably cannot move or breathe in?  ANd everything else that says basically "a princess must be insufferably feminine and without a will of her own"?  Yeah.  Abuse.  I can only read it that way.  Sorry.

and where the last Pixar movie was pretty good about having moments where our maligned non-focus main character got to show some positive traits and win the focus character over, in this one we're... apparently supposed to conclude that Merida was being selfish and was the one mostly in the wrong?  No.  Sorry.

So yeah the core dynamic of the movie is just a complete no sell for me.  We can intellectualize this as Elinor trying to teach power through femininity as it were, but that's not how it's presented.  She kinda sorta models it, but there's two main flaws here.  a) she never makes any visible attempt in the movie to reason with Merida over it, to explain why she should know these things.  They're just a pile of duties and if any of them are done even the slightest bit wrong Merida will have caused the downfall of her entire civilization.  b) Merida is generally presented with a very modern sensibility, and since the movie is heavily framed from her point of view the (highly anachronistic) medieval setting and the realities thereof are things that only exist in the abstract.  They don't make sense in this movie despite nominally taking place during them (probably).  So yeah.  A desperate act stemming from a lifetime of abuse isn't the crime the movie frames it as I don't think.

When we take all that away there's... not really a lot of movie left.  Some Scottish Hijnks.  THey're.. there.  And the triplets.  Scottish Huey, Dewy, and Louis!  They can stay.  I do like how the mystical elements are omnipresent but have a very light touch.

Rating- 4/10.  Yeah I dunno.  Um... I can't say it's hard to watch really.  Moves at a fine pace.  But yeah the beginning stuff is very distracting now.

[SnowFire]

Apropos of nothing, I remember being in a Borders ages ago (back when such entities still roamed the Earth) and seeing some collection of Teen Titans, the comic book (specifically older Teen Titans stuff, not newer stuff...  this was in 2006, and I think the comics were from the 70s or early 80s?).  I recalled liking the few episodes of TT the Cartoon Network show I randomly watched, so why not give it a look?  It even came with a forward explaining a bit of the history and just how awesome this one old plotline they were collecting was, and how they'd built toward it and re-introduced old characters and this is gonna be awesome blah blah blah.  I think the plotline was something along the lines of Raven's dad invades New York City or something and Raven must decide her TRUE LOYALTIES blah blah blah?!

It was awful.  Okay I didn't read all of it but the writing sucked and I'm not sure what drugs they were on that caused them to think in the forward that their "connections" to other comics was in any way good or made sense.  Like, they literally have this other character who'd apparently been written out or removed from the cast earlier walk up to their door and say "Hi I'm back, I think you're going to need me!" as their big reunion thing.  All the elegance of "hey our friend who left the D&D group is visiting this week, let's put their character back in."  Anyway, yeah, writing was bad, plot appeared to proceed in the most hackneyed way possible, art was awful, etc.

It left me quite impressed at the writers of Teen Titans the TV series, to have made something pretty cool from such dreck to be based off of!

[Grefter]

The "classic" Teen Titans stuff is really the 80s stuff.  Most thing I am aware of it is that with a bit of distance, it is a run that has a few okay bits but is mostly just a "Me To!" of X-Men without the build up and earning of it or singular vision that the Claremont nearly solo era or even after stuff got broken up and shared with Nocenti and the like.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Not liking the Elinor/Merida relationship is really weird but yeah I wouldn't like the movie either if I agreed! You're wrong about a bunch of things, though.


I'm not sure where you got the idea that Merida was framed as mostly in the wrong. Recall that (a) she totally gets her way about marrying against her will, which was the single biggest wedge issue between them, and (b) the last scene in the movie is Elinor and Merida riding horses together which shows that on some level Merida has won her mother over to her way of thinking on other things, too. Not to mention how much fun they have catching fish together and other "unladylike" activities. The only way that Merida is framed as "more wrong" than her mother is uh the part where she causes her mother to be cursed which well duh, otherwise the audience is very much supposed to sympathise with Merida more. Your argument would make sense if Merida ended up bending to her mother's will on all things at the end of the movie. If this was some weird sexist morality story about how Merida was wrong and needed to learn to be more ladylike/submissive/lack free will then it would not have these scenes, nor the ending it did.

You can call the Elinor/Merida relationship "abusive" all you want but you're living some pie-in-the-sky fantasy land if you don't realise that there are plenty parent/child relationships which fall awfully close to this one. Do I think Elinor is partially in the wrong because she treats Merida like a child and doesn't properly impress on her with words and logic the reasons why she should be better-behaved? Absolutely, but that's the point. You remember that scene where Elinor practices talking to Merida (and vice versa) in a reasoned way? The point being she never actually talks to Merida this way? The movie certainly wasn't unaware of the problems with Elinor and Merida had in communicating and relating to each other. Most of the things Elinor asks Merida to do are very reasonable in-setting even if Merida (and a 21st century audience) objects to them, i.e. the "perfect" behaviour and wearing the objectifying and highly uncomfortable courtship clothes.


Also, side-note, having watched both movies pretty recently, maaan Elinor has nothing on Triton as far as being an abusive parent in Disney/Pixar movies goes.

[SnowFire]

I somehow missed CK's post on Brave (didn't click next page), but hey Elf answered that one anyway.  Suffice to say that Elinor is an extremely understanding mother by contemporary standards and positively middle of the road by modern ones, so I'm not seeing it as abusive here either.  I mostly wanted to get mad at Merida in that movie, which I imagine was the intended result for the adults watching, just as getting mad at the parent is the intended result for kids, and then the result is everybody hugs at the end and yay.

I'm not a super-huge fan because I think the intended age group is ultimately still the 6-12 crowd that just happens to be pretty watchable as an adult.  So I like it as a children's movie but wouldn't exactly seek it out for obvious reasons unless I was looking for something to watch with kids.  (I wouldn't complain if Pixar did Scotland: The PBS unhappy srs bizness relationship drama some day, though.  I did watch some of "Outlander" which is closer to what I was looking for, albeit with more mommy porn!  Ah well, can't win 'em all.)

[Cmdr_King]

Obviously all, or at least the vast majority, of those things are true.  It just doesn't matter.  Comes down to what I'm actually assessing these things on.  At the most basic, I'm taking my knowledge and instinct for how the story expects me to react and comparing it to what I actually feel watching it.  I don't usually abstract things out to that level (it's more just sorta writing down whatever actual thoughts I remember having as I watched, preferably about a day after the fact so I can properly sort which ones were lasting impressions and which were my mind wandering), but I typically don't have to think about it, it's just how I end up writing.

But it's the only way I can really explain my issue with Brave on this rewatch.  Because of the sort of story Brave is, regardless of the details the story will end with a reconciliation between Merida and Elinor.  And at the story level, this means for me to be invested in that story I need to want them to reconcile.  But I don't.  A lot of this comes down to framing; we're looking at events through Merida's perspective, and she only sees the worst of her mother in the first half of the film.  Even though we have scenes Merida isn't in, all we really get from them is "Elinor feels kinda/really bad about the terrible thing she just did" which... uh, let's say is not helping.  We spend a lot of the movie with a Worst Parts version of parenting, and then later in the movie we just have them... get along because... reasons.  Because everyone feels really guilty so they have to get along to feel less guilty.  We get exactly one scene of good parenting to try and win us over beyond this but I'm not willing to grant them that at an emotional level.  Intellectually, yes, of COURSE Merida is really biased and emphasizing the negative, she's like 16, but we don't get to see the other side in a way that makes me sympathetic to her.  And without that sympathy for both sides in the relationship I'm not really invested in that entire part of the movie.

[The Duck]

Re: Inside Out
I disagree with your interpretation on Sadness. I don't think she was despicable, more bumbling and annoying and definitely never malicious. I think she's more misunderstood and no one knows what her role is. That's the whole point. That may be due to a protagonist centered morality, but that's a really weird criticism to levy at a movie about a character's internal emotional state, especially since she's a kid. When you're young, sadness is a negative thing that happens when you're upset and it is worsened by the fact that it's embarrassing to show outward signs of sadness (like crying in school).

There's a remarkable moment when Riley's mom says "throughout the move, you've stayed our happy girl... if we could keep smiling, it'll be a big help." This is a well meaning sentiment but it has unintended consequences. It puts pressure on Riley to remain positive and happy and implicitly sends a message that being sad is a bad thing. It is any wonder that a protagonist centered morality puts these valuations on Joy and Sadness when her own parents frame it this way?

A similar sentiment is in Moaning Lisa in the Simpsons. Lisa is sad for the entire episode and Marge tells her to smile. Both Inside Out and that episode come to the same conclusion that it is okay to be sad and that parents will support you ("Lisa, I apologize to you, I was wrong, I take it all back. Always be yourself. If you want to be sad, honey, be sad. We’ll ride it out with you. And when you get finished feeling sad, we’ll still be there"). We are told by our parents to "be positive" and "smile." This is a message echoed by broader society, especially in the west, where the idealized affective state is one of joy/happiness. On the other hand, sadness is stigmatized. One of the main points was finding out the utility of Sadness, both internally and externally.

I also don't think Sadness as Depression makes much sense. Depression isn't necessarily extreme sadness (although it can be). When Riley is depressed, she derives no pleasure or happiness from things she once loved, like her friends, being a goofball, or hockey. If anything, depression in this case is best represented by a lack of affect at all, positive or negative, and that dovetails well with the fact that Joy and Sadness go missing from the control center. That's when Riley is the least reactive and just lies in bed. I actually think the movie does quite well here in depicting depression.

I can kind of see where you're coming from but I didn't see any of what you've said as a problem and I didn't think the movie demonized Sadness as much as you thought. Beyond learning about the utility of sadness and how growing up involves integrating a blend of complex emotions, my reading of the film was a lot about the importance of openness of communication and learning to understand oneself, so I didn't see an adversarial bent here.

I also agree with NEB on Brave.

[Cmdr_King]

I also don't think Sadness as Depression makes much sense. Depression isn't necessarily extreme sadness (although it can be). When Riley is depressed, she derives no pleasure or happiness from things she once loved, like her friends, being a goofball, or hockey. If anything, depression in this case is best represented by a lack of affect at all, positive or negative, and that dovetails well with the fact that Joy and Sadness go missing from the control center. That's when Riley is the least reactive and just lies in bed. I actually think the movie does quite well here in depicting depression.

I can kind of see where you're coming from but I didn't see any of what you've said as a problem and I didn't think the movie demonized Sadness as much as you thought. Beyond learning about the utility of sadness and how growing up involves integrating a blend of complex emotions, my reading of the film was a lot about the importance of openness of communication and learning to understand oneself, so I didn't see an adversarial bent here.

I had the same thought, but I think it's poor wording on my part.  It's closer to... Sadness as portrayed in the first half of the movie was severely dysfunctional, and was inevitably going to lead to depression regardless of how the other emotions reacted to her.  An anchor that made her swirled around and around until Riley shut down as she ultimately does in the film.  And, y'know, of course Sadness was dysfunctional, considering how everyone reacted to her, but it came across as a self-reinforcing thing rather than something stemming from a mistake by the rest of the emotions.

Though really in Inside Out's cases it's more that when a film has such a huge gap between expected response ('poor Sadness she just wants to help and be acknowledged!') and actual response ('Good lord Joy is right Sadness, you go stand in that corner before you break everything!') I put more thinking than the film can actually stand up to into analyzing why that is.

[Cmdr_King]

Young Justice

Usually these sorts of shows are either a) awesome or b) uneven.  Young Justice presents us a new overall quality to assign our superhero action shows, muddled.  From start to finish, this season has a very consistent feel of trying to do things that play against its strengths and weaken what the show could have been.

Unlike a lot of things I cover, Young Justice actually has a very strong start; the first four or so episodes, where we're establishing the team, introducing the core party members, and sowing the seeds for long term storylines are actually very good.  Superboy's background, the forces behind his creators (Cadmus), watching our heroes learn about one another and gel as a team, these things are established early as places the show intends to explore and does an excellent job of getting you pumped up for what's coming.

At which point the show... just keeps adding more.  More storylines, bigger and bigger coalitions of villains behind them, ever more interaction with greater numbers of Justice League members and adding (or teasing) new teen heroes to the team.  I get the impression the second season only doubles down on this trait to boot.  And I'm kinda still sorting out where the show got the idea that it should be the grand DC Universe tour.  The best work on the show was always the character focus episodes, so I'm confused that the creators seemed to miss this.  The sheer volume of villains, which includes something approximating every single villain in the DCU working for the seven members of the Supervillain Illuminati really detracts from the whole thing as well, because the Light as a group very rarely act in concert, but no one member of the Light steps up to have the presence of a Main Villain, end result being the Vandal Savage has to exposition his villainous villainous plan in the last episode.

Basically the show seems to have known it was a cross section of the DCAU Justice League and Teen Titans, and so decided to somehow take aspects of both shows into itself.  But inexplicably picked all the ones that didn't make sense for a new show in its own continuity.

When the show does buckle down and put its focus where it should, it remains very good.  Our five main characters (Artemis is presented as a main character but... honestly she's not, she just doesn't get to hold down an episode and is always second fiddle to either Robin or Cheshire, one of the villains!) have a reasonable group dynamic and their trials and flaws are presented well.  It's all the other crap that stops episodes from being about them that holds it back.  Actually let's wrap up.

Weakest Episode- Failsafe.  I get the intent.  It's a clever episode idea.  But they manage to hit the exact... what's the opposite of a sweet spot?  Episode manages to shoot straight between the gap of coming off as incredibly fake (sorry, no force IN THE DCU can disintegrate Superman in a single shot) but never getting the audience invested in the real danger to the team.  Even knowing the twist going in it comes across as flimsy and lacks dramatic weight where it should be.. pretty disturbing.

Hooooweeeverrrrrr.

Best Episode- Disordered.  Seeing the team struggle through the aftermath of that is handled very well.  Superboy and his one-shot adventure with the Forever Planeteers SEEMS like it should add on to the pile of "yet another irrelevant cameo" but it actually works as intended for once; they give one of our established characters an in to fight a new set of villains and he gets a chance to save the day because they don't know how to handle him.  And of course the rest of the team actually having counselling sessions is kinda cool.

I will say though that they managed to make one character I'd never heard of, Klarion, pretty fun.  I keep thinking he's voiced by Vic Mignonga though, which apparently isn't true.  Weird.

Grade- 6/10.  Waffled between this and a 7, but having more time to sit on it has made the weaknesses stand out more than the strengths, so there it is.

[Cmdr_King]

Superman: The Animated Series (Volume 1)

Hello again D.. wait. 

oh?  Good, good.

Hello again DCAU!  Previously, we saw the far end of the continuity.  Today we have the formative element of that continuity, the earliest bits of Superman.  The differences in approach between this and Batman are obvious from the outset, and takes a lot of clear lessons from the third season of that show (or were they concurrent?  Eh, either way).  Superman actually starts with the origin story, something that is revealed quite a ways into the first season of Batman.  Hell, the only thing that makes it obvious the first episode of Batman is the first episode is the "I am the Night!" speech.  Episode one of Superman meanwhile has toddler Kal-El.

Wait, let's move on.

But honestly my first inclination is just to talk about the historical relevance of the show because it just feels sorta dated mostly.  In much the same way the Last Son of Krypton three-parter lays most of the seeds for basically the whole show (Supes' relationships with Brainiac, Luthor, and if I'm not mistaken the first hints of Apokoliptian influence on earth are all established out of the gate), so this show contains most of the most important threads that were ultimately weaved into Justice League.  Batman might be the cover boy, but it's Superman who's at the heart of DC, and his rogues and plots are the ones that can carry a full Justice League. 

Just as a show unto itself it's... quite watchable, but only occasionally brilliant.  And really.

Best Episode- The Main Man (Part One).  I remember watching the show in first run (which would be about 13 year old CK) and thinking it was kinda funny.  As an adult with many dozens if not hundreds of hours of super hero action to compare it to, the sheer outlandishness of Lobo stands out so much more.  And it's amazing.  The fact they were able to render something so accurate to the comics Lobo in a kids show is noteworthy as well; you can feel Brad Garret timing the REAL profanity so it was juuuusssttt off-screen.

But while the show does get a smidge better as it goes ('Volume 1' contains what the wikis tell me is actually all of Season 1 plus five episodes from season 2, and four of the five season 2 episodes are just palpably better than most of season 1), on the whole most of it fails to rise above kinda entertaining.  Granted on the other hand I'm having trouble singling out a weakest episode.

Weakest Episode- Probably the Promethean.  While timing hurt here, I actually fell asleep the first time through and had to watch it again.  And almost fell asleep that time.  It's not THAT bad but it's just not a terribly exciting concept.  Random alien thingie lands on earth, tries to eat heat.  We freeze it.  The end.

But that would rate, like, a 4 if I were doing individual ratings for episode by my usual scale.  Nothing really bad crops up, and very few episodes don't offer at least something.  Show just kinda feels aged.

Grade- 6/10.

[AndrewRogue]

Weakest Episode- Divide and Conquer.  I don't even remember who the villain is in this game and it so doesn't matter because Cyborg getting into a pissy fit with Robin and leaving the team in Episode Fucking 1 is amazingly stupid.  Like, THAT'S the first impression you want me to take from this show?  The cast is a bunch of self important cry babies who fight among themselves constantly?  In a super hero team show?  The fuck.

i swear, this is the most baffling first episode in anything ever. Took me forever to figure out that it was actually, indeed, the first episode.

[Cmdr_King]

I legit checked the episode list insert and online to be sure it wasn't some sort of printing error in the discs.

[DjinnAndTonic]

If I recall correctly the first episode isn't actually the first broadcast episode. Some execs had intended what is now the third episode to be the first but it was deemed "not a good intro" and so they aired these out of order. I'm not sure which is the actual first episode anymore but apparently someone up top shares your sentiment that the first episodes do a poor job of being first episodes.

[Cmdr_King]

Final Exam, the first appearance of Jinx, Mammoth, and Gizmo.  While better than Divide and Conquer to be sure, it shares some of the same problems and focuses too much on "our heroes don't really get along".  I get they wanted to have the team not start off perfectly in sync of course, but it's multiple episodes in before we even get a sense of why these five even ARE a team.

[Grefter]

I am shocked to hear about DC releasing a Justice League product to a new audience that focusses excessively on internal team conflict without spending any time actually building up any team dynamics.

[Cmdr_King]

Remember though, Teen Titans was concurrent with DCAU Justice League.  There is a point of comparison for expecting better.

[Hunter Sopko]

Still a better start than Clerks: The Animated Series got.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Final Exam, the first appearance of Jinx, Mammoth, and Gizmo.  While better than Divide and Conquer to be sure, it shares some of the same problems and focuses too much on "our heroes don't really get along".  I get they wanted to have the team not start off perfectly in sync of course, but it's multiple episodes in before we even get a sense of why these five even ARE a team.

I always kind of took that to be the point. The literal last episode of the show is their origin story. That's the big surprise ending is how they ended up together.

[Excal]

I think the argument is less that you need to give the origins in the first episode.  I mean, Batman doesn't bother to start with an origins episode.  It's more that the early episodes make it feel like these are not folks who should be working together.  That having them split up and work solo or work with other people would be preferable and more enjoyable for the characters than being in the Teen Titans.

Now, this isn't to say that you can't have teams that clearly do not work well together.  I mean, Suicide Squad is a great take on that concept.  But in that case, you need to explain early on why they're working together in spite of that being a bad idea.

[Cmdr_King]

That.

Additionally, in those first few episodes I feel like the team would even be more successful as solo acts at that point.  Like, they spend so much time not getting along that if they just ran in, did their thing, then went their separate ways it'd get more done.  This again changes as the team comes together during their focus episodes, but it's a bad, bad start.  THAT SAID I definitely liked the season after that point and do plan on covering more as I have opportunity to pick more seasons up.

[Cmdr_King]

Planet Hulk

This feels like the equivalent of All-Star Superman.  At least for the Savage Hulk (HULK SMASH, rather than the myriad different personalities that define the comics runs), this feels like the truest and most distilled story you could tell about that character.  Interestingly, it's only by creating a new setting for the character and actually REMOVING one of the core elements of the books (that he's always being hunted down) that you can tell that story.  Bruce Banner is defined by his baggage.  But the Savage Hulk, who is generally considered as an inner child, needs a clean slate to truly shine.  His defining attribute has always been the conflict between two very basic desires; to be left alone, and to have friends, so he needs a setting where he's the only aspect of the character known to the setting to really show that off.

It's just a very well put together movie.  There's never a sense that bits of the story are missing or unexplained, it's very good at efficient character development, and plot developments are generally well seeded without being overbearing.  Additionally as an adaptation thing, I looked up some of the details of the original comic and I think every change is for the better.  A betrayal among the warbound would feel intrusive in this story I think.  The rock dude whose name I legitimately forget having ties to the first Thor story was always there, but using that opening to put Beta Ray Bill in place of Silver Surfer is a good move.  I'm more willing to buy his being weakened in the same way Hulk is much more easily than the POWER COSMIC doing so, for starters.  Also y'know, any excuse to use Beta Ray Bill.

It's a simple story well told, and I'm having trouble thinking of anything to say about it that's not basically summarizing y'know?

Grade- 8/10

[Tide]

Flash destroyed Brainiac molecule by molecule after delivering multiple punches power by circumnavigating the globe.

So didn't know where to put this, but just nerding out the magnitude of Flash's punches on Brainiac Luthor. The Earth's circumference is 40,008 km. Wally West is stated to be 86 kg. If you use the animation as the timing for when Flash completes each of his laps around the earth, you get the following:

Lap 1: 9.48 seconds
Lap 2: 9.71 seconds
Lap 3: 11.16 seconds
Lap 4: 5.09 seconds
Lap 5: 2.02 seconds
Lap 6: 0.58 seconds
Lap 7 onwards: 0.5 seconds

With all the variables and the formula for calculating the energy, here's the magnitude of what each punch is the equivalent of:

Lap 1: Energy released by a hurricane in 1 second
Lap 2: Energy released by a hurricane in 1 second
Lap 3: Energy released by a hurricane in 1 second
Lap 4: Equivalent to the explosion 1 Megaton of TNT
Lap 5: Yearly consumption of electricity in Mongolia
Lap 6: About the yield of the Tsar bomb, the largest nuclear weapon ever tested
Lap 7 onwards: Higher than the yield of the Tsar bomb

Supposedly, this isn't even close to how fast Flash can run since 40,000 km/s is nowhere close to the speed of light. Granted, hitting Brainiac Luther with about 6 atom bombs is pretty notable.

[Cmdr_King]

Frozen

Well let's start with the obvious.

Grade: 9/10.

I mean, I don't really need to TELL you Frozen is amazing.  It's self-evidently awesome.  So instead we're going to focus on the biggest strength of the film, the use of songs.

By which I mean a song-by-song breakdown.  Because ~

Frozen Heart- Basically expositing the main plot.  It's a bit akin to having the greek chorus talk about the dangers of hubris at the start of a play.  Basically the least relevant song in the movie but eh, I can see why its there.

Do You Wanna Build a Snowman?- Montage!  This song I think is the crux of the film emotionally, in that the rest of the film only makes sense because of the emotions of this song.  Anna has gone mostly nuts from isolation, while ... well, we'll come back to Elsa actually.  What's neat here with her is the visual progression of her ice powers.  First she walls off the world outside the window, then learns she has to cover up her powers, then with every time skip she ices up more and more of the door to her room- the one Anna is always just outside.  Not subtle, but pretty cool.

For the First Time in Forever- My favorite song as a song.  The bit where Anna goes to the picture gallery is just delightfully animated and the whole sequence in general is filled to the gills with amazing attention to tiny, largely irrelevant visual details that I adore.  It's really sort of a sequel song to the previous one, which fits considering approximately thirty seconds pass between them.

Love is an Open Door- It's great how much this actually sets up Hans as the ultimate villain of the piece.  Like you're sitting there going "this song is weirdly dissonant and the singers are only in harmony half the time" and OF COURSE IT IS.  Hans is at first taking a few seconds to sync up to what Anna is doing to sell the act, then later intentionally baiting her into following up his lines.  The visuals are a bit tamer this time but using the song structure to set up the plot is just a lot of fun to see.
This is a good time to talk about my biggests issue with the film (it is appropriately quite minor); Hans' reveal as douchelord the ambitious was kinda overblown.  It's not that his borderline sociopathic nature is too much, it's that the timing of the reveal seems needlessly risky for him.  Like... yeah, maybe, MAYBE the chancellors and other officials of Arendelle will buy your story, but not even pretending to go along with Anna and ditching her at that stage seems needlessly likely to backfire for someone who'd be so careful to that point.  Still, it doesn't change the plot much even if you tweak it to be more in line with the overall character so like I said, it's minor.

Let It Go- So let's talk about Elsa.  People like to take this song as a bit of a gay anthem, which out of context on the radio, yeah, totally.  Within the movie that doesn't make much sense, because it's not about Elsa embracing herself and being honest with the world, it's about Elsa giving up on the rest of the human race and embracing a life of solitude.  A lot of the subtext for the movie presents Elsa's powers as being a sort of gifted mental illness.  The tortured artist thing, where it's the depression that gives you the mental flexibility/different view of the world to be creative, y'know?  So Let It Go is just a deeply ironic song about her triumphant decision... to embrace the madness and just fester in her own juices forever.  Of course, it's not just irony... there is definitely a sort of liberating feeling in just giving up on trying to function.  But it's a delusion, everything is not awesome, and the rest of the movie bears that out.

In Summer- As a song this has a bit of "we needed to mark 'Sidekicks have reality-ignoring comedy song' off the List of Disney Musical Cliches" to it.  Buuuuuuutt... well, Olaf himself is quite likable as those go so it's not too intrusive.  More than that this marks roughly the halfway point of the film, and the second half of Frozen is kinda all drama all the time.  Having a moment of pure levity is a logical move here.

For the First Time in Forever (Reprise)- ;_;

Fixer Upper- More expositional songing.  Both for the red herring solution to the issue and to the real one.  Not a whole lot else I can think of to say for it.

Fun experiment this.

Er I mean.  So yeah Frozen is awesome and y'all already saw it of course.  But there's only so many ways to say "oh god the level of detail in this movie is amazing" so here we are.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I rather unambiguously consider Frozen to be the best animated and/or children's anything I have seen since entering my 20's. That movie is so damn complete. I haven't even given much thought to the use of songs in the film before but yeah it is unsurprisingly very good.

Love is an Open Door takes on such a delightfully sinister feel once you know the whole plot.

[Captain K]

Frozen's terribly abrupt ending is the only thing that hurts it, but it's a pretty big deduction.  Elsa is all rawr I'm a monster... oh yeah, love!  There are so many ways they could have done that better.