What Happens In Frozen Fever
Carlos Beirise
Frozen Fever is a 2015 American animated musical fantasy short film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. A follow-up to the 2013 feature film Frozen, the short follows Elsa as she attempts to throw a surprise party for her sister Anna with the help of Kristoff, Sven, and Olaf. Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee again served as the directors with Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel, Jonathan Groff, and Josh Gad reprising their roles from the first film.
Production on Frozen Fever began in June 2014 and took six months to complete. The film debuted in theaters alongside Walt Disney Pictures' live-action remake of Cinderella on March 13, 2015. It received positive reviews from critics, along with praise for its original song "Making Today a Perfect Day" by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez.
One year after the events of Frozen, Queen Elsa is determined to give her younger sister, Anna, a perfect surprise birthday party and enlists the help of Kristoff, his reindeer Sven and the lovable snowman Olaf in order to make sure the party goes ahead without any problems.
Anna is led on a party treasure hunt created by Elsa, following a piece of string that leads to different gifts. The day starts fine but Elsa suddenly starts developing symptoms of a cold. With each sneeze, Elsa unknowingly produces a group of "Snowgies", little snow-babies who begin to dismantle the birthday party's decorations while Kristoff & Sven try to stop them and Olaf embraces them.
Elsa brushes away Anna's growing concern regarding her constant sneezing, assuring her she "doesn't get colds" and enthusiastically continuing the treasure hunt. Meanwhile, Anna is visibly struggling under the weight of all the extravagant presents she has found from the hunt and Elsa's condition is rapidly worsening. Anna recognises her sister is delirious with a fever as they climb the clock tower to Elsa's final present, two figures of the sisters as part of the hourly clocktower procession. Now completely delirious and wobbly, Elsa starts teetering dangerously close to the edge of the platform, before falling. Anna races forward and grabs her sister's wrist, pulling her back to safety. Reluctantly, Elsa admits she is suffering from a cold and that she needs to go home and rest in bed.
On September 2, 2014, during the ABC airing of The Story of Frozen: Making a Disney Animated Classic, Walt Disney Animation Studios' then-chief creative officer John Lasseter announced that a Frozen short film with a new song would be released in the future.[3] On the same day, Variety announced that the short would be released in early 2015 under the title Frozen Fever, with Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee returning as co-directors, Peter Del Vecho returning as producer and a new song by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez. Olaf the snowman would also make an appearance in the short.[4][5][6] On December 3, 2014, it was announced that Aimee Scribner would be a co-producer and that Frozen Fever would debut in theaters alongside Walt Disney Pictures' Cinderella on March 13, 2015.[7][8] In late December, the co-directors told the Associated Press "There is something magic about these characters and this cast and this music. Hopefully, the audiences will enjoy the short we're doing, but we felt it again. It was really fun."[9] Around the same time, Dave Metzger, who worked on the orchestration for Frozen, disclosed he was already at work on Frozen Fever.[10]
The short features the song "Making Today a Perfect Day", by Anderson-Lopez and Lopez.[11] At the premiere of Cinderella and Frozen Fever at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, California, on March 1, 2015, Josh Gad told USA Today, "I want to apologize to parents everywhere for the fact that children are going to be singing a whole new Frozen song[.]"[12]
The creators started brainstorming possibilities for the short film in June 2014.[13] After early discussions about Olaf, head story artist Marc Smith pitched the idea of what might happen if Elsa had a cold, which became the basis for the short's plot.[13] The directors began working on the short in June and by August were back in the recording studio with the cast to lay down vocal tracks. The production of Frozen Fever took six months.[14] All of the animators from Frozen wanted to come back to animate at least one shot on Frozen Fever, resulting in a large number of animator credits for a short film. They struggled to squeeze the animation phase of the short's production into a tight time slot in fall 2014 after animation wrapped on Big Hero 6 and before the studio's animators had to start working on subsequent features.[15][16] It was during this time period that the directors began to realize how much they missed the Frozen characters; they began to discuss the ideas that evolved into a full-length sequel, Frozen II (2019).[17]
Frozen Fever premiered in theaters alongside Walt Disney Pictures' Cinderella on March 13, 2015.[7] It was released on Digital HD and Disney Movies Anywhere on August 11, 2015, and was released on the Walt Disney Animation Studios Short Films Collection DVD/Blu-ray Combo Pack on August 18, 2015.[18] It was also included on the Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital HD releases of Cinderella on September 15, 2015.[19] On November 9, 2015, it was released on an exclusive DVD copy of its own, courtesy of Tesco stores across the UK.[20]
The short film, and most of the others that were released on Netflix, were made available to stream individually, rather than one single collection, on Disney+ on November 12, 2021 for the first Disney+ Day.[22]
USA Today's Claudia Puig rated the short three stars out of four, and described the new song ("Making Today a Perfect Day") as "pleasant". She concluded that although the short "is not as exhilarating and inventive as the original, it's still a treat to see an abridged tale of these two sisters in a warmhearted spinoff."[11] Writing for BBC, Natalie Jamieson called the new song "catchy and fun".[23] Dan Kois of the Slate called the film "a real bummer, the first recent misfire from Disney's shorts program, and thus the first serious misfire from the Lasseter-led Disney."[24] The Daily Telegraph's Robbie Collin praised the song "Making Today a Perfect Day", stating that "it's a lip-smacking confection, dusted with pure icing sugar, and suggests that songwriters Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez are capable of coming up with something special for the forthcoming feature-length Frozen sequel."[25]
CraveOnline's Witney Seibold wrote that the film "is a celebration of the very kind of conspicuous consumerism that Disney is always smearing the landscape with."[26] Mike Scott of The Times-Picayune wrote that "with its blend of sweetness, silliness and tunefulness, this animated Disney short is satisfyingly consistent in vision and in spirit with the original Frozen."[27]
Elsa is very excited to celebrate the 19th birthday of her sister Anna, and intends for her sister's birthday to be perfect. Using her ice powers, Elsa attempts to create ice figurines on top of Anna's birthday cake: her final choice are figurines of Anna and Elsa ice-skating cheerfully together. Kristoff makes a banner, hung up across the castle courtyard, which reads, "Happy Birthday Anna". Elsa and Kristoff spend all morning preparing everything. Before dashing off to wake up Anna, Elsa leaves Kristoff in charge of looking after everything until the guest of honor arrives.
Elsa tiptoes into Anna's bedroom and gently nudges her younger sister, who is still sleeping. Anna struggles to wake up but after being told about the day Elsa has planned for them, she immediately jumps out of bed. When Elsa sneezes, neither of the sisters notice that two tiny snowmen have fallen to the floor and scampered off. Starting off the day, Elsa uses her magic to create sparkly new dresses for each of them before heading out on a mystery tour which involves following a long string that Elsa had wound through the castle, leading Anna to different gifts. Inside a suit of armor, Anna finds a bracelet. Inside an armoire, she finds an Olaf cuckoo clock, and on a balcony, a bouquet of sunflowers. Elsa sneezes again and more little snowmen tumble to the ground, but still the girls don't notice. The snowmen scurry into the courtyard where Olaf finds them and is thrilled to see them. Anna and Elsa follow the string all over Arendelle. Along the way, Anna discovers more presents: a sandwich, family portrait, silk stockings, even a fishing pole. All the while, Elsa continues to sneeze and each time she does, more little snowmen appear and still the girls don't spot any of them. Anna is having a wonderful time but is concerned for Elsa's health. She feels she should go home and rest but Elsa declines. She leads Anna to Oaken's shop, where she presents her with one of Oaken's beautiful heavy cloaks. Then, noticing her sneezing, Oaken presents them with a bottle of medicine, which Elsa denies, but Anna accepts gratefully, knowing they may need it. Next, Elsa takes Anna to the center of the village, where a children's choir sings for Anna.
Back at the courtyard, Kristoff, Sven, and Olaf try to keep things under control as more tiny snowmen run in, causing a lot of chaos and trouble for them. When Kristoff spots several little snowmen climbing up to the cake, he grabs Olaf's head like a bowling ball and takes aim. Olaf's head rolls into the snowmen, knocking them away from the cake. Suddenly, the little snowmen knock down the banner. Olaf manages to rehang the letters, but since he cannot read or spell, they spell, "Dry Banana Hippy Hat" and then "Happy Hairy Ant Band".
Meanwhile, Elsa leads Anna to their last stop, where at the top of the clock tower was her last gift. Anna's arms are now overloaded with presents and Elsa's cold is getting worse. Anna insists that Elsa needs to rest, but she doesn't listen. Already, she is feeling feverish as she climbs the stairs to the top of the tower, to a point where she almost falls off the edge of the tower. Anna drops her gifts and rushes to catch her. She notices Elsa is burning up with a fever and needs to get into bed, which Elsa finally gives in. As Anna escorts her home, Elsa apologizes to Anna for "ruining" another perfect birthday, but Anna tells her she hasn't, despite having a cold. Then as they enter the castle gates, Anna is surprised by Kristoff, Sven, Olaf, and the hundreds of little snowmen who present her with her birthday cake and a special birthday song. Caught up in the excitement of the song, Kristoff sings the loudest of all, bursting out, "I love you, baby!", and becoming very embarrassed while a touched Anna grins at him happily. Though tired, Elsa insists on blowing the bukkehorn, and sneezes into it, launching a gigantic snowball all the way to the Southern Isles, where it hits Hans as he is shoveling manure at the royal stables (and the horses laugh at him in amusement).
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