Why is Frozen so Successful?

Pocahontas wasn't the last good Disney musical. In fact, I'd argue it wasn't a good Disney musical period.
Other than that, I'd say the video is pretty accurate.

I think most older people dig it because it goes against their expectations of a Disney princess movie (major relationship is between siblings, true love is a familial thing, prince is the bad guy, heroic-ish woman with powers, main character is the annoying dork instead of the talking object). I think older people give the movie "points" for that stuff and they end-up thinking the movie's more clever/engaging than it really is.
So, they're probably more okay with buying merchandise for their kids, hence why Frozen prints money.

I think it says something about Disney that "Disney princess musical" is a genre in and of itself that can be parodied, played with and reinvented.

Did you just compare Frozen to The Wall? Like the Pink Floyd musical about a psychotic neo-nazi rockstar? You could not have picked two more different animated musicals.
I never thought anyone could talk about Disney and Pink Floyd in the same breath.
Unless they're talking about Hercules, I guess.

 

I dunno. Apart from the profanity, "Outside the Wall" feels very Disney.

As for Honest Trailers . . . Well, it's Honest Trailers. When was the last time they did a movie trailer that was remotely fair to the movie in question? (Seriously, I have no idea how their video game trailers can be so spot-on while their movie trailers are so nitpicky and pointless.)

 

Ice being their primary export is pure speculation and is not a salient point since they probably couldn't actually export the ice.. The Duke is not a merchant, he's a Duke. Also, what's wrong with fighting against people that have the same job as your allies? All songs in musicals, especially openers, are expository in some way or another. No confirmation about whether or not Cristoff is turned on by reindeer. In fact, it's more that he hates people. While the snowman song is comic relief it gives important information about the character so it serves as more than just a joke, which again is common with comedic musicals. (See e.g. Urinetown "Don't be the Bunny."

 

My 7 year old daughter saw it and it had absolutely no impact on her. She's devoted to How to Train Your Dragon.

 

I don't see the appeal of these animated films to begin with, other than the visuals, but even those haven't changed by leaps and bounds in the past few years. But if they are focused on entertaining young kids then It really doesn't take all that much to be successful as long as you hit all the right marks.

 

And yet not all of them do succeed. And exceedingly few of them reach Frozen's level of success.

 

Old school Donald Duck was the man. Mickey Mouse also used to be a bit of a jerk until they turned him into Mr. "Squeaky" clean.

Popeye used to portray black kids as humanoids with a monkey-like head. When I was like 7 or 8 and watching the old cartoons on Nickelodeon, I always wondered why the kids in the class had a pet monkey that looked like a person. Little did I realize what was going on. Yikes.

 

Really catchy songs.

 

This movie is successful because it has a broad audience. Yes, it's mainly for young girls, but the whole family can enjoy it (which, to me, separates it from many of the older Disney Princess movies, which I absolutely cannot stand [except for maybe Snow White]). The music is also written well enough that one of them managed to go viral with people singing it everywhere online, especially kids, causing further marketing for the movie. It had all the ingredients it needed to have pretty much anyone watching it interested. It's simple and sweet and people love that sort of thing. But really, I think it's mostly the marketing Disney does.

Personally though, I just thought it was okay, but I'm also not a kid so it's hard for me to judge (however, I love the LEGO movie and I'm not a kid). I also don't see how it would help anyone writing fantasy unless it was of the same young girl audience and had similar subject matter. Catchy music can't go viral for a book, nor do books have the same level of marketing that movies do.

 

The easy points are- the animation is great and it has the best songs since the Lion King and Aladdin. To delve deeper, it is only the second time that Disney Princess doesn't end up with a man- the first being in Brave. Elsa is also the first Disney Princess to become Queen. It is also interesting how many boys and girls love Elsa even though Anna is the hero. The movie shows the teaching of Sun Tzu in that "fear" is the true enemy, the only enemy. It also helps that they followed the classic Disney tradition of killing the parents early in the story. At least Bambi's mother made it halfway through the story, now they die within 5 minutes.