Frozen was a global phenomenon of a movie. It became one of the biggest animated hits for Disney, a studio that has been making stellar animated movies for decades. It had a song so big that some parents probably still never want to hear it again, and others probably still haven't been able to stop listening to it. It's hard to imagine anybody having a problem with the film, however, Kristen Bell does have one issue with it.
The voice of Anna herself recently admitted to ET, during the recent D23 Expo, that she does have one critique when it comes to the movie that made $1.2 billion at the box office and won two Oscars and the hearts and minds of children everywhere. Her co-star in the film, Jonathan Groff, didn't get to sing enough. On the plus side, Bell says that Frozen II will remedy that issue. According to Bell...
You are going to get to see Jonathan Groff sing! Really sing! Finally! That was my one critique. We didn't get enough Jonathan Groff singing, and to me, he has one of the best singing voices I've ever heard. I would listen to him singing the alphabet forever, and he really gets his dessert in this movie.
It's almost hard to believe in a movie with so many well known songs, but one of the movie's main characters, Kristoff, voiced by Jonathan Groff, only has one song in the original Frozen, and it's barely a song. Kristoff sings "Reindeers Are Better Than People." a solo acoustic song that's all of 40 seconds long. You can listen to it below.
Considering that everybody else, including the snowman, gets a fully orchestrated musical number, it does seem like Jonathan Groff got a little short changed here. He's had a bit more opportunity to sing in the followup shorts, Frozen Fever and Olaf's Frozen Adventure, but even then, he hasn't had a chance to break out with a big Disney style song.
While we don't know anything of consequence about the new Frozen II songs, except that, according to Josh Gad, they are amazing, it appears that Kristoff will finally get at least one big song. A duet between him and Anna certainly wouldn't be out of place, but perhaps he'll have a solo tune as well.
In the end, how the songs shake out all depend on how the story goes together, and while we know the basic premise of the story, we certainly don't know enough to have any idea how Kristoff will fit into it all.
However it works, I'm glad the songwriters are finally giving Jonathan Groff his time to shine. For what it's worth, the duo of Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez realized while writing the music for the first Frozen that they had largely left him out of the movie. They even composed an additional song to be played over the closing credits of the film, but it ended up not being used.
We'll all finally get a chance to really hear Kristoff sing when Frozen II arrives November 22.
