Olaf’s FROZEN Adventure is yet another short film from the Disney Frozen Franchise, released in 2017 along with Disney Pixar’s Coco in theatres.
This animated featurette is based on the story when Arendelle celebrates Christmas. it’s the first Christmas since Anna and Elsa opened up the castle gates, and they both had planned a surprise party for all the Arendellians. Olaf is super-excited, and has been yelling “Surprise!!” at everyone he caught sight of since morning, with each of them replying, “Not yet, Olaf!”. Anna and Elsa have new Christmas-special dresses which look beautiful on them, and they’re excited too, since it’s festive time after a long time for them. They sing the song “Ring in the Season”, and go outside to meet the Arendellians, who have gathered to witness the ringing of the Yule Bell, which was Arendelle’s Christmas tradition.
After the Yule Bell rings, Elsa and Anna are surprised to see that the people instantly start heading home, each of them wanting to go start doing their Christmas traditions, since the holidays have begun now. None of them remains for the queen’s surprise party.
Even Kristoff has a family tradition, which is based on a troll called Flemmingrad, and sings the Ballad of Flemmingrad, to cheer up Anna and Elsa. After he leaves to cook Flemmy-stew for them, they return to the castle.
Olaf asks what their family tradition is, but Anna doesn’t remember any. She asks Elsa, and she tells about the Yule Bell. But when Anna asks about their traditions for family, not the kingdom, Elsa replies guiltily that they didn’t have any, because she had to lock herself out for the major part of their childhood due to her icy powers. She gets upset and leaves the room, leaving behind a sad Anna. Olaf suddenly gets an idea, and he goes up to Sven. Both of them leave the castle towards the village, to look for family traditions.
Olaf receives a lot of traditions from the various houses in Arendelle, which fill up their sled. He sings the song, ‘That Time of Year’ during this part of the film. He visits Oaken too, who gives them a portable sauna for his friends.
Unfortunately, all the tradition things Olaf had collected from noon till dusk, caught fire due to the burning coal from the sauna. Sven loses control of the sled, and it falls into a deep gorge, tossing Olaf to the one side side, and Sven the other.
Meanwhile, back in the castle, Elsa realises that she had been harsh with Anna earlier, and searches for her to apologise. But she finds her in the castle attic, looking for traditions in her old trunk. They find rows of gloves and a box in Elsa’s trunk. Anna opens it and gasps.
Back in the snow, Olaf realizes that the fruit cake (one of the traditions he received) is still intact and heads into the forest, searching for another way home. A howl is heard, and Sven realises that Olaf has been attacked by wolves. He panics, rushes to Kristoff, and tries to explain Olaf’s attack to Kristoff (but in vain). Anna and Elsa are already searching for Olaf, and understand Sven’s acting. They go out in search of Olaf.
Whereas, Olaf is attacked by wolves, but manages to escape, but loses the fruit cake to a flying hawk. Depressed, he gives up under a tree, and is completely covered in snow.
Elsa and Anna find him by his carrot nose from a small heap of snow and try to cheer him up by telling that they do have a family tradition: Olaf himself.
After they had been separated, Anna made cards of Olaf, the snowman she and Elsa had created before Elsa struck Anna with her powers. Anna presented this card to Elsa every Christmas, and even dolls of Olaf, throughout both their childhoods. He was their annual Christmas tradition.
The villagers give more traditions to Olaf to cheer him up. As they celebrate, with Anna and Elsa singing “When We’re Together”, Elsa creates an icy Christmas tree, and celebrate the party at last, with help of Elsa’s powers. In the last scene, the hawk drops the fruit cake on Olaf, who claims it is a ‘Christmas Miracle!’
The film is good to watch, with Olaf’s funny dialogues and Anna-Elsa’s ending song. The only thing I didn’t quite understand was that how a snowman could become a Christmas Tradition. But still, it had pretty good animation, better than the first film. The songs were good too.
The characters were voiced by the original voice actors from Frozen:
Olaf- Josh Gad
Anna- Kristen Bell
Elsa- Idina Menzel
Kristoff- Jonathan Groff
It’s a 22-minute film, joyous, funny, with nice songs. It confirms the Frozen-Sisters’ love for their talking snowman-Olaf. He is innocently lovable, and his best friends are Anna, Sven, Elsa and Kristoff, but he does love making new friends. His existence adds humour to the film. His very way of walking, talking, laughing and dancing is sure to make anyone laugh.