I think the reason Frozen was such a hit was marketing.
Ads for the animated film were all over TV. They got people to see it.
But I’m not sure why so many people liked it. I thought the script was dreadful and the songs mediocre. Plus, it was highly, highly unfunny, especially the character of the live, talking, happy-go-lucky snowman. It’s highly possible that the execrable Jar Jar Binks in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace was a more humorous, better developed character.
OK, the computer animation was quite well done in Frozen; that was no surprise. Yet the film seemed artificial, manufactured, as if devised specifically for a certain audience and peppered with hip dialogue and silly situations. It didn’t have an organic quality, and the songs just made it worse.
I’m in the minority on this, I know. Frozen was a huge success. Yet that doesn’t necessarily equate quality, and in that light, the movie doesn’t make the cut for me.
Disney can do better than this, methinks.
Skip and Setter's Cinema Blogishkeit 
I suspect the reason that “Frozen” was such a hit is a little more insidious. Disney tried branching out by placing (in their eyes) less-conventional heroines at the center of their last few films—think “Brave,” “The Princess and the Frog,” etc. “Frozen” represented a return to the key Disney success formula: beautiful, blond princesses; magic; wealth; castles; boundless optimism; fluff and little substance. Throw a Broadway star and a lovable chick who looks like a princess in real life and you’ve got a money-making recipe. That’s my cynical take on it, anyway.
You’re probably right–it definitely had a patched-together quality that smacked of combining a whole lot of can’t-lose ingredients. I wonder if Disney will stick with this formula or gravitate toward the more unconventional plotlines. Either way, I wasn’t too impressed with Frozen, unfortunately.
I think that some of this is a result of changing direction mid movie. In some deleted scenes on the blu ray, the writers mention how they has originally planned for Elsa to be a villain but thought it would be more interesting to make her just troubled. But it doesn’t work. Too many holes. Nice post.
Thanks. I agree–the “troubled” nature of Elsa in the film just ended up being bizarre and not credible. The whole thing felt like something of a mess to me, as if the script were thought up on the fly.