It’s been five years since Frozen came out and the little kids who loved it then have grown up a bit, and Frozen II kept this in mind, letting the characters grow with the audience. If you thought it was just gonna be another kids movie —you would be wrong.

The movie started off with Anna and Elsa as little kids again, with their parents telling them a bed time story about an enchanted forest which (spoiler alert) becomes an important part of the story.

The plot focuses on the main characters from the first movie trying to save Arendelle from a mysterious magic that has caused the kingdom to evacuate from their homes. The characters end up traveling into and getting trapped in the enchanted forest where they learn some unsettling secrets about Arendelle’s past.

Overall the themes of the movie revolve around growth and change, which is made very clear with the first song in the movie which literally starts off  “the wind blows a little bit colder, and we’re all getting older”. I loved these themes because there was a lot of character development for a kids movie; in fact, the general tone was actually darker than one would expect considering the first movie. Where the original Frozen was mostly lighthearted, with lots of jokes and silly moments, the second movie saw the characters under a lot more stress and they weren’t as jovial about it.

I personally really loved the whole stuck-in-a-mysterious-forest plot. It created a captivating setting and it pulled the characters out of their comfort zones which showed the audience different sides of them we didn’t see in the first movie.

The soundtrack of Frozen II was arguably better than that of the first movie and gave us all another passionate Elsa solo to belt out in the car (I haven’t stopped listening to “Into the Unknown” for weeks). The songs in the first movie, while fun to listen to, had the same sound as every other Disney movie but the songs on the second soundtrack were more stylized and unique — they all kinda slapped.

While the first movie is arguably more popular, Frozen II deserves just as much, if not more praise.