Coco took top honours over the holiday weekend, racking up $71 million in ticket sales, but some filmgoers have some criticism involving the Frozen-themed pre-show festivities.
Mashable reports that Olaf's Frozen Adventure, which screens right before the main event, isn't getting the same warm reception as Coco.
The site notes that the Disney short isn't exactly, well...short. Unlike past pre-film featurettes, Olaf's Frozen Adventure is 21 minutes long. That's far longer than the usual five- or six-minute running time for shorts like Piper or For the Birds – which showed before Finding Dory and Monsters, Inc., respectively. Part of their charm was their brevity. Short and sweet, they didn't detract from the films that viewers actually expected to see.
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Went to watch Coco, super adorbs! But that 20min Frozen "preview" was torturous.
— Angry Aims (@aims82) November 26, 2017
The FROZEN short before COCO unforgivably stretches the definition of "short."
— Miguel (@miguel91915) November 26, 2017
Olaf's Frozen Adventure didn't just overstay its welcome, though: Twitter users also added that it seemed to be in poor taste to preempt a film that celebrated Latinx culture with what amounted to an ad for Frozen 2.
It's also notable that Olaf's Frozen Adventure isn't the first Frozen-related short. In 2015, an eight-minute long clip, Frozen Fever, played before Disney's live-action Cinderella and it didn't face the same pushback as this latest trip to Arendelle.
Is there an option to watch coco without the frozen movie??? @Disney just couldn’t let brown people have their moment ??♀️
— Melissa (@FuturaDoctora_) November 27, 2017
*at the Disney exec meeting*
— Tyler Lucrecia (@yourfavnica) November 26, 2017
Person 1: Coco has too many brown people. What will make white audiences go?
Person 2: Hmmm...you know what white people love more than anything else?
Per 1: What?
Per 2: More white people.
Per 1: Perfect. 30 min Frozen movie it is.
My wife's take on the not-good Frozen short that played before Coco: "I guess Disney wanted to show audiences a bunch of white people before showing them a bunch of brown people."
— Zach Malm (@muzach) November 26, 2017
Reactions to Olaf's Frozen Adventure got so bad in Mexico, where Coco premiered in October, that some cinemas even cut it from showings. Redittors have actually teamed up to help out anyone planning on seeing Coco, with threads explaining that anyone wanting to skip out on Anna, Elsa, and Co. should plan on showing up to their screenings at least 30 minutes late.
There's reason for the clip's length. Olaf's Frozen Adventure was supposed to air on TV, which explains its 21-minute runtime (perfect for fitting into a 30-minute time slot), but Entertainment Weekly reports that the team behind the project decided it would be better on the big screen.
There are varying theories as to why Disney showed the clip before Coco, ranging from offering something approachable for audiences unfamiliar with Dia de los Muertos to banking on the popularity of Frozen to get even more people to the cinema, but it's pretty clear that some Disney fans think that the Frozen crew has overstayed its welcome. With a sequel set for 2019, there's a lot more Olaf on the way.
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Let's hope that there's enough time between now and then for fans to prep for that avalanche of snowmen and singalongs.
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