Death to Plushies!

You ever watch a movie and see something happen which makes absolutely no sense, contributes nothing to the plot, and then it's never brought up again? There's a term for that, apparently.  It's called a "Big-Lipped Alligator Moment." There's a reason for that name. I'm not going into it. Look it up.

Now, everyone's taste may vary. Some of you guys might like these scenes, but in my mind, a "BLAM" is almost completely unjustifiable.  A non-sequitur sequence usually indicates of poor planning or storytelling on the part of the writer: either they fell short on their run time, or they couldn't find a way to make the music someone worked SO HARD ON fit into the plot and didn't have the heart to cut it. These sequences are sloppy, untidy, and reek of meddling from someone who doesn't share the creative vision that the rest of the writers, directors, composers, and... um... sculptors had.

You know what got me thinking about the "BLAM"? This guy:

For the record,  I hate this guy.

If you haven't seen Frozen: The Road to Broadway yet (no, that's not the actual title, but it works), then you might be under the impression from all the marketing that Olaf the snowman is a major character. If he were, then you can bet your pink-striped knickers that Frozen  wouldn't be sitting at the top of my list of Best Movies of 2013. As is, Olaf's in about a dozen scenes, with maybe 20-30 minutes of screen time. I'd need a stopwatch to make sure, but, if I go see Frozen again, I plan to spend as little time as possible thinking about the snowman and instead focus on trying to find the Rapunzel cameo.

Now, here's my question for those of you who have seen the movie: What happens if you take Olaf out completely? What plot holes would need patching? What narrative elements are left out?

Olaf's the comic relief, but the movie's already populated with a dozen very funny characters ("all men do it"). Olaf himself doesn't have a compelling character; he's completely static. I actually watched the movie again and mentally removed Olaf from every scene he was in. The characters barely acknowledged him (except to occasionally set him up for a punch line) and he made no meaningful contribution to the plot. By my calculation, Olaf's function in the narrative could just as easily be filled by a lock pick and a Hallmark card.

EXCEPT... then there wouldn't be the presumable hundreds of thousands of dollars Disney will make off of merchandise with Olaf's visage on it.

That's it. That's the only thing that changes about Frozen as a whole if Olaf were to be left in the "poor ideas" bin. He is utterly without motivation, development, or personality outside of a few "wacky" characteristics. He's the latest in long line of characters created seemingly just to sell toys and lunch boxes. 

I call these types of characters "plushies." And, if you couldn't tell I %^#*in' hate them.

The "plushy" is a jaded marketing attempt to reach a broader audience when they don't feel the story is strong enough on its own to appeal to more than one demographic category. The plushy is every talking animal sidekick, every snarky creature voiced by whatever prominent comedian happens to be on the pop culture radar. They almost always feel foreign within the context of the film.

Now, sometimes, the plushy works out. Long time readers will know that the bane of my existence - my arch-nemesis, if you will - is Maximus, the horse from Tangled. He defies the internal logic of the film (how in the world does a horse lead the palace guard when it can't talk?!). He defies the external logic of... reality (horse tails can't move like that). And, worst of all, he won't return my phone calls.

AND YET... if you take Maximus out of the film, Tangled needs something in his place. Someone has to chase Flynn Rider. Maybe Russell Crowe could have done it, I don't know. But the point is that Maximus - or some three-dimensional equivalent character - has to be there.

In fact, a friend of mine actually argues that if Maximus were replaced by a less toyetic human counterpart, he would immediately be less interesting. That.. may be true, but I'm not yet ready to concede that point yet.

But that's one of the funny things - Disney's plushy characters are usually significant to the plot in some way. You can't take Sebastian out of The Little Mermaid, or Mushu out of Mulan, or Lumiere out of Beauty and the Beast. Heck, Stitch is arguably one of the greatest characters Disney ever churned out, and he can't NOT be a stuffed toy. 

These two, on the other hand?

COMPLETELY useless.

I'm not so naive as to think that all stories would be better off without a character who would look good sitting in the crane game machine at Denny's, but I think children's entertainment in general has proven that the marketable characters they introduce can be characters first and toys second. It just takes a little bit of extra effort on the part of the writers and editors, but it brings the quality of the story way up. Kids still get their Happy Meal figures, and adults get to not rip their hair out every time Bartok shows up again.

By the way, my friend from a few paragraphs earlier actually helped me to identify the first real "plushies" of modern cinema:

Take 'em out, replace 'em with a PDA, and the plot resolves exactly the same way.