Frozen / Ezra Brooks Distiller's Collection Bourbon (250th Movie!)

0:00 In 2012, the Disney Empire marches on with an icy exploration of what true love really consists of. In 2024, we kick things up a notch with an extra spicy high rye bourbon. The film. Do I have to say it, Bob? I I believe you do, Brad. I think the people need to know what we're watching today. We're watching frozen people, frozen people. I would watch that movie. That sounds dope. It's the sequel to Snowpiercer. The whiskey is Ezra Brooks Distillers Collection and we'll review them both. This is the Film and Whiskey podcast.

1:01 Welcome to the Film and Whiskey podcast, where each week we review a classic movie and a glass of whiskey. I'm Bob Book. I'm drinking so much beer tonight, Bob. Brad, it sounds like you don't want to be here today. Nope. You know what's funny? I. Blame. I blame you, Yeah. I mean, you, you should. For years and years, Brad, we have been talking about our mutual distaste for this film. I have not watched the movie Frozen in, I don't know, 7-8 years. Like it's been a minute since I watched. It I haven't watched it in a decade. Yeah, probably around that for me. And I was thinking, you know what, like I am sure that having watched a great deal of mediocre children's films since entering my 30s and having kids, that this movie is not as bad as I remember it being.

1:47 And folks, let me tell you, my opinion on this film has not changed one darn bit. That's what I like to hear. So it sounds like you're drinking beer on our whiskey podcast to get yourself through. Yeah, frozen. Frozen doesn't deserve whiskey. Let. Me tell you what I'm doing. It's 8:00 PM at the time of recording. I brewed myself a cup of decaf coffee and I am eating a powdered sugar doughnut. Wait, are you telling me that you you turned into the fat cop from the Santa Claus? Yes, both. Both him and an 80 year old man. OK, I I love it.

2:27 Man, you know what, let me let me sidetrack us immediately here Brad. We were at my in laws house. They had a dozen doughnuts on the table and they had already picked through what they wanted and they said, you know these are a day old now take what you want home and the rest is going to the squirrels. And I said, I will be darned if I let the squirrels eat a cream stick that's like the Cadillac of doughnuts. Like, I'm taking that home with me. So I'm eating a powdered sugar cream stick. And as we were talking about doughnuts, I had to remind them of something we learned, Brad, when we lived in Kentucky. Did you ever purchase doughnuts for yourself when you lived in Kentucky? I yes Bob, I I have purchased doughnuts.

3:08 OK, well, like, I didn't know if you were a doughnut family. I had a shocking realization, which, you know, the cream stick, which is a staple of Ohio's diet, I feel like is known as a long John. In other parts of the country, and especially in Kentucky, they call it a long John. They do not fill their long Johns with cream. It is an unfilled doughnut. It's just a freaking loaf of bread. It's like an unsliced hot dog bun that they slap some frosting on top of. I can't like and we started talking about is that just a Kentucky thing or is or is Ohio in the minority in filling them? And so I have to know film and Whiskey Nation before we start A, do you understand what I'm talking about when I say Long John and B locally to you? Are they filled with cream or is that just a delicacy that is unique to Ohio 'cause it feels like these should have filling in them, Brad. 100% Bob.

4:04 Lack of filling is unacceptable. I will say I'm going to keep us sidetracked. I I love a good cream filled doughnut. Long Johns, whatever you want to call them, they are very delicious because they're doughnuts. I'm I'm a little more of a Boston cream kind of guy. Oh, you're the custard type. I love the custard filling man, it is delicious. I feel like when you get the Boston cream filling at like a grocery store doughnut, though, it's just vanilla pudding. Like it's not really Boston cream. It's just like they took a snack pack off the shelf and they were like, yeah, use the Turkey baster and you know what I mean? Like it. It just doesn't feel quite right to me. That might be the best mental image I've. Ever had.

4:52 All right, Brett. Well, now that we've gotten completely sidetracked, I guess I'll say one more thing. In the past week, my beloved film from last year, Godzilla -1 dropped on Netflix. Surprisingly, it was. It was unannounced. I was going to ask if you had gotten around to watching it yet. I had dude, you should be so proud of me. I, as a movie connoisseur, I had no idea that that happened. You really need to watch it. It is. It is significantly better than the film Frozen. We could have, in fact, just talked about that today. I'm going to do your favorite thing in the world and I'm going to watch it on my phone. I don't even care how you watch it, it's so good. I would stake my reputation on it still being good on a phone. Not ideal, but still good.

5:40 There it is. All right, Brad. Let's start talking about Frozen. And in order to do that, we need to get into our first segment of the day, which we call, Brad explains. Brad's going to give us the movie plots with only 60 seconds ticking on the clock, so let's go ahead and hear your take with this little segment that we call, Brad explains. Brad Explains is the part of the show where Brad breaks down the plot of the film that he has just seen, often for the first time. This is obviously not Brad's first time watching it, but it might be his second time watching it 'cause it sounds like he has been adamantly opposed to revisiting it. Oh yeah, I have never watched this. All right, so tell me a little bit of your history with the movie, Brad.

6:20 Like, I mean, A, it's a very short history, but B, like, where were you when you saw it? Why did it? Why did you have such a visceral reaction to it? Why do you still feel this way about it? Oh, man, I honestly, why do I have such a visceral reaction? That's a great question, Bob. Is it because you're a sexist chauvinist? Pig. Yes it is. How did you know? Man, we got right to the bottom of that. I didn't even have to pull that out of you. All right. Good episode, good podcast. Yeah, that we're packing it in now. I don't really know. That might be the last thing we say. I don't know what there else where else there is to go. I watched this with my soon to be wife. We were engaged at the time and I believe two of her friends. We watched it while she was still at Malone University way way back in the day.

7:14 Why did I hate it so much? It sucks. Josh Gad gives a great performance for a different movie and it it doesn't make any sense in Frozen. The there's just so much happening. And here's the thing, Bob, I'm I'm going to blasphemy. Are you ready for this? Please? This movie is upon credits rolling one hour and 32 minutes long. It it needs to be 20 minutes longer. It needs to be 20 minutes longer. I like, if only so that it could slow down a little bit and just like, let everything breathe.

7:58 Like or just develop. Yeah, I'm with you. Man, like here's, here's the wild thing. Pixar takes 10 minutes. Not even really. It's like 6 or 7 minutes of the montage for them to like fly through an entire couple's life and take you through all the ups and downs of of infertility and cancer and death and all like all these things. And yet at the end of it you don't feel like you just got thrown through the freaking meat grinder of information and plot development.

8:39 And like Frozen is the exact opposite. Yes, it feels like this movie is all plot, but that none of it connects to each other. Like it just, I don't know what storyline to follow. I don't know what developments are necessary. And we're we're getting off base from, Brad explains. We're going to jump into why we actually don't like this movie. And it's not going to just be like two guys hating on the movie that all the little girls liked because this was a really important movie to a lot of people 10 years ago. Brad, I, I just have very strong feelings about how it does not work. So in order to get there, we have to get through, Brad explains. You have one minute on the clock to break down the plot of the movie with full spoilers. Folks, if you have avoided Frozen for this long, honestly, hats off to you. Like, yeah, this, this movie was inescapable for you, clearly. Don't have children?

9:30 All right, dude, one minute and go. Frozen is a film about man. I don't want to do this. I'm like, trying to get myself up for it. All right? Frozen follows these two princesses and Arendelle and their parents are idiots and die on a boat and isolate their children and keep them from experiencing what life is all about. And because of that, the one older daughter has ice powers and she's a danger to society. And when she gets coordinated as queen, she freaks out because Anna's an idiot and wants to marry some dude right off the bat. And she shows off her ice powers and everybody's like, we found a witch. May we burn her.

10:13 And she runs off into the woods and the mountains and is like, I'm a build an ice castle. And then her sister's like, Hey, I love you. Get your freaking butt back down here and fix all the crap that you started. And and then the dude she fell in love with is a bad guy and Elsa almost kills Anna and and then she doesn't because Anna sacrifices herself for Elsa. And it's it's, it's the only good part of the movie. Boom. OK, so that's Frozen. I love that you are already so opposed to the film that you won't even pronounce her name. Anna. You're just like, no, it's Anna. This is this is the film that I watched.

10:53 From Ohio, man, it's Anna. I have my critique for this film, Brad broken down into a well organized outline and with subheadings and everything else. Because there are so many different areas of this movie that I feel like fall short. And I think the best place to start is by just kind of making this blanket statement that none of the characters motivations make sense, none of the plot devices make sense. None of this movie feels like it logically flows from the preceding scenes. And perhaps nowhere better to start than at the very beginning of the film because I just don't like what the hell is going on in this movie, Brad.

11:37 So it starts with this kind of cool. Go ahead, go ahead. I would. Say, can I be honest with you, man? Yeah, I think, I think the opening I see it is great. Yeah, well, so it's like, it's so good. Two back-to-back, cool sounding songs. The first thing you hear is that chant, which which is interesting because like. So I guess ostensibly this movie happens somewhere in Scandinavia, right? Like it. It seems that way, although. They say the word fjord. They. Do but then the name of the country is Arendelle which is very clearly French influenced so I don't know, maybe they live in the Swiss Alps. Anyway, they start chanting in this kind of like not Western sounding key and cadence.

12:19 And I don't know if it's just like it if the songwriters were trying to tap into like ancient musical patterns of that region, but it sounds more like something you would hear at the beginning. Like it. It sounded like music from The Lion King, if I'm being frank. That like, Nah. I was kind of thinking a preview for Moana. Yeah, it's a little more, yes. OK. So we'll just say it sounds like it comes from somewhere where people have melanin and not from Scandinavia because like, let's just be honest here. So that threw me off. And then it starts with this ice cutting chance that all the men are singing. Also kind of cool. I liked that scene a lot. I thought I had some of the best animation in the whole movie.

13:02 And then you immediately get thrust into this magical world of trolls and it immediately is like, I don't understand where we are, what we're doing. What are the rules of this Kingdom are the like, do people know the trolls? Like what what's going on? And I guess that's the. You needed a you needed a 10 minute back story on the trolls, didn't you? Honestly, yeah, like please, just a narration like something. Yeah. And I guess that's my opening question to you is like what's going on here, Brad? Oh, man. So here's here's my other question. Rapunzel and her boyfriend Eugene make an appearance in this movie, right? You did?

13:46 Oh. Man I should have done that. My 2 facts in the falsehood. As the gates open at the start of the movie and Anna is running out of the gates, you see them walking into the castle. Oh cool, which? Means that this is the same universe as them and like magic is a very clearly established thing in this world. So why is everybody freaking the F out when they see their queen, their new queen using ice magic? Yeah. So that's. What's? What's going? On they don't set expectations well, so you, you get your first glimpse of Elsa and Anna as small children. And Elsa has magic powers that are just there already, like you don't see her attain them.

14:33 They, she was born with them and they sneak off into like this Great Hall at night. And she's like, do the magic, do the magic. And she starts doing magic. And you know, by no fault of her own, she accidentally injuries her sister and they go visit the trolls and Brad, I, I wish that I had just looked up on IMDb when the first trolls movie came out 'cause it was around this time and the character design's very similar. So someone's copying off of somebody. Oh, 100%. They go visit the trolls, and the trolls are like, oh, yeah, of course. Like, there's ice in her mind. OK, sure. And and they're like, you know, you got to do a better job of training her to use this magic.

15:16 And the dad's like, no, I'll do you one better. We're going to protect her. We're going to go back to the castle and we're going to fire everybody so no one comes in contact with her. And we're going to keep her locked in a room. And they just cut back to the main troll. And he's like, dude, that is not what I suggested at at all. Nope, not at all. And so it launches immediately into this song. Do you want to build a snowman? And you, you start to understand the strained relationship that the two have because they are literally like Harry pottering their child, like she's like living in a locked room forever. And and you start to get this mantra that the parents are teaching her, which is conceal it. Don't feel it.

15:58 Don't let it show, which is first of all, like the most contrived thing to teach your child to say. Like they should have just said like, hide it or we're all we're all gonna die. Like that's that's pretty like this. I feel like that's a little more accurate to what's going on. I don't know, man. That's then that's how the movie starts. And then they're just like, OK, I think it's time for us to go die now. And they just do they just go off. I don't know where they're going. I don't know what they're doing. They just get on a ship together and they just die. And then they're like, and that's the prologue to the movie. That's it, ma'am. Don't you feel satisfied now? Compare this to up a couple of weeks ago where you have an entire self-contained story that also inflects upon and influences the story that's to come. This doesn't tell any coherent narrative. It's just a bunch of different plot developments that are happening parallel to each other and then a fade out. And then you're kind of wondering, like, how are they going to cross all these paths together? How do these things influence each other? Where are we going from here?

17:09 And I don't think the movie ever successfully brings all those threads together to tell one compelling narrative. Brad. No. I've been talking a lot. Please say. Please say something. You, you have been talking a lot and you've been speaking the most sense you've ever spoken in your life by the so much of this movie just rolls upon itself like, like Olaf rolling down the hill. And it, it all builds up into this critical mass of fluff. And and that's the problem with this film is that at its core, this film is about the true, deep, abiding love that siblings ought to have for one another and Anna has for Elsa, but that gets lost constantly and it it gets thrown to the side and you're much more worried about these silly trolls or Olaf being ridiculous. The the songs don't.

18:17 I'm trying to think, I feel like maybe three of the songs really make sense for what's happening in the movie. So many of the songs are just throw away like, well, wouldn't it, wouldn't it be funny if a if a snowman was obsessed with summer and then sang about it for 4 minutes And, and, and it just doesn't work because the at its core, this movie has a great storyline. I absolutely love the storyline of Anna loving on Elsa, no matter the cost to herself like that. That's a beautiful story. And really I, there's a part of me that looks at it almost, I don't know this, this is probably reading too deeply into it, but it, it almost feels like I don't know if I should say this. It, it feels kind of to me like Elsa is a bit of an addict, that she becomes addicted.

19:14 I mean, I mean, in the film she literally says it like to herself, like, I'm not going to care about any of my responsibilities. I'm not going to care about anything going down in the Lower Kingdom. I'm only going to be with myself now. And obviously she changes that and moves on. But but for Anna, it's this journey into the depths of her addicted sister's madness as she's trying to bring her back and it is her love that saves her in the end. Tell me that's not a great, great story, Bob. It is. And if I can jump off from there, because you've said like 8 things that I want to comment on. But but let's go back to the the first point that you were making, which is I think the overarching point. Like if if the sister's love for her sister is the heart of this movie, then they sure do a bad job of underlining that because it is so, so pushed to the side so early on that by the time it comes back at the very end of the movie, as this is what it was about all along, you go.

20:14 Oh, OK, I guess. Yeah. Like that was kind of there. But by the end of the film, Elsa. Is Anna's like fourth or fifth most important relationship? Like she has learned essentially to have healthy relationships beyond Elsa with all of these other people and magical creatures. By the time she actually, like, sacrifices herself for Elsa at the end of the film, it's like, oh, OK, like, I guess we could end there. But you did a really bad job of leaving the trail of bread crumbs to this moment. And I think honestly, Brad, the where they start to get off track is in their development of these two characters from the very beginning. I think dramatically speaking, Elsa is obviously the more compelling character because she's she's the one struggling with this thing, this magic thing. It's really intriguing.

21:05 But because it's Disney, you're not going to make her the lead of the movie. You have to have some other kind of audience surrogate that's like the window into Elsa's world. And you know, I keep thinking about a movie that I like more than you, but I think we both like significantly more than this movie. And it's the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Like Elsa is the Quasimodo of this movie. A. Very beautiful Quasimodo. Just a gorgeous hunchback and she goes off and does her own thing in the bell tower. Right. But quasi Quasimodo story is is more compelling, but I feel like the the Disneyfication of these two stories is like we can't it's it's too dark and it's too advanced for what we want this movie to be. So Anna becomes our heroine, and that's fine. The thing is with Anna, though, man, I'm gonna make make you mad with this comparison.

21:57 But a few weeks ago I talked about how Spielberg's like my favorite director, but he kind of paved the way for the MCU. And I think that, yes, a movie that you really like that came out four years prior to this called Tangled, was one of the first Disney films where the Princess heroine character wasn't just like your classic Disney Princess ingenue. Like, they're always green, right? They're always young and impressionable. But she had this kind of like, I'm the awkward girl. Like I'm, I'm not fully formed yet and I'm a little bit funny because I'm clumsy and things like that. Whereas, you know, Belle wasn't like that.

22:38 Even Ariel to some extent wasn't like that. And I think they took that and ran with it for this movie. And this was like in the peak of Manic Pixie Dream girl, like Zooey Deschanel, 500 Days of summer type leading ladies. And I feel like, dude, they go so overboard with Anna just being like, oh, oh, I stand here OK. I wouldn't even know where to stand 'cause I'm so awkward. And like, it's just, it was like nails on chalkboard for half the movie. I can't, like I just cannot abide them making their lead character such an idiot for so much of the movie. Like I can't, I can't stand these characters, dude. I want Anna and like, she is a badass at points and she has agency and she's smart and you know, like her, her ability to trust people is her downfall.

23:30 But that's also her virtue. And like lean into that, make her a little bit more, I don't know, root horrible because I can't do it with how you're portraying her in the early parts of this movie. Dude, that's that's absolutely wild because Otto was actually probably one of the few characters I liked in this movie. I I'm not totally in disagreement with you that she's kind of a manic Pixie dream Anna, but she's at least an enjoyable one that like there's there's other films where it doesn't work as well, like a Elizabethtown. I I think that it works here. Why do I think it works here?

24:12 I don't know. I think it works. Sometimes that's all you can say is like, yeah, it just worked for me this time around. I do think the extent to which it works is because Kristen Bell does a really good job with the voice acting. I was about to say, I think it's because Kristen Bell gives the character a depth at the end of the film that qualifies the rest of who she is. Like there's character growth by the end of the movie, but like, as she is facing death, you can tell that she begins to move beyond who she once was. And I, I think that's that's why I, I enjoy her as a character. She doesn't stay where she's at. Yeah, I totally agree. I do want to talk about Elsa, but I think in order to do that, we got it.

24:56 We kind of have to start talking about the music of this movie because Elsa's big moment obviously is let it go. And man, let it go is such a it's such a weird topic to talk about. So I kind of want to broaden it and talk about the music in general. This soundtrack went absolutely bananas on the charts in 2013, 2014. Like people were buying this like crazy. And, you know, a few years ago in Kanto, I feel like kind of took off. But it it never got to the level of Frozen. Frozen was the most popular thing I'd seen from Disney since probably The Lion King. And I just to this day, I've been trying to piece together what is it about this soundtrack that appeals to people so much? But I think when you're just watching it in the context of the movie itself and Brad, you've already started talking about this, it's kind of a muddled mess because none of the songs are really designed to specifically address what's happening in the movie.

25:55 No, it's not talking about the story that's being told. It's, I don't know, telling ancillary little bits of information like, I don't know, like we don't need a 4 minute background on this newly formed and life breathed into character Olaf. And we don't need to know his motivation for going on vacation, right? We're in the middle of important things here, guys. Come on. Like, come on. I think that this soundtrack is one of the first ones from Disney that shield away from that old like Howard Ashman style of writing songs. You know, we talked about Beauty and the Beast and how that's our favorite soundtrack.

26:36 And it's because the songs are so specific to what's happening in that movie. Even the the I want song of Belle where she's just I want adventure in the great wide open. That's not like a song you put on the radio. It is very specific to the the musical style of that movie, which is much more kind of classically Broadway and to the characters of that movie. Whereas this movie is like they sat down and they said, we want every single song in this movie to get radio play. We want to be able to put this on the radio. And in order to do that, we're going to write in the vaguest possible terms so that when you're watching the movie, what is coming out of these characters mouths kind of fits.

27:16 Sure. But then you can also listen to it in your car and you can apply it to whatever situation in in life. And I was just talking to somebody about this movie today, and I said that the soundtrack reminds me of like the contemporary Christian worship music of Disney. Like it's kind of about Jesus, but it could also kind of be about my boyfriend if I wanted to, because we're talking about it so vaguely. And I think that that's what really frustrates me here. It's. Yeah. It's good pop music. It's terrible soundtrack to a musical music. Yes, I I mean it. It set the stage for the Greatest Showman. 100% dude like. Yep, every single song in The Greatest Showman was like how can we be the most poppy radio song that the world has ever seen?

28:05 And they all sound the same and they all suck. Well, and The thing is, I don't even care if it's pop music sounding and not classic Broadway. You got to make it address what's happening in the movie and in both of those movies, it's not like the movie almost seems like placeholder visual stuff for a song that's completely separate from the movie. Yeah, and, and even like the opening song is the most classical Broadway vibe in my opinion, and it has nothing to do with the plot, but I don't mind it because the plot hasn't started yet. And so like the first time through, that song feels like it could be the opening song of Beauty and the Beast, because we're talking about the culture, we're talking about the lifestyle of Arendelle and, and what it means to be an Arendellian.

28:58 And, and it feels like it's setting up the mythos of the region. And and then it's never brought up, It's never mentioned. It's never like, you know, you have bells singing about this poor provincial town, and then the poor provincial town takes up pitchforks and torches and goes to kill the local beast like that. Like it all fits together. And here it's like, yeah, we cut ice for a living. And then that has no impact on any of the characters whatsoever. Right, other than a a throwaway joke where the guy's like, I sell ice for a living, what am I supposed to do now, you know? And yeah, but you don't really understand the plight of the people living in the Kingdom. You're you're absolutely right.

29:42 And the music does nothing to support that. And I think because the music is operating in this sort of like vague pop genre, you get music that sounds like early 2000's pop. You get your classic Céline Dion style ballad songs. You get, you know, stuff that sounds like it should be in Moana, like it's it's all over the place. And I it's funny to me because I think some of my favorite songs from the movie are the ones that fit the least with this movie, like the the duet that that they sing at the beginning. Hans and Anna love is an open door. It's great. It's great because it sounds like it's from High School Musical, like it is. It's like 100% dude. Like, yeah, I like the song that the trolls sing, the fixer upper song, 'cause that sounds like it should be in Hercules.

30:27 It's a completely different style of music. It just continually muddles up this movie because this movie has no idea what it wants to be or what it wants to say. Yeah, I I am with you 100%. Man, I need to drink whiskey. Well, hold on, wait. I'm gonna delay your whiskey for two seconds. We've been crapping on this pretty hard. And, like, I'm not gonna give it a high score, but I don't think that there is, like, nothing to enjoy or appreciate about this movie and us both being fans of the musical. Brad, what were your favorite songs in the movie and what did you like about them? Oh man, I what were my favorite songs in the movie?

31:09 I don't know, Bob. I don't like the songs in this movie. Like I I don't I don't want to be a Dick. I just, the only one I really like is probably the opening song and and probably the duet. And the reason I like both of those is that, hey, the opening song feels like it's setting something up even though it doesn't. And the duet sets up the characters. If there's one thing that this script does well, it sets up the character of is it Hans? He's he's the bad guy, Yeah. Yep. I think that it does an incredible job of setting him up as a sincere, good hearted good guy.

31:52 Yeah, like, I do think the twist is really well done because, you know, what I thought was coming was she, You know, she gets stabbed in the heart by her sister. And then she's like, you got to kiss me. It's true love. You know, I thought it was going to be the classic Disney thing of he does kiss her, but it's not really true love. And so then she has to go get whatever the hell his name is to kiss her, Right? But instead they're like, hey, let's make him a murderer. And I'm like, oh, OK, Like I'm on board. Yes, and, and it's so well done because you're right. Like you can feel as an audience member watching the movie that the kiss isn't going to work, but you think that it's going to happen. And, and that's the, that's the incredible bit of writing, like, so I, that I think that's why, to go back to your question about the music, I think that's why I like the love is an open door because it really sets up that childlike teenager first crush, first love vibe.

32:51 And, and once again that, you know, going back to Anna, like, I think that's why I like her is because she starts off as that 1516 year old girl who is just madly in love with the first set of beautiful eyes that she sees. And, and, and he seemingly is the same way. And I I like that it's well done. All right, man, let's break for whiskey. Let's let's cool our jets a little bit, then we'll come back and talk about more things we dislike about the movie Frozen. What do you say? Let's get to it. All right, so today we are checking out Ezra Brooks Distillers Collection.

33:32 This is a high rye bourbon whiskey from Lux Roe Distillery. This is, I believe, our 4th Ezra Brooks product that we've tried on the show. We've tried Ezra Brooks, we've tried Ezra Brooks 99, we've tried Old Ezra 7 year, and now we're trying the Distillers Collection. It follows roughly the same pattern as their weeded bourbon Lion Rebel, which we really, really love. I've always been a little bit more mixed to muted on Ezra Brooks, Brad, and it might just be my own preference for I like weeded bourbon better than high rye bourbon. But I'm really hoping that this distillers collection nails down for me what the flavor profile of Ezra Brooks is supposed to, because for me, Rebel Distillers collection, I think is the best thing in that entire line. Oh bro, far far in a way.

34:20 Rebels Distillers collection is mind blowingly good. I I like if there's a reason to go down to the Kentucky Bourbon Festival every year, it might be just to buy that for what, 60-70 dollars usually? Yeah. It's it's such good stuff, man. It's really, really good. And so the distillers collection is this interesting thing that Lux Rd. does, which is a super hyper small batch release. They release it every few weeks, but the batches are like on the website it says 30 to 40 cases of whiskey. So we're talking like only a couple barrels Max depending on how old the whiskey is. It is a blend that's made-up of hand selected barrels that are chosen either by the master distiller or specifically appointed employees, you know, at Lux Row. So it's pretty cool that they they blend them that frequently. They release them that frequently. This one is clocking in at 107 proof, which I think is like a perfect proof point.

35:20 Brad, I don't want to talk too much more about it because I'm excited to dive in and see what this brings about for us in terms of how we evaluate this brand overall. So I'm drinking it live. Brad, you've had it before. Why don't you kick us off with your nosing notes? As I got into the nose on this one, the the thing that popped out to me right away and stuck with me after multiple nosings, it just really came across astringent to me. The longer I stuck with it, the more I got some caramel, there's some black pepper, there was some apple notes coming through almost like a a red apple. It's interesting and unique, but I I couldn't get away from that astringency so I'm I'm going to give it a 6 1/2. I got most of the same notes you did, but I like it a lot better. I think the very first thing I noticed was like pink bubble gum and then that led directly into Coca-Cola, but it was Coca-Cola with like a ton of black pepper, like like ground right into it. Like an Olive Garden server just grinded pepper in my Coke. It was pretty spicy and I liked that to go with that sort of bubble gum thing.

36:29 I got a ton of red apple peel on the very back end. So it's got this nice kind of like, I don't know, it's, it's not quite apple pie. It's a lot spicier than that. And I'm, I'm intrigued by where it's going to go. I'm going to give it a 7.5 on the nose. I think that the the palate helps it out a little bit. It it got a little bit spicier. There's some clove, the caramel comes through, the apple turns into like a a really nice tart apple vibe that like this is a really interesting whiskey that has good solid flavors coming through. I'm going to give it a 7 out of 10 here. Yeah, I think I'm pretty much with you, man. I I like this a lot. There is definitely some Coca-Cola notes right up front and then you're kind of overwhelmed with the sweetness of it.

37:15 It gets really like vanilla extract kind of heavy for me to the point where I think like the on the back of the pallet it might. My palate was almost fighting against it. It was like, oh, this is like sickly sweet, but it has a nice layer of spice underneath it. The black pepper definitely shines through. The ethanol comes through on the back end of the pallet. I thought it was going to be like mind blowingly good from the front of the pallet and then it got a really kind of bitter herbal quality to it at the back that kind of kind of soured me on the whole experience. I went from I, I was going to give it like an 8 1/2 or a nine down to I, I don't know, I guess I'll give it A7, But I, I feel pretty strongly that my finish score is not even going to be that high, Brad.

38:01 Yeah, and I, I think that I'm with you, man. The the finish falls off for me. It doesn't last long enough, It stays peppery. The oak starts to come through. 6 out of 10 here. Yeah, same thing, man. It's like overly spicy and overly aggressive and overly bitter at the same time to the point like, and I, I hate to say this 'cause I'm gonna make it sound like I'm being dramatic. I almost had like a little bit of a, not quite a gag reflex, but something close to that, you know what I mean? Like, oh, this is this is very bitter, almost like when you leave a a pill in your mouth for too long and the taste of the medicine starts to go through that coating.

38:43 Yeah, not my favorite man. I'm gonna give it a 5 1/2 on the finish. And that really tanks my balance score because I thought the nose and the taste were pretty well balanced. But it get, it got really, really herbal and almost medicinal for me on the back. I think I'm just gonna give it a, let's call it a 6 1/2 on the balance. Yeah, I, I'm at a six on the balance, Bob, that there's just nothing to write home about here, unfortunately. I, I really wanted to like this. I, I think the interesting thing is that when it comes to value, this is only sitting at $35 and I, I want to give it a decent score, but I don't know, even at $35, Bob, I don't know if this is a good value. Yeah, it's hard to say, man, because it's, again, it's a blend of whiskeys, but it's got to be, I don't know, about seven years old, six to seven years old probably. It's 107 proof.

39:40 It's super small batch. Like man I it's hard to not recommend this at $35 if you like very high rye bourbons because I would give the Rebel A10 out of 10 on value. The value is OK here, the whiskey itself is not. So that puts me in a weird spot. I think even if you shelled out the money for this and then didn't like it, I don't feel like you'd be that mad 'cause you didn't shell out that much money. And I think that's why I'm going to give it like above average on the value. I'll give it a 6.5 with the caveat that I I just don't like this whiskey that much. Brad. Yeah, I I'm at a 5 out of 10, Bob.

40:22 Oof. I I really didn't enjoy this enough to give it a good score. I there's way too many whiskeys I like at 2025 thirty, $35 for me to give this a high score. Yeah, yeah. And it's unfortunate because the last two products we've had on the show from Lux Row have not been our favorites, but we've also been giving them like years worth of free Rebel publicity. So like once again, let me say, go buy Rebel Distillers Collection. It is phenomenal at a $40 price tag. I'm coming out on this one to a 33 out of 50. Brad, where are you falling on this? 30.5. Oh, 30.5.

41:03 OK, so that takes us to a 31.75 or a 63.5 out of 100. That's not a very high score. I'm not going to recommend this one. It's not because it's an exorbitant price. I actually think it it's more than fairly priced in a vacuum. I just don't think the whiskey's quite up to par for what I have come to expect from Lux Row. Agreed. Yeah, I, I, I want to give this a good score. I'm just rating it on the juice inside the bottle and it's just not quite up to snuff. All right. Well, man, we we are just Downers today, Brad. Yeah. Crapping on the movie? It's not Whiskey Nation.

41:46 Liking the whiskey man. What a way to celebrate our 250th episode. Let's get back into talking about Frozen Brad. I'm so excited, Bob. Let's get to it. All right, everybody, That was Ezra Brooks Distillers Collection. You know what I was thinking about, Bob. What's that, Brad? At the end of the day, people on the Internet love complaining so who knows, this might be like our highest rated episode ever. Can you believe that this is the 250th first regular? Well, I mean, it's it's not even the 250th movie. This is like probably our 270th movie when you consider all the bad movie bonuses and everything else Cruise misses that we've done.

42:35 Thanksgiving. But man, Brad 250, we made it here. Yeah, we've done a lot. I My movie knowledge has come such a long way. I'm pretty sure isn't that like a direct Dwight Schrute quote when he's like I love movies I've seen over 250 of them. I think that is actually. That's that's you now, man. Oh, that is me now I was thinking about it, I I feel like I referenced Fargo a lot. It's a movie that pops up in my head. I feel like I need to institute a new segment called like 6° of Fargo where I take any movie that we watch and walk it back to Fargo somehow and it's always going to end up with somebody in a wood chipper.

43:21 Perfect. I'm I'm on board man. Institute it today. Yeah, the entire writing team for Frozen. Into the wood chipper. Fargoed. All right dude, it's time for our actual game, which we call 2 facts and a falsehood. Brad is going to try to stump your ball. Two are right and what is wrong? 2 facts and a falsehood. Two Facts and a falsehood is the part of the show where Brad presents me with three items about the making of this movie. All of them are presented as fact. One of them is a complete falsehood. Brad, I am sitting at 15 and 10 on the season.

44:02 I'm on a losing streak here, man. I think I've lost three of my last five. This is not good. It's great. In fact, not good. Great. I'm loving it. I want my 500 season locked up, man, and I hope that it happens today. But I'm gonna be honest with you, Brad. I did not research the making of this film at all. What are you gonna do? If you end up at 15 and 17, I don't know that that's that would be the most the most Cleveland ending to a season for you. Including today's episode, there are 7 two facts and a falsehoods left. So if I go oh and seven, I deserve it. You do. All right, dude. Well, let's see if you can start me on that streak today. Hit me with your two facts and a falsehood. Fact #1 The characters of Hans, Kristoff, Anna and Sven are a reference to Hans Christian Andersen, the author of Snendronagen the Snow Queen, which is the inspiration for Frozen.

45:01 Fact #2 In early designs, the giant snow monster that Elsa creates is a big version of Olaf who addressed him as little brother, but it was later decided that although it was cute and funny, it looked a bit dumb. As opposed to what they actually, I'm sorry, I'm eating my doughnut now, this is ridiculous. As opposed to what they actually made. That thing looked terrible. I couldn't believe that was 2014 graphics. Fact #3 Bob The CGI team at Disney created a custom algorithm for Frozen called Blizzard, which helped create the snow and ice magic used throughout the film. I will say good job on the snow and ice magic. Like I have a lot of complaints about the way this movie is animated, but the snow and ice very good. Brad, you got me today, dude.

45:51 I have no idea. They all sound true. Remind me what number one was again? Oh, grounds. Christian Andersen Hans Christian Andersen See See what they did there? That's the falsehood. That sounds too much like a Brad G creation. I'm going to say number one. Number one's the falsehood. Number one is not the falsehood. Robert, you sounded too proud of yourself. You sounded like I totally wrote this and I'm going to be like you get. It. Wow, these writers really do belong in the wood chipper.

46:32 They really do. Fact #2 is true as well. They originally designed a giant Olaf. I would have preferred that. Really, you could have had a you could have had a duet with them as like a post credits scene of them both singing about being in summer. Together, but the giant one has like a really low bass voice, you know? Yes. OK so Blizzard is not a thing that was created. As soon as you said you liked the ice magic in the movie, I was like, I got it. I just, I got it so good. Damn. All right. I'm at 15 and 11 now on the season. The streak continues. That's two losses in a row.

47:15 Oh man, don't call it a comeback, Bob. All right, let's talk a little bit about that animation quality because Brad, one thing that I really noticed, especially coming off of consecutive weeks of Pixar films a few weeks ago, Up and Toy Story 3 is that Disney at this point, you know, they've acquired Pixar, but Pixar still operates independently as its own production studio. And we have raved, especially with Toy Story 3, about just the the depth of field and how incredibly intricately textured everything is, even when it's not in focus in a Pixar film. There's just it's mind blowing. This movie you can see the cheats happening and I was really shocked at even like even characters in the foreground. The animation looks like what you would get on a really well produced Disney plus show now.

48:07 Like it looks like ATV show. And there were multiple scenes like the the dance hall scene at her coronation where they do the thing that they used to do with hand drawn Disney where they would put the characters in the foreground in focus and everybody in the background out of focus. But it was a way of hiding that they just more crudely animated those characters. And they did it here like in in computer animation, those characters were more crappily rendered than the other characters in the movie. And that's not to say that like you can't do that, obviously Disney's done it for decades. But I think it showed the the chasm between how well rendered everything is in a Pixar movie versus what they did here with Frozen.

48:51 And the other thing for me was how bland the color palette was throughout the movie. Like, it it's one thing to be chasing Elsa off in the snowy wilderness and like, yeah, everything is snowy and you have some green, you know, pine trees. Like, you're not going to have a lot of colours. That's OK. It's even better, in fact, to have that blend of a pallet if the ball that they have at the start that you just mentioned is a cacophony of beautiful bright colours. Like tell me that the Be our Guest scene from from beauty and the beast doesn't have a billion more colors than the ball scene in this movie. Like everything is brown and green and blue and it's all drab and just nothing pops in this movie. Even even on his hair.

49:43 She's supposed to be this like fiery redhead and even her hair doesn't have like a vibrancy to it that that should like show what her character is like. I I don't for me the colour palette on this film just irked me through I. Think a good analogue is like Pixar made a movie a few years after this, I believe after this called Brave, which is set in Scotland. And it's, it's a similar kind of palette, like they're, they're both going for the like Kingdom of Rohan thing in, in those movies. And it's accurate to the period, right? But the way they render the red hair in Brave, the way they render those earthy greens, it's just so much more vibrant than what they're doing here. I completely agree with you man.

50:25 Yeah, there, there. Hey, Bob, this movie sucks. It sucks so bad. Can I go and it? Go ahead. Sorry. Keep. Yeah, go ahead. Keep going. Can I go on my let it go rant now? I hate that song. Yes, I mean, yeah, that song, I called it a Céline Dion song because it was as ever present as my heart will go on for a number of years there. But you mentioned Beauty and the Beast a little while ago. And I think that one of my main issues with this movie is that it tries to do Beauty and the Beast, but it it neglects to understand what made Beauty and the Beast work so well. Like Belle is your main character in Beauty and the Beast, and she helps the beast understand who he really is. To overcome the obstacles.

51:16 She goes on her own journey of growth. And and so like the beast, I'm sorry, the Belle TA Anna thing, that comparison, they, they track pretty well together. Where this movie really fumbles things is in making Elsa have to follow the path of quote UN quote, the beast. Like, she's the one who is burdened with this thing that's seen as a curse. She's the one that shuts herself up in her own castle. And what the movie seems to imply is like she has an obstacle to overcome. She needs to learn something about herself. But then the movie really waffles back and forth on whether she actually is a flawed person or if everybody else around her is flawed. And so therefore she doesn't actually grow or change anything.

52:01 And it makes no sense when you when you bring the song, let it go into the equation. Like I'm gonna interrupt. Please do Please do. We can all agree that her parents are the most flawed people in the movie, whether or not anybody else is flawed. We can all agree that her parents suck 'cause they are the reason this entire movie happens. Yeah. Never before have I said like, wow, those people deserve to die at sea, Yeah. I I mean, yeah, I thought it. Like yeah, and I think that like the crazy thing about the the 1st 25 ish minutes of the movie here are like the most compelling like dramatic tension that comes in that part of the movie is the realization like everyone finds out that she is the beast quote UN quote right? Like once her powers get revealed and everything hits the fan, it's like, oh, this is gonna get to some really interesting places.

53:02 This is gonna go into Gaston Beauty and the Beast territory. They're gonna chase her off. And then it kind of just like, hey, first of all, it buries the lead. Like we don't get to that for 1/2 hour. But then it's immediately the next time we see Elsa, she's walking up the mountain and she's singing Let It Go. And this song Let It Go is just it's so frustrating, dude, because it's presented as this, this anthem of liberation. Like I'm so glad to be free of all of their expectations. I don't care what they're going to say. Let the storm rage on. Like I'm going to be who I am.

53:42 It's very similar to this is me from the greatest showman. However, like she's she's happy to be free from all of their expectations. But like she's only been queen for like 6 hours. Like they have no expectations of her. They don't they, they didn't know this about her. They're not like hunting her down to kill her. They, they got scared and she ran off, but they got scared for a reason. Like she is injuring many people on accident with these powers that she cannot control. It's supposed to be this metaphor. And I think it was interpreted, you know, culturally as a metaphor because it's so vague for how young women in our society are kind of boxed in and expected to act a certain way and expected to kind of keep their emotions at Bay. I know this character of Elsa has been like really championed as like a queer icon.

54:38 There's a very funny SNL sketch where they talk about how gay Elsa is. Like, I understand all that. But like in the context of the movie, she's, you know, she's saying like we we need to let go of all these expectations, but it gets completely undermined by what she's actually doing. Like, if she's if she's shaking off the constraints of society and the way that she's choosing to do that is like, I'm not going to hide my powers anymore. I'm going to be who I'm supposed to be. The cold doesn't bother me. Then like, why are you still hiding in the woods? Why are you building a castle for yourself in seclusion? None of it makes any sense. And then like, go ahead. You know how you make the song work? Keep the parents alive. Or make it like make it the song she sings at the end of the movie where she's finally sure of these expect like she comes back at the end of the movie because she has literally almost killed her own sister.

55:31 And then like, first of all, magically now she can control her powers. Like, what the hell is that about? Are we to expect that you you aren't gonna accidentally kill someone now? Here's here's the thing, if Let it Go is sung as a response to Anna's love, setting her free from the expectations of their parents. Like I, I mean, I, I don't know if you've had this experience with your siblings, Bob, but at a certain point in your relationship with your siblings, you realize, oh, hey, like we're on the same team. And like, mom and dad aren't always right. And like, if they explored that relationship and the, you know, the parents stay alive and and initially Elsa runs away and, you know, maybe she sings let it go as in like a giant FU to the parents and then Anna's love. And like, yeah, our our parents were wrong. They they treated you poorly.

56:27 I but please come back because I love you and we can be on a team and I like. Which I think is what they're intending, but it gets so lost in the sauce here. Yes, Yep. I think that's actually 100% what they're intending. Because like, she is trying to say, I'm not going to hide any longer. Mom and dad told me to conceal it. I can't do that. Like I can't control this anymore. I can't hold it back anymore. That's like part of the song, but it's sung as a theme of empowerment. And it's not because she's still like in a really in a state of disequilibrium, right. And so she's still hiding in the woods. She's still afraid. She doesn't want to face the reality of the the harm that she's caused. And at the end of the movie, she becomes a much more complete, healthy, emotional person. But if that's the case, then what they're saying is like, she went from totally messed up to coping's mechanism, which is let it go to health.

57:20 But but if that's true, then everything she said in the song, Let it go, she was saying from a place of unhealthiness. And therefore it's not a song of empowerment. You know what I mean? Like it. I just think it really wants to have it both ways and it can't do that. Yeah, yeah, it wants its cake and to eat it too. But at the end of the day, it's moldy cake and like nobody should be eating that cake. And, and I think that's, I think that's the problem with the messaging here. It's speaking a song. It's speaking a message of empowerment to people being immature and unhealthy and making decisions out of a place of unhealth. And and like that is not good for any human being. Like I like, I have no qualms saying that the way that she quote UN quote lets it go is is poorly done and it's not good for her and it doesn't lead to a good place. Right.

58:19 And I don't think the movie wants to present, like, maybe the writers didn't want to present that as the solution. But when you make that the cornerstone song of your movie and you write the song in such a way that it can be vaguely applied to any young person's life who may be listening to that song on the radio, then it really loses the meaning that, hey, she's actually not in a good place when she's singing this as her anthem. And and so, like, I just feel like you need that context in the movie. To your point, it wants to have its cake and eat it too. I've been rambling, Brad. You know, I think maybe it's just time for us to switch over into let's make it a double on this movie so we can talk about other films besides Frozen.

59:01 We're near the end of the episodes of Things, listening to the film and Whiskey Show. Let's pair another film with this one, even if it's struggling. It's a final segment of the day. Now let's make it a double. I haven't even come close to thinking about let's make it a double Bob. Let's Make It a double is the part of the show where we pick a movie to pair up with this one to make the perfect double feature? Would you like me to go first, Brad? Yeah, go for it. I'm going to pair this with a movie that I recently came to find out has just come out on Netflix. It's a movie about a a Kingdom, a once mighty Kingdom that is fighting against a monstrous creation with what seems to be magical powers that is keeping them at Bay. Pressing and suppressing them in the way that those people rise up and the way that they overcome this monster by ultimately sinking it to the depths of the sea and and encasing it in ice.

59:57 Similar to the story of Elsa. And that is a movie called Godzilla -1 Please go watch that instead of Frozen. It is so good. Oh, that's really funny. It's so good. Go watch Godzilla -1 folks, I. I'm going to go watch it, Bob. I'm going to go watch it. Maybe tonight, we'll see. I might fall asleep. I think that's a great pairing, Bob. I wish Godzilla would just rip through Arendelle halfway through this movie. Go ahead. Sorry, I'm going to pair this movie with a film about a protagonist who just wants to live a simple life, who doesn't want the pressures of society weighing down on him, who wants to be married and experience the joys of what it means to be a human but is forced upon him a different life.

1:00:52 I'm going to pair this movie. This is This is easily the most ridiculous pairing I will ever give on this podcast. I'm going to pair this movie with Braveheart, Bob and. Appropriately drab color palette combat. That's thank you. I I was kind of going for that. OK, let me finish my doughnut. Sorry. How's your how's your doughnut? It's. Gone now. I've been trying to eat it like in in peace and quiet but I've been talking so much this. Episode I was gonna say man, this if we had a rabid fan base that kept track of statistics for our podcast, I think this will easily be the highest percentage of.

1:01:32 Bob And it's so weird because I don't like I don't feel so strongly that I had to say XY and Z. But it's that weird alchemy of I put thought into why I don't like this movie and you don't like this movie so much that you're like, I refuse to give this movie any more thought. And so then. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I gave lots of deep thoughts on this. I talked about color palette and the songs and all sorts of things. Robert. You listen, you had some great points. They just only took up like 7 minutes of audio in our in our hours long podcast. I'm just. A little more succinct than you, that's. That's very true. That's the fatal flaw of me. OK, so Brad, let's give this movie some final scores.

1:02:16 I think that for all of the faults of this movie, it is not like an inept movie. Like they're like, the animation is good enough and the songs are good enough. Part of my visceral reaction is this took off in a way that better movies, more deserving movies should have taken off. And it's always kind of pissed me off. That's not really the fault of the movie itself. Like if this had come out and made a couple 100 million and made its money back, sure, great. It made like a billion dollars. Everyone loved this movie and it's it's kind of like the greatest Showman where I'm like, do you people understand how not good this is?

1:02:56 Like what's going on America? I think when I try to get a hold of myself at the end of the day, this is like a 5 1/2 movie. I probably hate it more than the five and a half. I want it to be like a 3 1/2 but it's like it is just mediocre enough to get a 5 1/2. Oh, Bob, the five and a half is a really high score for this movie. It's. Not that bad, dude. I'll give it a four and a half. I I can't get, I can't bring myself to give this movie A5. Here's the thing. I I'm going to say something nice about the movie. Like I actually got a little bit emotional at the end.

1:03:39 I I think that the Blizzard as they're running across the lake with the frozen ships and Olaf or not Olaf Kristoff, who we didn't even talk about Kristoff and his his gay reindeer. Kristoff, played by Jonathan Groff, one of the more famous, you know, Broadway actors of the last decade. You would know him, Brad, as the King in Hamilton. I do know him. He is a fantastic actor. I mean, he's been in a ton of stuff. I had no idea that was him until this time around. I saw it on IMDb. So yes, let's give a shout out to Kristoff. Yes, I want to get finish your point please. I I was just going to say, like, I was emotionally moved at the end of the film.

1:04:22 Like the the through line of Anna's love for Elsa is powerful and meaningful and the idea that a story would end where true Love's kiss is actually, you know, well, and I like that they phrase it differently, that they say like an act of true love and everybody goes, oh, true Love's kiss and and it turns out to be an act of self sacrificial love. Like, I I am all about that great ending to the film, but man, it's really rough getting there. Yeah, really, really bad this. Could have been a really good movie if they had just clarified their intentions with it. They wanted to be 100 things and it can't be all those things. That is what makes me so angry about this movie is that it could have been so much and it wasn't and. It like.

1:05:16 I don't know, I, I feel like that's Disney's problem is that it gets caught up in trying to be so many different things. Like I don't know, you, you hear about films that kind of balloon out of control and I feel like Disney as a studio has ballooned out of control where it's like, you know, I, who knows? I don't know the behind the scenes, like was the the music team, the sound team not in enough conversation with the animation team and the scripting team to like make everything match up well enough? I like, I don't know, but there is so many mixed messages going on in this movie that it just, I can't give it a good score. Bob.

1:05:56 I will say a couple nice things as well. The the Big Summer blowout guy is my favorite character in the whole movie. He's freaking hilarious. The guy in the in the little like big summer Blowout, he's also out. I also, you know, a few weeks ago you talked about how Robin Williams in night at the Museum provided you or no, it was Dick Van Dyke provided you with a quote that you always say, which is moving on, moving on. Olaf in this movie provided me with a quote that I say a lot, which is when he turns around and looks at the giant abominable snowman and says, oh, hey, we were just talking about you. All good things, all good things. I say all good things a lot.

1:06:38 I just think it's really funny. That one always makes me laugh. But yeah, man, apart from those few moments, this was this was not an enjoyable watch for me. Folks. Are we too harsh on Frozen? Are our hearts frozen? Do they need to be thought out towards this film? You can let us know what you think of this movie and its songs and all of the merchandise that came out of it by finding us on social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tiktok and YouTube at Film Whiskey. Or you can join the conversation on Discord. We will be trash. I'm going to be trashing Frozen tonight. You can go back and read the conversation when this when this episode comes out. But man, join the conversation to Discord. You can find a link to it at the end of every single one of our show notes.

1:07:23 Well, while Brad is rage posting, I will be preparing for next week, which is perhaps the most interesting episode we're going to get for the remainder of this season. A movie that came out of nowhere to dominate the box office. And it is once again, because I don't think Americans interpreted it correctly, 2014's Clint Eastwood film American Sniper. So we'll see you next week with Bradley Cooper, but until then, I'm Bob Book. I'm Brad G. And we'll see you next time.