Futari wa Precure Max Heart The Movie 2: Yukizora no Tomodachi
Well, that was definitely more fun than the first movie.
Winter settings make everything better (this is a fact), so this movie, which featured snow, skiing, snow, snowboarding, snow, evil snowmen, snow, and more snow, could only really be a success. Even the main conflict was "warmth versus cold", with the enemies being a pair of creepy ice dudes who want to suck all the warmth out of the world by eliminating a newborn phoenix. How rude.
Where the first movie's story was somewhat lacking in emotional investment, basically amounting to "go to new world, recover stolen artifact from villain, the end", this movie had a much more satisfying story arc, centring around Honoka and Nagisa having a silly fight, falling out, and then making up over the course of the movie. Not exactly the most unique plotline ever, but it was nicely executed, complete with a Snow Queen-esque segment partway through where the villains corrupted the Cures' hearts with ice and made them fight each other.
The villains, being a duo themselves, also formed a parallel with the Cures, outmatching them towards the beginning of the movie when the Cures were still in falling-out mode, but ultimately falling out themselves towards the end and losing to the Cures' superior POWER OF FRIENDSHIP.
Also there was a sub-plot about Nagisa learning to snowboard. A little contrived, perhaps, that the POWER OF SNOWBOARDING would just happen to prove invaluable in the final scene (and I have no idea how the Cures managed to snowboard using a block of ice - you'd think they would slip straight off...) but the tried-and-tested cycle of failing embarrassingly at first, only to have a revelation when it mattered the most and finally master the skill, was certainly satisfying.
Hikari was amusingly useless in battle in this movie. I think the only actual attack she used was a quick HEARTIEL ACTION against the snowman Zakenna right at the start. (That was a pretty nice Zakenna battle, incidentally.) She then spent most of the rest of the movie just running away from the bad guys. Her powers as Queen did prove pivotal after the villains were defeated, though, to revive the dying phoenix and restore warmth to the world, so I guess there's that.
Oh, and the Cures' endgame power-up this time, while reminiscent of the first movie's in that it allowed them to fly, was clearly superior because it wasn't just a lazy palette-swap. They had, like, longer and shinier hair, and feathery bits on their costumes and stuff. Come to think of it, I seem to recall hearing that one of the Cures in Splash Star is bird-themed. Birds are pretty cool.
So yeah, a fun movie overall. My only regret is that even though the Cures and friends were all staying at a hot spring resort, the only character we got to actually see in the hot springs was Fuji-P. CURSE YOU TOEI!