Idina Menzel raises eyebrows with holiday-themed music video

Announced by the old-fashioned ding of a gleaming brass elevator, the holiday season is here -- or, at least, a music video preview of it. On Monday, Idina Menzel -- of “Glee” (2009 - present) and “Frozen” (2013) fame -- uploaded her rendition of “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” to her YouTube channel. The video’s audio track is off her Oct. 14 album, “Holiday Wishes.” The song -- a holiday duet sung between two lovers, one desperately pleading for just a little more time together, the other on the point of leaving -- features a collaboration between Menzel and multi-genre crooner Michael Bublé. But in the music video, while Menzel and Bublé still do all the singing, grade-school children make up the entire cast, lip syncing and acting out the words to “Baby It’s Cold Outside.”(The only exception to this are Menzel and Bublé's brief, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameos.)

As they whirl across polished marble floors, saunter up a grand staircase and dance an adorably awkward box step, lead actors Emily Carey and Harry Collett tell the light-hearted love story of a precocious bellhop who falls in love with a pearl-draped young girl visiting his hotel.

A clear publicity ploy by Menzel to boost sales for “Holiday Wishes,” Carey and Collett’s youthful reenactment is nevertheless a fresh take on the 1940s classic, and one that’s received mixed reviews. Billboard called the video “charming” while Entertainment Weekly described the kids’ lip syncing as “creepy” and “unsettling.” Others have expressed concern over the message of the song itself. In particular, critics object to the fact that the lover who is being “persuaded” to stay -- traditionally sung by a woman -- is ignored after she repeatedly rebuffs her companion and then is plied with alcohol. The lyric “Say, what's in this drink?” even prompted Salon magazine to label “Baby It’s Cold Outside” a “date-rape anthem.”

Notably and somewhat thankfully, the lyrics have been made a bit more kid-friendly for the video adaptation. A “drink” becomes a “soda-pop,” and the line that troubled Salon writer Stephen Deusner has been rephrased: “Say, was that a wink?” Somehow, though, “Gosh, your lips look delicious,” made it through -- and no, there’s nothing weirder that watching a nine-year-old “sing” those words.

Whether or not audiences are disturbed or charmed by what they see, they’re still watching. Currently, Menzel’s video has over 1 million views, and numbers continue to climb as temperatures drop and Thanksgiving inches closer. Regardless of public opinion, one thing seems clear: After the year of semi-irrelevance that Menzel has suffered since “Frozen” hit theaters, and despite relatively sluggish sales on her new album, the Broadway star has finally made it home for the holidays.