Review of Moana (2016) by Reece L — 13 Jul 2017

Moana is a Disney picture that goes back to Disney's roots with an animated musical. It introduces a brand new actress and puts together what it would be like if Lilo and Stitch and Frozen were mixed together. This movie was getting amazing reviews, and I was wondering what all the buzz was about. So I watched it, and - eh. It was good. The tomato meter surprised me. It was good, not great.

So there's a lot of very different things that are good about this movie. Don't get me wrong, I like this one. The story is good. It's nothing very moving or phenomenal. However, the story was also something I didn't like. It branches out on a lot of things and then just cuts the branch. It starts something that could have great emotional depth and just doesn't really go into it. An example is Maui's backstory. This could have done a lot for the character and helped fuel the story. Nonetheless, the character development in this is great. Maui is the one who caused all the problems in the first place, but he ends up being a character we like. The musical numbers are also good. I don't know how much I can award for music, but the musical performances were great, as well as vocal performances from Dwayne Johnson and Auli'i Cravalho who do good in both singing and acting.

One of the other good and bad things in this movie is the animation. I don't really care for or notice animation very much, but the animation in this movie was very realistic. However, it also sometimes felt lazy. A lot of the characters looked very similar to the main ones, and it felt like Maui could only change in too a few animals because they couldn't animate any more. The animation is still impressive though. There's also a bit of humor in this movie. While some of it was funny, some of it felt unnecessary. An example: there's a joke where Dwayne Johnson's character uses the chicken to carve something and says, "it's called Twitter." This just didn't feel necessary. One of my favorite things involving the humor though, was the parodying of Disney tropes. I'll quote the movie again. Maui says, "if you have an animal sidekick, your a princess," or something along those lines. Another good quote is again from Maui. "If you start singing, I'm gonna throw up." It really showed that this movie is self aware. The ending is also satisfying and smart.

Overall, this movie is good. It's thoroughally entertaining and with a good enough script, featuring great performances, musical numbers, and animation, although it's humor is sometimes scattershot and it doesn't always pursue certain story lines that it just can't fit in its hour and a half runtime. Kids and Disney fans will love it!