Review of Raya and the Last Dragon (2021) by Thunderboltway — 09 Mar 2021

Pros: Cool Monsters. Pretty set pieces and some neat fantasy creatures. Awkwafina’ s dragon form is unusual and impossible to take your eyes off of. Dragon-shaped kingdom: interesting. Occasional nice use of blue, green, and purple (cool). Maybe the best CG water I’ve seen? Music by James Newton Howard is quite good. Adequately dark climax. The evil plague sweeping the land is maybe a little like Facebook, which is clever.

Cons: 2/3 of the film is clunky exposition. The film would have been stronger without most of it. 9 year olds with 30 year old voice actors. Tran is a talented orator, very Shakespearean, but she doesn’t sound like a teenager. Very distracting and unconvincing voice performances. Awkwafina needs to lay off the cigs. Way too much plot, way too little audience interest in said plot, way too many paper-thin cutesy sidekick characters (ten?). Painfully unfunny. Can’t pull off its own faux-tough, faux-Kung fu, faux-lesbian love story with zero romance and zero stakes and zero timer. Absolutely horrendous storytelling and morality. While it’s nice to see Disney try something new, they fail, backpedal, and it can be a shame to see Disney forget how to Disney.

Would have garnered a five for the visuals alone if it weren’t for the inclusion of quite possibly the worst animated short I’ve ever seen (Us Again) before the film. This double feature literally gave me a headache due to all the cringe.