Review of Raya and the Last Dragon (2021) by Aaronbake322 — 19 Jan 2022

Raya and the Last Dragon is a movie that wants so very badly to be great. It's got great visuals, a great score, some enjoyable side characters, and is pretty edgy at times... So why is it so mediocre?

While the side characters are kinda fun, they're pretty underdeveloped. There's a ton of cringe-worthy "modern" talk that feels out of a place for a movie set in ancient Southeast Asia, Sisu is a major tone-killer that's arguably worse than Olaf in Frozen II, and the attempt at the trust message is just so messy and heavy handed that it tanks the movie as a whole. I never felt like the rival girl deserved a chance at redemption because she did literally nothing to show that she deserved it.

I've seen worse, it's not even within Disney's bottom 10 animated movies, but I don't think I'm ever gonna watch it again.