Disney seems to be on a roll when it comes to retelling the princess journey or at the most, at least try. Hot on the heels of their 2013 hit, Frozen, Walt Disney Animation returns to recreate the same formula and success with Moana.
With little to leave to imagination, they nail it with the ingredients that now are a staple for most, if not all, of Disney’s productions. The empowering female centric story that no longer stresses on romance. Like every successful Disney film, it’s a musical. A musical that’s helmed by one of the biggest names going around Broadway right now.
“For a Disney film, Moana is surprisingly self aware. This film addresses the princess trope and mocks it. There’s a lot of love in this film and no prince among the plenty of fish in the sea. That’s progress.”
This is a story about the journey of a Polynesian island girl who is raised to become the leader of her people, by virtue of being the chief’s daughter. Moana (voiced by Auli’i Cravalho) however has always had a connection with the ocean and grew up listening to her grandmother’s tales about how shape-shifting demigod Maui brought a curse to the islands of the world by stealing the ancient Heart of Te Fiti, which grants the power of creation. This is dismissed as fiction. Moana though can’t ignore the signs when the islands starts to show signs of an impending ecological disaster.
The coconuts fail to harvest and there’s no fish in the vicinity of the island, Moana decides to voyage, against her father’s wishes to find the exiled Maui (Dwayne Johnson) and deliver him across the sea to return that the heart that he stole a millennium ago and in that journey find out who she was really meant to be.
Getting into it, it’s easy to identify this animated family film as something you’d expect from the Disney camp to do. Telltale signs include, a strong female lead, amazing score and musical numbers and your token talking creatures, in this case, is a narcissistic hermit crab (Jemaine Clement.) with David Bowie esque charm that changes the tone in the film in classy devilish way.
It’s also surprisingly self aware. In an interaction that plays out between Maui and Moana. Maui claims that Moana is and acts like a princess. She seems the type, after all, she’s an impressionable girl on a path who wears a pretty dress and even has an animal sidekick (A very annoying chicken) It’s something that’s very unlike Disney but very refreshing. Moana counters this by saying that she’s not a princess but a daughter of a chief. “Same Difference” claims Maui. the fact that Disney is able to make jokes at the princess stereotype is pretty admirable. It also deals with death in the most beautiful way and how it’s important that it’s not just the destination but the journey which you take.
Why this movie works on so many levels for most audiences is because of its rich and beautiful tribute to the Polynesian culture. Its music, from the brainchild of Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Disney composer veteran Mark Mancina, and Samoan musician Opetaia Foa’i who developed the variety of pieces inspired by Oceanic music. Johnson fits perfectly with Maui who coincidentally is of Polynesian descent and brings his animated charm to this animation.
