I have been a bad partner honestly…My partner has been begging me on and off to watch ‘Moana’ with her for the better part fo 7 years…and for one reason or another, we’ve just never been able to get it lined up…But today? we had a christmas lock in. all day in front of the box playing video games, watching TV and movies and consuming a large volume of our fridge…and NOW is the time for ‘Moana’.
…And I kind of feel bad that I didnt really ‘like’ it…like, dont get me wrong! its good! VERY well made, impressive animation, decent casting, fun moments…But it just…didnt really resonate with me.
The plot revolves around the titual Moana, an island girl who lives on an island with islanders whos dad is the island chief and who has been brought up to want to live on the island because eventually she’ll run the island and the island is a tropical paradise and its set on an island…island.
But Moana doesnt WANT to be an island (island) girl! She wants to explore beyond the reef! visit strange and exotic places and while she wants to make her family proud and continue the tradition of running the island and its subjects…She has grander plans.
And then several things happen very quickly. The island starts to…well…basically begin to rot, all the fish vanish and the coconut supply goes rotten. At first Moana thinks there’ll be more fish beyond the reef, and despite her dads protests, she shores up a boat and heads out…only to get nurf’d by a wave.
Undefeated she eventually has a conversation with her grandma, who reveals that she is in fact chosen by the ocean to go on a great quest to ‘restore the heart of Te-Fiti’ a goddess who, over 1000 years ago had her heart stolen by a demi-god called Maui who mysteriously vanished after a fight with another god by the name of Te-Ka.
Moana is to go, find Maui, command him to get on her boat and take her to the island of Te-fiti where he is to return the heart and restore order to the islands. And to further embolden her, her grandma reveals that up until recently all of Moanas relatives were in fact wayfinders and voyagers. Keen to explore as much as possible.
With that, Moana loads up a napsack, hitches a boat and heads off to find the demi-god and restore the islands…But when she finally DOES locate Maui…things arnt quite as prophesized…
So…Look, this is a Disney movie and as such my usual review notes around ‘technical ability’ and ‘creative output’ are kind of a moot point. They excel in creating BEYOND technically proficiant digital and 2d animated movies, they have done for years and they continue to do so.
So realistically, my comments on Cine and direction for this one are best summerized by ‘Yep…thats A-okay’…I enjoyed the direction, I found it quite creative in places, as I did with the cine around the animation and the way the scenes were set up. Do I think it went above and beyond? No. Do I think it more than surpassed the standard expectation. Absolutely.
Which means really, I only have the scripting, performances and music to talk about here. and the scripting is probably going to be the most contentious thing I have to talk about really.
Its a problem a lot of the more contemporary (last 15 years) Disney productions have…and its to do with runtime and pacing. I’ve never believed that a film predominantly aimed at children should be close to 2 hours long. Kids films (unless they have a BLOODY good reason) should NEVER break 90 minutes in my opinion. Im a grown adult and struggle to stick with something for 2 hours or more…as a child, I wouldnt have made it much past Moana leaving the island the first time. And given kids today are supposed to be the ‘ipad generation’ who’s attention spans have been totally nuked by Tiktok and Gore.com. I cant believe that kids who wernt already front loaded into this film would stick with it past the first act.
Which then leads me onto the second problem I have with this film, the pacing and act structuring. I CRAWLED through the first act of this film…CRAWLED. They spent so long establishing life on the island, the islands lore, the characters of the island (hell they introduce a cute pig and then cut it out of the rest of the movie for seemingly no reason) that by the time the ACTUAL plot had surfaced, I was already restless and reaching for my phone.
It seems to struggle repeatedly with knowing exactly what to focus on and how to hone in on the moments that DID draw my attention. Moana and Maui’s first encounter is delightful, the section in the realm of monsters, I really quite enjoyed…But the rest of the film is essentially Moana and Maui on a boat, talking about family traumas and finding their places in the world…and that. is. SLOW. SO painfully slow…and it feels like the film makes a point of pulling the handbreak and saying ‘No! YOU WILL HEAR MAUI’S TRAGIC BACKSTORY BEFORE WE SHOW YOU MORE HEIHEI’…
…It crashes the momentum of the film repeatedly and catastrophically, to the point that it started to feel more like they were given a runtime to hit and had to pad the thing to hit the golden mark, rather than just letting the film naturally grow out of the situation.
Equally not helping matters (and I will try to avoid spoilers here) but the films resolution is just kind of a nothing. I will give the film credit that the twist reveal at the end was quite well handled…But the films spent an hour and 40 building to this, and when that twist happens…nothing much comes from it. the gang kind of just…go home…and thats it. Which…given that for the preceeding hour and 40 Moana and Maui had been built up as semi mythical figures who were going to change the world forever…well, it was a bit deflating to be honest.
Hei hei the chicken is cute, but his joke gets redone OVER and OVER and OVER again until its well and truely ground into the dust. the film hovers in a single gear for most of the second act, idling basically to get us to the finale reveal. and the act structuring is a bit all over the place, with a heavy on the exposition (which wasnt really needed) first act, leading to an actually kind of alright but very Stop/Start middle act, and then it feels like the film was running out of time and as a result the 3rd act is just crammed in and made to work as best as it can…Which was kind of dissapointing.
The characters dont have much depth and emotional range and when the film attempts to inject some, it doesnt feel genuine to sincere to me…It feels like they realised making Maui an asshole for most of the runtime WITHOUT giving him some kind of tragic backstory just wasnt going to sit well…so they just gave him a generic ‘out’ to let him have justification for being a dingus, and then the film uses that generic ‘out’ to force a character change on him in the 3rd act.
The vocal performances are fine enough, Auli’i Cravalho is a pretty solid lead as ‘Moana’, One of the better offerings i’ve seen in modern Disney if im honest…Its just a bit of a shame she doesnt really get to do much other than steer the boat and follow Maui around.
Dwayne Johnson as Maui is equally solid. But just has the occasional moment that feels ‘off’ for lack of a better word…like Im not sure if its a dialogue issue, or a delivery issue…But something just didnt sit right with me about his performance in a couple of places…
And…because I dont have much to say about it, the supporting cast were ‘fine’, but also ‘unremarkable’ with probably the only other standout performance here being Jermaine Clement as the sparkley crab Tamatoa, who ALSO gets one of the better character pieces in the film AND one of the better songs in the movie too.
Which leads me to, the soundtrack…and basically the only songs I jammed with were ‘You’re Welcome’ and ‘Shiny’ both of which are legitimate bops. But the rest? I couldnt hum you a bar. I know there was one where the word ‘Island’ was said approximately 16 million times…but again I couldnt sing you a line of it. other than going ‘Island, island island island ISLAND, island island ISLAND, ISLAND ISLAND ISLAND’…it was a tad on the generic side, and by the 3rd act I did find myself saying ‘Not everything NEEDS to be a song’
I know that Disney movies have musical elements to them…but it felt in places like this film was TRYING to cram as much music in as possible, rather than letting songs happen organically.
I didnt hate ‘Moana’ its technically sound, the performances are fun and well handled and I enjoyed some of the gags and music…But I have major issues with the script on a structural level and they really overplayed their hand on the musical numbers. If your kid likes it, I wont ick their yum. But This was too long and generic for me sadly…
TYTD Reviews 