Moana- Can You Hear What The Rock Is Singing?

This is my fourth post on Disney/Pixar princesses. I like to compare these two sister studios. I did it with my very third post on Tangled. In that post, I argued that Disney should stick to traditional animation and let Pixar handle the computers. Since then, Disney has produced Zootopia, Wreck-It-Ralph, Big Hero 6 and Frozen, while Pixar has made mostly unoriginal plots and sequels. (I still say Pixar has never made a bad movie, but Cars 3 is coming.) But Disney is still a rocky road. I loved Moana (the character) and the plot, but not the movie.

Back when I wrote about Brave, I criticized Disney for building up an action-adventure princess and then having her save the day through sewing. Moana also uses sewing skills at a key moment in the movie, but she uses them to repair her boat and kick off a badass sailing sequence past a raging lava monster. I am officially crowning Moana the best role-model Disney princess of all-time. She sails. She does parkour. She has engineering and leadership skills and realistic body proportions. She defies male role-models, in choosing the path which is best for her, all while remaining respectful. She doesn't even has a romantic sub-plot. Now Disney must play the challenge round, put all of Moana's traits into a character with a healthy romantic relationship. Bonus points: lesbianism.

My main problem with this movie is that it was a movie musical when it should have been a movie and a musical. I am sucker for soaring operatics, but the songs were too slow and they didn't fit with the action driven plot. The final battle features Moana singing the anger out of the lava monster. It would have been a great stage moment, but I wanted to see Moana use her kickass parkour to win the movie. It's also how boy Moana would have done it and that's a small deduction from the movie's feminism scoreboard. (She also figured out the mystery and then called the rampaging lava monster over to her and stared it down, so still she's still a badass.) I wish for a re-cut of this movie without the songs and a Lion King on Broadway style stage play.

Moana also seemed uncertain if it was a comedy or not. It certainly wasn't funny. The best joke was an after the credits Little Mermaid reference. A few rewrites either way could have produced something much funnier and sillier or something more serious. I would have liked to see the serious version, the funny version would be an easier sell, but either would have been better.

Today, I took a break from catching Pokemon on a fictional version of Hawaii to watch an animated movie set in a fictional version of Hawaii. I am a tropical themed man child.

Moana features a character from Hawaiian mythology called Maui. If you're unfamiliar with him, here's a primer in song from.

(That song is by that sumo Hawaiian man you saw in the video. His name is Israel Kamakawiwo'ole. Listen to his cover of Somewhere Over the Rainbow sometime and picture that tenor voice coming out of that giant man. It's an uplifting and confusing experience.)