Moana Spoiler Free and Spoiler Review
Non-Spoiler Review
What a charming movie. Not the best Disney has put out, but it's one of the best that Disney has done in recent years. It felt like it was rushed, and apparently it was rushed a year earlier than supposed to be. I was pleased with the final product, but I wish they would've spent to a few more months to tweak the story a bit. I'll explain in the spoiler portion. The musical numbers were great. Some of them didn't work for me, but for the most part, the songs were fantastic. Auli'i Cravalho was great as Disney's newest princess. She is in fact the age of her character by the way. Dwayne Johnson was amazing. I'm so glad that he was able to get his own musical number and while I did have a few problems with his character, he is the best sidekick since Flynn Rider in Tangled. They're actually quite similar when you think about it. Heihei, who is the rooster, not a chicken, was hilarious. Alan Tudyk did the voice of the animal and he has now cameoed in five Disney's five recent animated films. He's like John Ratzenberger, who cameos in all of Pixar's films. The animation quality is stunning. Especially with the ocean and the islands. I have to say that Zootopia was the superior film that Disney did this year. At least for me. It just seemed that Zootopia had more creative liberties, whereas Moana follows the expected Disney princess formula, which works out well for Disney. You can't argue with success, but I wish that they had changed some things up and gotten rid of some of the cliches. Overall, the story, despite its derivativeness, is a pretty interesting one. I thought the world building was really good. I think that this'll most definitely get nominated for an Oscar or two. There was a ton of funny humor, although I think Disney tried too hard with the meta references. Now I think we should get cracking on that spoiler portion.
SPOILER Portion
This is it. This is where those that haven't seen this film and don't want to be spoiled, bow out. "CONTINUE AT SPOILER RISK!"
Auli'i Cravalho as MoanaI really liked Moana. She was a very good princess. Wait I'm sorry, she said so herself. She isn't a princess, but as Maui pointed out, apparently she counts as one. I thought Auli'i Cravalho did a great job with the voice work. I would've liked her more if we got know here a bit more. I believe she needed more of a personality. When she didn't have a well defined personality, I think Disney decided to go with the very familiar princess with same can-do attitude and about wanting to have adventure and go beyond the normal boundaries. I wonder why the ocean chose her as a baby. I think they didn't establish well why the ocean chose her to be its savior. Especially as a baby though. It was odd that the ocean chose a baby and not an already grown adult. While Moana's going through her childhood, the ocean and the environment is slowly decaying. Although she was cute, I don't think that there was a really good reason to start out the film with Moana as a baby. The moments with her and Maui on the boat were very funny and entertaining. I really liked the conversations the hilarious banter they had with one another. Moana herself got a great musical number. We'll talk about the songs later on down the line. I'm really surprised that she and ultimately Disney decided to have that pork joke with her and her pet pig Pua. I'm really surprised that Pua forgave her. I'd be kinda upset to hear that my friend was eaten and tasted good. As for her other pet, Heihei. The moment where Heihei woke up and when he realized that he was on the boat and started committing suicide, that was the moment where I fell in love the rooster. I was like "I surrender to your cuteness." I liked it when Maui said "Fatten up drumstick." That was just so funny. The rooster just provided an amazing amount of comedic relief. I really liked Moana as a character overall. She had great morals, some things could've been axed, but as the main protagonist and the hero of this film, I was okay with it.
Who needs comedic relief though, when you got "The Rock" in your film. Dwayne Johnson's Maui was my favorite character in the film. He brought a ton of energy to the film. I'm so glad that he had a song in the film. I was really impressed with his vocals. I was kinda disappointed that he was handicapped with his shapeshifting abilities though. The filmmakers toned down his awesomeness a bit, by creating situations where he couldn't do what he wanted to do. They kinda revved the characters engines, but there were very few times where the character took off. I understand why they did that, because this was Moana's film and not Maui's, but if have The Rock, you use him. Beyond that, he was the only one that did the meta jokes well. The tweeting joke was hilarious. "If you use a bird, it's called tweeting." So does that mean if you have a book with peoples faces in it, it's called Facebook? The part were he explained why Moana was a princess got on the border of being too meta for me. Another meta joke he made where he said "Are you going to break out into song now?' was pushing it. Never before in a musical has any character acknowledged the fact that the other characters break out into song. Although funny, he was pushing it a bit. Other than the meta jokes he made, I loved his recklessness and his ego. I loved his tattoos. The animation quality of them looked superb. There were also very funny. I liked them keeping score on who roasted who and I think the tattoo was being biassed against Maui a bit. I'm really curious about his parents though. I'm really curious about learning more of his backstory. It felt like they were setting up questions that were going to be answered later in a future film. Assuming of course they make a sequel. If they do, please bring Maui back.
Moana's family Tui, Sina, and Gramma TalaI did not like Moana's parents. I think they had very little to do in the film. The dad was, with respect, so stuck up. You would think that with everything going wrong, he'd listen to reason, but no, he'd rather let everyone die than go voyage and find some way to stop it. Also why would everyone agree to hide the boats and not protest about it? Nobody even talked about the boats even after they were hidden. You would think that at least one or two people would talk about it, but it seemed that it was wiped from everyones memory. As for Moana's mother. She wasn't in the film a lot. She barely had any lines and just helped Moana pack and she let her leave. Gramma Tala was surprisingly awesome. The joke about her tattoo was hilarious. "I hope I picked the right tattoo." Up to her death, I knew that one parent would die. It's the classic Disney formula. One, or sometimes both parents has to die. No it wasn't her parents. It was the grandparent. Although I think I should've saw that coming, because of that stingray line. But her death was surprisingly powerful. The way it was dark and as soon as she died, a non lethal explosion came and this stingray headed toward her and guided her the right way. I liked that the Grandma came back for that one scene later. Those are my thoughts on the parents/grandparents, let's move on.
I didn't like Jemaine Clement's character. I did like the Realm of Monsters, that looked stunning. I thought that the animators did a great job with designing the look of that separate world. But Tamatoa, wasn't my favorite part of the realm of monsters. I didn't like the song he had. For some reason it didn't click and the after credits scene he had was too much meta for me. Yes, there is an after credits scene. It features Tamatoa, who is still stuck on his back, as he asks us, the audience, for help. His final plea is this. "Admit it. If my name was Sebastian and I had a Jamaican accent, you would totally help me out right?" He of course is making a meta reference to Sebastian from the 1989 film, The Little Mermaid. It was funny, but this joke was too meta for me. Maui's tweeting joke was a clever meta joke, but this one felt like Disney was trying too hard. Suffice to say, Tamatoa was not a very good character in my opinion.
Musical Songs
What an interesting set of songs we have here. I'm only going to touch upon the four songs. Tamatoa's Shiny song I've spoken my thoughts about, but I'm gonna do the other four songs that are actually good. But first, I thought Lin-Manuel Miranda, Opetaia Foa'i, and Mark Mancina did a great job with the music. Some of the songs were catchy and the rest of the score felt authentic to the type of culture the movie was portraying. Now, onto the songs.
Where You Are
What a pleasant song. Not my favorite of the bunch, but still good. It was an okay opening number to some future songs that would prove themselves to better than this one. It was the song that fast forwards Moana's life from infant to where we find her for the rest of the film. This one basically was the one to persuade Moana to stay on not go sail on the ocean. We always get one, but though we've had that kind of song before in other Disney musicals, they still managed to make it fresh for this scene. It wasn't the biggest standout for the film, as I said, but a great song to start the wide variety of numbers we would be getting. I honestly don't have a lot to say about this song, so on that not I'm gonna move on.
You're Welcome
Initially, I thought that this was my favorite songs, but I have two other songs that compete for that title, but that doesn't degrade this song in any way. This song further deepens the level of ego that Maui has. He's saying that they should be thankful, but keep in mind Maui, because of you, the world is slowly crumbling. I didn't like the fact that it had rap in it. It kinda took me out of the time period this film is set in. I don't believe they had rap back then. I liked the way the tattoos were involved and I liked this blend of both 2D and 3D animation. I thought that was cool. Maui may be a great guy, but he used the song for evil purposes, because he trapped Moana in that cave. He was singing the lyrics to Moana point blank so I don't understand why she didn't catch on and try to stop him before he did said trapping. Talk about getting caught up in the moment.
How Far I'll Go/I Am Moana
Ah the classic 'I want' song that every princess has. But man oh man is this song powerful. This was a very good song. What makes this song even better is the images that go with that. In its second reprise when the grandma comes back to her, the water glowing beneath looked really cool. It reminded me of the 2012 film, Life of Pi, which had similar visuals. I though Auli'i Cravalho was did a commendable job with her singing. I think that was one of the best things she did with her character. It felt very epic and upbeat. This and the next song compete for the best song of the filmI'm getting vibes that this song will get recognized during the Oscars. For some reason I have that feeling. I mean Let it Go was nominated for that award and ended up winning and I think that this song is similar to that, but less annoying of course.
We Know The Way
I liked the song when debuted in the first trailer and I loved it even more in the actual song. I really enjoy the lyrics about adventure and exploration. I enjoyed the instruments used. In fact, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Opetaia Foa'i did the song themselves with Mark Mancina composing the music of course. This song made exploring the ocean fun and not a total danger. I thought the flashback scene accompanying the music was really cool. It showed off some pretty stunning animation. I think that the overall score was done really well. Disney musicals are really good. Some scores work and some don't. This was one of the times where it worked.
Inner Workings aka The Disney ShortA lot of the time Disney and Pixar release a short in front of their films and wow was this a good one. What a fun, inspiring, and hilarious short. The overall message of not being too much of a pragmatist and just letting go of your worries and enjoying life. This message has a good and bad side though. You don't want to be too much of a care free person. There's a perfect balance between the two. The main character in the short looks a lot like Carl Fredricksen from Up, though as a young man. Did anyone else think that or was it just me? There were a lot of similarities between the two. The brain and the heart were the stars of the show though. It was hilarious seeing the brain predict all his different deaths if he went and did all of these fun things. Death by shark, chainsaw, slipping and cracking your head, and more. What's even more funny was that it showed all the funerals for each of the deaths. For the shark, the guy was put in the coffin with the shark eating the coffin and for the chainsaw death, it was multiple coffins, because he was sliced up. The short was spectacular. I think it should get nominated for Best Animated Short at the Oscars. It was really good.
Conclusion
So that's my spoiler and my non-spoiler review for Moana. A fun and meta, but flawed princess film with a great cast along with some fun songs to accompany it. What did you think of the film? Did you like it? Write those thoughts in the comments section below as well as what you would like me to do on this blog. Thanks for reading, i'm the film fanatic, bye-bye.
Comments
Post a Comment