Moana

As America’s First Nation tribes stand togeth­er for the first time in his­to­ry to defend Stand­ing Rock from gov­ern­ment and busi­ness inter­ests threat­en­ing to destroy their sacred lands, Disney’s lat­est ani­mat­ed fea­ture, Moana, direct­ed by Ron Clements and John Musker, feels pow­er­ful­ly rel­e­vant. The film fol­lows the daugh­ter of a Poly­ne­sian chief who is fight­ing for the sur­vival of her indige­nous tribe’s way of life. But instead of the ene­my being the fos­sil fuel indus­try, Moana is up against a giant lava demon who is dec­i­mat­ing their island idyll.

New­com­er Auli’i Craval­ho voic­es Moana. She is an emo­tion­al­ly strong and ath­let­i­cal­ly built hero­ine who doesn’t need a male love inter­est to end up hap­pi­ly ever after. Instead, she is drawn into the vast Poly­ne­sian abyss, cho­sen by an ocean spir­it to set sail and find Maui (Dwayne John­son), a leg­endary shapeshift­ing demigod famed for rais­ing islands from the sea, pulling the sun clos­er for extra warmth and com­muning with his sen­tient tat­toos. Moana proves her kick-ass abil­i­ties through believ­able tri­al and error. She helps Maui undo his mishap a mil­lion years earlier.

This is a visu­al­ly breath­tak­ing film, every rip­ple of ocean cur­rent, every swoosh of hair, every under­wa­ter sparkle draw­ing you clos­er into this mag­i­cal world. But the real mag­ic of Moana lies in its cul­tur­al rich­ness, in the way it por­trays Poly­ne­sian life. The main cast all have Pacif­ic Islands roots, and every­thing from the char­ac­ter details, song lyrics, and even a deep respect for coconuts, were all signed off by an Ocean Trust which Ron Clements and John Musker devel­oped through their years of research across Polynesia.

The pan-Pacif­ic flavour of the tra­di­tion­al cel­e­bra­tions and Samoan war dances adds depth to already cap­ti­vat­ing musi­cal num­bers, writ­ten by Lin-Manuel Miran­da and per­formed in both Eng­lish and Toke­lauan. The film boasts ear worms that you won’t be able to ful­ly sing along to, but are still some of the strongest Dis­ney songs for some time. Cov­er ver­sions of two poten­tial hits, ​‘Shiny’ and ​‘You’re Wel­come’, will sure­ly start pop­ping up on YouTube in no time.

Yes there are some fair­ly child­ish jokes and point­less side char­ac­ters, but Moana takes you on a majes­tic jour­ney across the Pacif­ic, and you always feel safe in the young heroine’s hands. You trust ful­ly in her resource­ful­ness and abil­i­ty to nav­i­gate vast star­ry skies, as she fights to find out who she real­ly is and where her true call­ing lies.