Moana

Directed By: Ron Clements and John Musker Written By: Jared Bush (story by Ron Clements, John Musker, Chris Williams, Don Hall, Pamela Ribon, Aaron Kandell and Jordan Kandell)Starring: Auli’i Cravalho, Dwayne Johnson, Rachel House, Temuera Morrison, Jermaine Clement

It’s easy to praise Moana strictly through th

e prism of gender politics. The title character is a gutsy young lady; sixteen years old and the heir apparent to the Polynesian island of Motunui. She is chosen by the sea itself to liberate her people from a supernatural darkness foiling their crops and driving the fish from their waters, not because she’s in need of a helping hand, but because she’s virtuous, the most capable in employing said power and making good. She’s the studio’s most empowered female lead yet, cute yet fiery, extending upon Disney’s internal progress made with films like Brave, and leaving whatever criticisms disenchanted viewers may have had of the studio’s original, hapless princesses in the dust.

What’s particularly progressive, and appreciable, about Moana is how it refuses to pat itself on the back for its politics. Moana’s gender is seldom mentioned; it has no bearing on her characterisation nor the plot. Like The Force Awakens’ Rey from 2015, Moana is the hero because she is resolute in her goodness, the fact that she’s a female is coincidence.

But to hone specifically in on gender would be to undercut the fundamentals of Moana’s storytelling that empower the film itself; sharply drawn characters; a breezy, buoyant energy; a slick sense of humour, never shy of a Hercules-esque pop-culture reference; and an eye-popping vibrancy, both in sight and soul. Perhaps most strikingly, the film offers Disney’s most accomplished visual work, rendering a fine-stroke world of glowing ocean blues and soft, powdery skies and sand. There is a tactility to Moana’s landscapes that pops them into existence, a meticulous detailing in which bubbles in the sea and the lines in the leaves echo reality in a way that few animated films ever have.

The film’s niggling restriction is that it is ultimately too fundamental to stand atop the animated mound. There is a quiet subversiveness in the omission of a romance, Moana certainly has no, nor requires, a male suitor to sweep her off her feet. Instead her sole male counterpart is Maui, a shape shifting, fishhook wielding demigod who instigated Motunui’s failing ecosystem after he stole the goddess Te Fiti’s heart. A millennium on and Maui is enlisted by Moana to restore the heart and with it stability to our heroine’s homeland; and it’s all very inevitable. They’re an odd couple embarking on an epic cross-sea adventure, developing a cautious admiration for each other on the way. There’s the obligatory pre-third-act riff between the two leads, and the obligatory pre-denouement reconciliation, with their journey embodying Disney’s staple themes: follow your heart and never underestimate your worth. The film’s cavalcade of writers themselves can’t help but confess to the obvious affinities between Moana and its musical predecessors; with her kooky, dim-witted chicken Hei Hei in toe, Moana bellows at Maui that she is “not a princess.” “If you have a dress and an animal sidekick, you’re a princess” he responds. Per the Disney dictionary, he’s right.

But familiar stories told well can excel on their own terms. Moana finds distinct, tenacious life in the way it’s able to envelop its themes in its action; the film is never afraid to articulate its messages, but it doesn’t pause to articulate them. Instead, they are inherent in every fibre of the characters and plot, where the complication itself revolves around the restoration of a heart; where Maui obsessively pursues his all-powerful fishhook out of fear of being perceived as something less without it; and a giant, treasure hoarding coconut crab (played by Jermaine Clement) is vilified for his championing of the material. The ideas don’t need to be preached, rather they’re infused into the story, inherent in its machinations.

The songs were composed by Opetaia Foa’I and Lin Manuel-Miranda, and in themselves provide great personality, injecting the film and its familiar ideas with a distinct sparkle. Moana’s moment of entrusting her inner voice is leant considerable weight and gusto by Foa’i and Miranda’s central arangement “How Far I’ll Go”, whilst Maui’s joyously jock-like personality is brilliantly rendered by his own introductory piece in “You’re Welcome.”

The performers match their mater

ial for heartiness. Auli’i Cravalho and Dwayne Johnson voice Moana and Maui respectively, and each are textured and luminous in their work. Dwayne Johnson, with his warming, in-built charisma, offers a unique brand of fragile machismo, where Maui is at once a rambunctious, physically imposing braggart, and a quietly wrenched, often frail man. Cravalho is fierce yet amicable, painting a gutsy veneer which masks flickers of her own inner wavering. She too has an intuitive allure, an inviting confidence and determination. Both are able to translate their charm into their vocal performances, their chemistry graceful and natural; one is content to simply listen to the lead performers pivot back and forth.

So delightful and beaming then are the key elements of Moana, that its eventual ensnarement by its formula is all the more prickly. The film is never quite able to transcend its simplicities, to become the great film that it seemed destined to become. But it is effortlessly enjoyable; a lovely, bubbling, urgent film, the sort you’d like to wrap your arms around and hug. If nothing else, Moanais great for what it inevitably is.

Rating:

3.5/4