To any mastermind behind established cinematic brands, aesthetic fatigue is the bête noire they should keep at bay constantly, in the case of the time-honored traditional Disney animation (excluding its Pixar offshoot), for all its vast output of family-friendly, teenager-angling, positivity-projecting, life-affirming fairytales, novelty ineluctably wears thin in the process of time, MOANA, flags up the issue pointedly, in spite of translocating into a Polynesian and seafaring milieu, the nexus remains refractorily blasé: following your heart and to be who you are against all the odds, so is the story of Mulan, Pocahontas, Elsa and Anna in Frozen, among other female protagonists. It is so self-evident that when Moana expresses that she is the daughter of a chieftain, not a princess, the throwaway reply of her seafaring companion, the demigod Maui, is “same difference!”.
Weaving a Polynesian mythical backstory into the plot, the stories goes in a plain predictable route, Moana (Cravalho), the future chieftain of the island of Motunui, is chosen by the ocean to restore the equilibrium broke by Maui (Johnson), who steals a heart-stone from goddess Te Fiti, in order to being worshipped by humans. After following both predestination and her own heart, and breaking the warning of not going out of the protected area, Moana embarks on her journey as a simple three-acts adventure: locating Maui, finding Maui’s magic hook and finally, emboldened by the pep talk of her wise grandma Tala (House), takes it on herself to finish the daunting tsk, instead of being a sidekick of the shapeshifting and petulant demigod.
With all the possible emotional ups-and-downs written all over it, MOANA, the umpteenth iteration of a princess-ly, uplifting rite of passage, gives audience exactly what we want, still a gleeful, stirring viewing experience in which we are bombarded with an eyeful of visual and auditory stimulations, the former highlights Maui’s unique hand-written tattoos and the waterborne voyage which reminisces of Ang Lee’s far more superior LIFE OF PI (2012), whereas the latter gives a full blast of Lin-Manuel Miranda co-penned ear-worm HOW FAR I’LL GO, and Cravalho proves to be such a fantastic belter, after all, resting on the laurels might not be such a dismal idea if the laurels are as toothsome as this rehashed girl-power manifesto.
referential entries: Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee’s FROZEN (2013, 7.7/10); Byron Howard, Rich Moore and Jared Bush’s ZOOTOPIA (2016, 7.6/10); Tomm Moore’s SONG OF THE SEA (2014, 7.6/10).
