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Moana review – sail of the century from Disney

A teenager crosses the ocean to save her homeland in a joyous animation whose greatest character is the sea itself

Mark Kermode
Mark Kermode, Observer film critic

@KermodeMovie
Sun 4 Dec 2016 09.00 GMTLast modified on Wed 21 Mar 2018 23.56 GMT
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‘Independent spirit’: Moana and demigod Maui in Moana
‘Independent spirit’: Moana and demigod Maui in Moana. Photograph: Disney
2016 has been another strong year for animation. Alongside the superb stop-motion of Laika’s Kubo and the Two Strings, we’ve had the provocatively sociopolitical joys of Walt Disney Animation Studios’ Zootropolis (aka Zootopia), the gentle waves of Pixar’s Finding Dory and the extraordinary body swaps of Makoto Shinkai’s runaway Japanese hit Your Name. All of these have been tipped as contenders for the best animated feature Oscar, alongside Studio Ghibli’s The Red Turtle, which, like Illumination’s eagerly awaited Sing, opens in the UK early next year. But Disney now has another frontrunner in the shape of Moana, a joyous tale of a Polynesian teenager’s quest to save her homeland, which boasts eye-watering visuals, earworm songs and heart-swelling messages about respect for the past and hopes for the future.

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As demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson) jeers: “If you wear a dress and have an animal sidekick, you’re a princess.” Yet 16-year-old Moana (beautifully voiced by Hawaiian newcomer Auli’i Cravalho) is something else – an explorer with a fire in her soul, passed down through generations. Her father, Chief Tui (Temuera Morrison), insists that his people stay within the bounds of the reef surrounding their island home of Motunui. But Moana has fallen in love – not with some handsome suitor, but with the sea. As a child, the waves parted for Moana (whose name means “deep water”), marking her as the ocean’s chosen one. So when the time comes to save the island’s failing ecosystem, it is Moana who ventures into the wide blue yonder, drowning out her father’s instructions to remain Where You Are with her own song celebrating How Far I’ll Go.

Having made their names with the hand-drawn triumphs of The Little Mermaid and Aladdin, directors Ron Clements and John Musker here segue seamlessly into their first CG feature, embracing the malleable magic of digital animation while retaining the clear lines that underpinned their previous work. In contrast to the sylph-like figures of Frozen, Moana has a sturdiness that recalls the Hawaiian heroines of 2002’s Lilo & Stitch. She also embodies the independent outsider spirit of Tiana from The Princess and the Frog, the lovely 2009 feature with which Musker and Clements revived the “traditional animation” skills that Disney had seemingly put aside in the wake of 2004’s Home on the Range.

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Inspired by her grandmother who loves “to dance with the water”, Moana is on a mission to restore the Heart of Te Fiti, a magical stone stolen years ago by Maui, whose muscular frame is adorned by dancing tattoos (think of the muses on the vase from Hercules), which provide Jiminy Cricket-style conscience and commentary. Johnson clearly relishes the role and wrings self-deprecatory laughs from the ego-massaging song You’re Welcome (“I know it’s a lot, the hair, the bod!”), written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, whose adored stage show Hamilton has been riding a new tidal wave of popularity since Donald Trump peevishly tweeted about it being “overrated”. Other musical highlights include Jemaine Clement’s hermit crab Tamatoa’s bling-tastic Shiny, and the poignant I Am Moana, co-written with Opetaia Foa’i and Mark Mancina, both of whom do superb work on the soundtrack.

In the course of their adventures, Moana and Maui encounter a swarm of diminutive Kakamora pirates, whose ships weirdly resemble the morphed monster trucks of Mad Max: Fury Road, and face a fiery lava monster that pushes at the boundaries of the “mild threat” outlined in the BBFC’s PG rating. But the most beautifully realised character is that of the ocean itself, a symphony of fluid movement whose waves become hands that aid our voyagers on their way, not least in constantly saving Moana’s half-witted chicken companion Heihei (the aforementioned “animal sidekick”), who provides many slapstick laughs.

As always, success has not come without controversy. In September, Disney pulled a range of kids’ costumes and pyjamas amid complaints that they constituted a ghastly form of “brownface” cultural appropriation, an offence that the company clearly took seriously. But in the context of such news stories, it’s worth remembering that Moana is the story of a female leader-in-waiting who is independent and progressive, who cares about the environment and who looks beyond the borders of her homeland to face the challenges of the future.

This film is an animated fantasy, but as 2016 comes to a close, one could be forgiven for wishing it were real.

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