REVIEW: MOANA 2

Way back in 2016, Moana's quest to return The Heart of Te Fiti ran perfectly parallel to both Moana's own sense of unrest and her community's need to return to their voyaging roots, motivations that were all intrinsic--and also very well-established in that first act. The opposing forces were also clear--not just in the presence of lava monsters or killer coconuts, but in the attitudes she faced from her overprotective father and her swaggering demigod sidekick. Her ultimate discovery, that the island she was trying to restore and the monster she had to thwart were one and the same, was likewise an organic extension of her inherent compassion and discernment.

That first film understood the basic chemistry of the adventure narrative, and how it sang when thoughtfully applied to the Disney aesthetic, so they don't really have an excuse for bungling the mixture this time around.

For a film determined to fit in as many characters as will fit on one poster, very little about this sequel was character-centric. Moana has a sailing crew this time around, for example. This motley crew possibly served some kind of purpose back when this project was conceived as a full tv series, where they no doubt each had their own specific tracks and culminating moments, but in execution they contribute less to the narrative than the screaming chicken.

Moana herself is hardly handled any better. She embarks on this mission exclusively because the ancestors sent her a spirit lightning vision telling her she had to. There's no internal motivation propelling her into the purple storm here. Neither does Moana herself really earn the revelations that enable to advance through this mission--they're just handed to her like flags on some psychedelic version of The Amazing Race.

The musical numbers were all phoned in. I'll tip my hat to Ms. Cravalho for supplying some of the most elaborate vocals in a Disney pic, but even now I only remember the tune to one of the songs, and only a handful of lyrics. Worse, I had the recurring experience of landing at the end of each number feeling like I had discovered nothing. None of the catharsis of Let it Go. None of the elation of Part of Your World.

In a way, this was kind of inescapable because here Moana has no real questions to be answered or even views to be challenged. She is taking no risks. I think the fact that she feels no real hesitancy about taking this quest is supposed to be played as Disney Princess Spunk™, but it winds up working very much to the story's detriment because there is no tension. No specific flaw in her community or herself that we're worried about her overcoming. Moana winds up becoming redundant in her own story.

There were some artistically inspired moments within the animation itself. The 4th of July fireworks might keep your eyes in the sky just long enough that you might forget the faire grounds are being held together by rubber bands.

--The Professor

Comments

REVIEW: WICKED pt. 1

Historically, the process of musical-film adaptation has been scored on retention --how much of the story did the adaptation gods permit to be carried over into the new medium? Which singing lines had to be tethered to spoken dialogue? Which character got landed with stunt casting? Which scenes weren't actually as bad as you feared they'd be? Well, Jon M. Chu's adaptation of the Broadway zeitgeist, Wicked , could possibly be the first to evaluated on what the story gained in transition. The story imagines the history of Elphaba, a green-skinned girl living in Oz who will one day become the famous Wicked Witch of the West. Long before Dorothy dropped in, she was a student at Shiz University, where her story would cross with many who come to shape her life--most significantly, Galinda, the future Good Witch of the North. Before their infamous rivalry, they both wanted the same thing, to gain favor with the Wonderful...

Are We in Another Golden Age of Musicals?

In early 2017, Variety ran a piece titled “ Will Musicals See a ‘La La Land’ Boost ?” alongside said movie’s victory lap around the box office and critics at large. Justin Paul, who wrote the music for La La Land alongside his partner, Benj Pasek, was optimistic about the doors his movie was opening: “I have to believe that other studios, other producers, would only be encouraged by the impact of ‘La La Land,’ both critically and at the box office.” Their agent, Richard Kraft, shared a similar sentiment. “I think people are growing tired of snark and skepticism and pessimism. [La La Land] hit the zeitgeist for smart and unapologetic optimism. Even in times of strife and conflict, people still fall in love and follow dreams.” These are the kinds of statements that don’t go unnoticed by a musical nerd who chose to write his semesterly report on Meet Me in St. Louis when all his fellow film students wrote on Woody Allen. Classical musicals had always just been that gatew...

Children of a Lesser God: Between Sound and Silence

Loyal readers may remember last month when I talked about Sidney Poitier and Elizabeth Hartman in A Patch of Blue and how I casually alluded to the larger framework of disability within film and promised to talk about it one day. Well, this isn’t like with my Disney Princess series where I teased the project for years before finally getting to it. I’m making good on that promise here today. You’re welcome. Now, when I say “disability within film,” that’s a really large slice of the pie. The discussion of disability in Hollywood is a vast and complex field of study. There’s obviously overlap across the broader discussion, but people of different disabilities experience ableism differently, similar to how members of different ethnic identities experience racism differently, and it’s a machine that has to be dismantled on multiple fronts. But with this piece, I’m not so interested in airing all the ways the industry has let down members of these communities. Today, I’d ...

The Power of the Dog Doesn't (want to) Understand Toxic Masculinity: A Deconstruction and History of the "Toxic Cowboy"

I want to start this piece by recounting my very first experience watching John Ford’s 1956 masterpiece, The Searchers . The film sees John Wayne playing Ethan Edwards, rugged cowboy who embarks on a years-long quest to recover his young niece, Debbie, after she is kidnapped by a band of Comanche Indians, who also murder her entire family. Ethan is joined on this adventure by Debbie’s adopted older brother, Martin, played by Jeffrey Hunter. Ethan does not welcome Martin’s presence on this mission and even tries to leave him behind at the start, and he will continue to menace Martin as they travail the desert. Part of this is because Ethan does not consider Martin to be Debbie’s real family, and he also resents Martin’s Native American lineage. But most of his animosity stems from the fact that he simply sees Martin as weak. He does not seem like the kind of guy who can ...

Bright Young Women: The Legacy of Ariel and The Little Mermaid

I had an experience one summer at a church youth camp that I reflect on quite a bit. We were participating in a “Family Feud” style game between companies, and the question was on favorite Disney movies as voted on by participants in our camp. (No one asked for my input on this question. Yes, this still burns me.) I think the top spot was either for Tangled or The Lion King , but what struck me was that when someone proposed the answer of “The Little Mermaid,” the score revealed that not a single participant had listed it as their favorite Disney film. On the one hand, this doesn’t really surprise me. In all my years of Disney fandom, I’ve observed that The Little Mermaid occupies this this very particular space in pop culture: The Little Mermaid is in a lot of people’s top 5s, but very few people identify it as their absolute favorite Disney film. This film’s immediate successors in the Disne...

REVIEW: Belfast

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the world needs more black and white movies. The latest to answer the call is Kenneth Branagh with his semi-autobiographical film, Belfast . The film follows Buddy, the audience-insert character, as he grows up in the streets of Belfast, Ireland in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Though Buddy and his family thrive on these familiar streets, communal turmoil leads to organized violence that throws Buddy's life into disarray. What's a family to do? On the one hand, the father recognizes that a warzone is no place for a family. But to the mother, even the turmoil of her community's civil war feels safer than the world out there. Memory feels safer than maturation. As these films often go, the plot is drifting and episodic yet always manages to hold one's focus. Unbrushed authenticity is a hard thing to put to film, and a film aiming for just that always walks a fine line betwe...

PROFESSOR'S PICKS: 7 Best Songs Written for (Non-Musical) Film

This being a blog about film, I generally keep my observations focused on movies, but today we're going to expand the menu just a little. Most of the stuff I write here, I write with some film music playing in the background, usually a film score or a Broadway cast recording (right now I'm on a bit of a Raul Esparza kick, everyone deserves to hear his rendition of "Come to Your Senses" from this year's Miscast concert). I've been doing this for a while, yet I only recently had the idea to actually write about some of the songs that inform my writing process. The songs I can never get out of my head. To keep things mostly on-brand, I'm going to be writing about music that features in films, preferably songs written for their respective movies. Just to make things interesting (and to keep the door open for a future installment ... maybe ) I'm choosing to restrict the songs listed here to those written for non-musical films, and I'm cho...

REVIEW: The Lost City

Your reasons for browsing a movie like "The Lost City" probably aren't so different from mine. Me? I just wanted to see Daniel Radcliffe back in the mainstream world. You may have wanted to relish Sandra Bullock or Channing Tatum making their rounds in the spotlight, or, just as likely, wanted to see them together. Maybe word of Brad Pitt's extended cameo did it for you. Whoever caught your attention, it was certainly one of the A-listers because a film like this doesn't have a lot to offer outside its movie star parade. And yet, I can't say I don't like the film. Loretta Sage is a best-selling writer in the field of romance-adventure struggling to remind herself why she does what she does. Her latest writing block is a product of 1. her grieving the recent death of her husband and 2. her growing insecurity over the prestige of her career. Maybe eloquent prose is wasted on an audience that will read anything with Channing Tatum's exposed bosom on the...

REVIEW: Ezra

I actually had a conversation with a colleague some weeks ago about the movie, Rain Man , a thoughtful drama from thirty years ago that helped catapult widespread interest in the subject of autism and neurodivergence. We took a mutual delight in how the film opened doors and allowed for greater in-depth study for an underrepresented segment of the community ... while also acknowledging that, having now opened those very doors, it is easy to see where Rain Man 's representation couldn't help but distort and sensationalize the community it aimed to champion. And I now want to find this guy again and see what he has to say about Tony Goldwyn's new movie, Ezra . The movie sees standup comedian and divorced dad, Max (Bobby Cannavale), at a crossroads with how to raise his autistic son, the titular Ezra (William Fitzgerald), with his ex-wife, Jenna (Rose Byrne). As Jenna pushes to give Ezra more specialized attention, like pulling him out of publ...

Films and Feelings

Search This Blog