Sometimes a single character can make a conventional story seem anything but routine.
While the new Disney animated movie might wind up selling lots of dolls in the image of its new Polynesian princess, Moana (Auli'i Cravalho), the main reason to catch the film is her not-so-trusty ally Maui (Dwayne Johnson). His antics make the Robin Williams-voiced Genie in Aladdin (also directed by John Musker and Ron Clements) seem tame.
Moana
88 Cast: (voices of) Auli’i Cravalho, Dwayne Johnson, Rachel House, Temuera Morrison, Jemaine Clement, Nicole Scherzinger, Alan Tudyk
Directors: John Musker, Ron Clements, Don Hall and Chris Williams
Rating: PG, for peril, some scary images and brief thematic elements
Running time: 1 hour, 53 minutes
Like her South Sea island forebears, Moana is tough and plucky. Those traits are important for her and everyone else on her island. While the island's chief (played by the great Maori actor Temuera Morrison from Once Were Warriors and Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones) has forbidden her and everyone else from exploring beyond the limits of the land, instinctively Moana knows she has to sail.
She has other reasons as well. The once plentiful crops are shriveling up and the fish have disappeared. Her grandmother (Rachel House) reveals to Moana that her people weren't always so stubbornly stationary. She persuades the teenager to get into a canoe even though she doesn't know how to sail and return a small, glowing stone to a goddess.
If that weren't challenging enough, she has to find the vain Maui, who's always happy to remind people that he's a demigod and a hero.
Actually, he's now little more than a muscle-bound, tattooed blowhard. Without his magic fishhook, the only muscles he exercises are the ones in his jaws. If he can get his hook back, he can change shapes at will and help Moana place the stone in its proper place. He should help her if only for the fact that 1,000 years ago, he stole the rock in the first place.
Because he's voiced by Johnson, Maui is as entertaining as he is self-important. Like fellow former wrestler John Cena, Johnson isn't afraid to make an utter fool of himself on screen. Perhaps his (computer and hand-drawn) muscular build prevents him from feeling ashamed to be silly.
Maui's tattoos provide a running commentary on his subconscious, often mocking his boastful rants. They even goad him into doing the right thing when he finds it irritatingly inconvenient.
Maui isn't the only visual delight in Moana, but he's easily the standout. The lush 3-D depictions of the South Pacific actually make wearing the glasses and shelling out a few extra bucks worthwhile.
Musker and Clements stick Moana with a pair of obligatory animal sidekicks, a pig and a less-than-observant chicken. The latter gets a few laughs, but at least the filmmakers thankfully decided not to anthropomorphize them.
The music is sort of a mixed bag. Several of the lyrically clever tunes were written or co-written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, the mastermind behind the Broadway sensation Hamilton. Miranda's lyrics are consistently clever, and the Polynesian and hip-hop fusion is intriguing. That said, it's hard to imagine anyone singing any of the tunes after the show, although Miranda's song "You're Welcome" is actually a decent showcase for Johnson, who isn't known for his ability to belt out tunes.
Maui's usefulness to Moana's mission might be questionable, but he helps make her movie seem like far more than a 90-minute toy commercial.
Be sure to catch the short film before Moana. Inner Workings is a slight but often side-splitting short about a corporate drone (working for Boring, Boring and Glum) whose strict brain consistently stops him from having the fun all of his other organs crave.
MovieStyle on 11/25/2016