Disney Studios may well be the butt of bearded hipsters’ snide jokes, but if you are not afraid of being uncool you could do worse than check this out. The animation, it goes without saying, is superb – a joy to the eye – and the story is smart, contemporary and, with any luck, influential (there are lessons in it for kids and adults alike).
Set in Polynesia in the unwritten past and loosely based (I am assuming) on one of the Pacific’s creation myths, it concerns Moana (voiced by Auli’i Cravhalo), a cute and feisty chieftain’s daughter. To save her island from an ancient curse, she takes it upon herself to hunt down the demi-god Maui, who is responsible for her people’s plight, and set things right. Maui is a tattooed boofhead with a penchant for a smart-arse one-liner, so who better to speak the part than everybody’s favourite tattooed boofhead, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson? I am a huge fan (I know, it’s a terrible indictment of This Paper), but what I was previously unaware of is that Johnson has Samoan lineage, which makes his casting even more appropriate.
When Moana discovers that Maui is not as bad as his reputation, and that there are further challenges to overcome, they set off on her catamaran, with a chook (it got the most laughs from the kids in the audience) to vanquish demons together. The squabbling/cooperating routine between the pair is sit-com classic, but it is Moana who is boss – girl power has made huge strides in children’s animation and if this latest example of it is not quite up there with the marvellous Brave (2012), it falls pretty close.
What doesn’t work is the cheesy injection of Broadway songs into the action. They are out of sync with the gusto of what is happening on screen and compare pitiably with the pulsating rhythms and vocal harmonies of the islander numbers used. Otherwise, this is another example of a cartoon exhibiting a great deal more intelligence than many of the multiplex’s movies for grown-ups.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
