Thoughts on Moana/Vaiana?

[Scrooge MacDuck]

The title says it all.

Personally, I haven't seen in yet in its entirety, though I have mixed feelings about what I have seen. The animation, as far as CGI goes (and it'll never be as good as hand-drawn animation for me), the animation is very good, and most of the designs are very interesting. I don't find Maui all that engaging, but heh, what can you do. Some of the humor seems okay, and some of the story concepts (such as the villain's backstory) are very good. My big problem with it is going to be the music. I haven't yet listened to all the songs, but I, at worst, thoroughly loathed, and, at best, felt nothing for, the ones I listened to.

The reviews I have seen are wildly different; my two favourite Disney critic websites (in French, so you probably wouldn't know them) have wildly different opinions: one hails it as a new Frozen, with inspiring characters, hilarious comedy and beautiful animation, whereas the other one thinks Disney is resting on its laurels, slavishly copying the formulas of its recent hits without adding much effort into the story, and shamelessly editing random songs (he goes so far as to say the movie is the result of a novel idea: stringing several music videos together with a semblance of plot, and calling it a film).

[hex]

For some reason it doesn't premiere in Norway until February, so I haven't seen it yet. (Zootopia premiered in Norway before USA). But I've seen the trailers, and a segment from the movie was included in this year's edition of "From All of Us to All of You". And from what I've seen so far I can't really say I'm that excited about the story, but the animation looks great. One of things I didn't like in the trailers was that exaggerated rooster. Maybe it has a better role in the movie, but it looked like its only purpose was to be able to have in-between slapstick scenes.

I like to watch animated movies in their original language, so I might wait until the movie gets a digital or home media release to watch it. We usually do get a limited set of screenings with the original dialogue (sadly not without annoying subtitles), but most cinema screenings in Norway will be dubbed.

[jubalpomp]

It's the kind of story I like.

[The KKM]

Dec 23, 2016 20:04:54 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

(he goes so far as to say the movie is the result of a novel idea: stringing several music videos together with a semblance of plot, and calling it a film).

[squeakyboots]

Dec 26, 2016 10:47:13 GMT hex said:

One of things I didn't like in the trailers was that exaggerated rooster. Maybe it has a better role in the movie, but it looked like its only purpose was to be able to have in-between slapstick scenes.

You would be right unfortunately. The rooster is only there to add random humor to the movie and doesn't contribute to the story in any meaningful way besides having Moana constantly avoiding him getting killed. I can't even remember what his name is.

My only other gripe with the movie is that they didn't explain Maui's backstory and motivations very well. I won't go into too much on that right now because it goes into spoiler territory but it is a big part of the movie's plot and it left me scratching my head in a few areas.

Besides those things, I thought the movie was pretty good. The songs were all great in my opinion. I would definitely say it's a better movie than Frozen but I also didn't think Frozen was that spectacular of a movie.

[Matilda]

Just saw "Moana" today, and enjoyed it a lot. I *loved* the look of it, the water, the animate tattoos, the spirit-ray, the coconut pirates, the shiny monster-crab. The story was fine--I particularly like the resolution, the way Moana saves the world. I certainly appreciate the way Disney is getting better and better in recent years with regard to its portrayal of female characters. Probably my favorite thing in the movie is the grandmother. And it's of course welcome that they didn't feel the need to give Moana a love interest. Scrooge MacDuck, I don't see at all how that one critic could argue that this is slavishly copying other Disney hits in storyline. Because the adolescent girl wants to break away from well-meant parental restrictions? It's not like that's an uncommon motivation in real life! Anyway, I found the plot surprisingly coherent, given how many people contributed to the writing.

I did enjoy Maui, thought Dwayne Johnson did a great job on the complex lyrics and did well at creating humor with inflection.

The movie's form of girl-empowerment didn't speak strongly to me personally, though I'm naturally glad that nowadays the Chosen One is sometimes female. But the movie is so buoyant, with touches of real magic, that it might still end up getting on my personal Top Ten Favorite Animated Movies list. We'll see what I feel about it in a year or so.

Oh, and the chicken didn't bother me--it's not really very intrusive. And happily, it doesn't speak. I did laugh when the ocean became exasperated with it!

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Interesting. (Though CGI movie (especially one with songs I dislike) is likely to make my Top Ten.)

[mcquack]

I've seen Moana and I enjoyed it. It was a little different at times, the story was a bit reminiscent of something like the twelve labors of Hercules. The newcomer who voiced Moana was really good and held her own opposite Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson. I can't believe Sing is making more at the box office. Its too bad we have to wait another year for the next Disney Canon film, the Pixar movies are more hit-and-miss with me.

[Pan Maciej]

Let me stary by saying - I'm one of these people who respect CGI animation in general but just don't care that much for it. Not that I hate it, I just don't think it holds the candle to classic, handr drawn animations films and I'm still waiting for that one CGI movie that will enchant me in the same way classical Disney movie this (or heck, even something newer like "The Princess and The Frog", which I found beautyful looking)

This being said : I think "Moana" looks amazing. I love all the water animation, I love all the character animation and colors and I love how they integrated CGI characters with the hand drawn tattoos. The duo of directors (which whom I was happy to see live during this year's Annecy film festival in June) know their stuff and where great in making this movie a feast for the eyes and known how to spice up every scene with something word wild.


The first 15-20 minutes I found incredeble generic (I even didn't care that much for the song), but the moment Moana left the island (In a scene so touching and eyed-tearing I won't dare to spoil it) I really loved it and enjoyed the ride for the rest of the movie. The songs where great (The gigant Crab got the best one but I did like "You welcome" as well) I didn't found the Rooster that funny but he didn't annoyed me or borher me.


It is a very standard "hero jurney" story-line adventure but the visuals, songs and characer made the movie for me and I had a very good time. The movie is very relaxing which I appriciate.