AC5: Movie Review - Moana

How could one top Frozen? I mean that was the last animated Disney musical and that film raised the bar really high, mainly thanks to the popularity of the song "Let It Go" which become number one on music charts all over the world. So 3 years later, we get Disney's latest animated musical which unlike Frozen, is something original. No seriously. In a world where its mostly nothing but sequels, prequels, spin-offs, remakes/reboots and reimagined films, we finally get something original and it kind of works well. Its not the first time Disney have gone to caribbean like islands, but this take is kind of different in that its a full on musical and its a full on CGI film. So does it work and is it any better than Frozen? Let's find out:

Our story begins with an old lady called Tala (voiced by Rachel House) telling us the tale of Te Fiti, an island goddess who created life and became an island. However a demigod called Maui (voiced by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson) stole her heart as a means to seek ultimate power, plummeting the island into darkness as a result, but not before battling a lava demon called Te Ka to which he lost the fight. One millennium later, a girl called Moana (voiced by Aulii Cravalho) sees her island starting to go into darkness itself and due to her eventual position as her tribe's leader, sees no reason why not to go beyond the reef to find a means to stop the darkness. Her overprotective father forbids her to go in the ocean, but when the ocean chooses her, she sets out to find Maui to have him for lack of better words, save the world.

While the first half is dedicated to the whole family issues nonsense that you often see at the beginning of most films along with the big song, the second half is more comedic with Maui being self aware of Disney cliches like when a character finds an appropriate moment to sing a song or what it takes to become an official Disney princess. In a way, that kind of means that he's doing the job of those YouTubers that nitpick films, but fortunately, he only does that a handful of times. It is a great film that has some great music, outstanding and very colourful visuals (and I am not talking about the characters when I say that) and even has as previously mentioned, references to previous Disney films and even one moment that feels a bit like Mad Max. A fun film all around I'd say. But the big question is does it top Frozen? From a musical point, yes because the music in this film is actually pretty good and I could see myself singing them for a while while with Frozen, it felt like they were thrown in my face. As for visuals, they are kind of on par with one another there and the characters are all unique even if they all look similar. A great Disney film overall. 9/10

And as always, it had a short film and this one was about body parts cooperating with the brain and I thought that was quite cute and funny so yeah. 9/10