Is Moana the next Frozen? Or is that Frozen 2? Either way, Disney has contrived an amiable new animated musical that speaks to the tween-princess-sleepover demographic while tapping into Polynesian myths and making a modest, decently intentioned gesture at diversity. But it does this by feeding these components into its well-honed narrative machine, and producing a story with obvious but well-managed borrowings from The Lion King – with a bit of The Hobbit and even the Book of Exodus: it’s a pretty traditional exile-quest narrative with a sense of monarchical destiny. Newcomer Auli’i Cravalho voices Moana, the smart, rebellious daughter of a Polynesian king; she is entrusted by the ocean-spirit with a precious stone: a sweet initial scene with the uncomprehending one-year-old Moana waddling into the magically parting surf. Her people are terrified by the sudden disappearance of fish and Moana’s mission will be to solve this eco-crisis and heal the cosmic wound by reuniting the stone with the ancient goddess. To do this, she needs to team up with swaggering bad-boy demigod Maui (voiced by Dwayne Johnson): a mountain of muscle and tattoo. Maui and Moana squabble their way through a sibling meet-cute before becoming a devoted animated duo, facing up to a scary, funny giant crab, Tamatoa (Jemaine Clement). As for the songs, they didn’t seem to me as catchy as the great refrigerated masterpiece, but time will tell.
