You can tell a lot about Moana from its comic relief. Comedy sidekicks in kids’ cartoons tend to be manic and excitable, from Timon and Pumbaa in The Lion King to Scrat in Ice Age to Olaf the snowman in Frozen – but in this case we have Heihei the chicken, a squawking cross-eyed lump who’s utterly oblivious. The chicken doesn’t care. With the exception of one glorious moment when he realises he’s stranded on a raft in the middle of the ocean, his most obvious trait is complete indifference. Heihei has no instinct for self-preservation. Throw him in the sea, and he’ll float belly-up till you rescue him. If a spear comes within an inch of disembowelling him, he’ll only peck at it. Moana and Maui save the world, and he doesn’t even blink.
Comic relief tends to work in opposition to the whole (hence ‘relief’) – and it’s easy to imagine what a relief it must’ve been to the animators labouring on this $150 million Disney adventure to have Heihei around, like a lucky charm reading ‘Chill, bro’. Disney have a lot riding on Moana. It’s not just a cartoon, it’s a statement of purpose, the latest in their quest for cultural brownie-points. Not only does it feature a strong female heroine, it’s based on Polynesian mythology and tries hard to be respectful and authentic. “In the beginning, there was only ocean,” are the first lines we hear – a pointed echo of Genesis, declaring itself as an alternative to the usual Christian cosmogony.
Those lines are spoken by Moana’s mischief-making grandma, terrifying an audience of toddlers with scary stories; only baby Moana listens to the tales of fire demons and shape-shifting tricksters with shiny eyes, the adventurous gene clearly having skipped a generation. Her dad begs her to stay in their safe little village, protected by a reef from the open sea – but the village is dying, and indeed village life is a sham: Moana’s ancestors were always sailors and seafarers, and the ocean has “chosen” her for a mission which involves persuading disgraced demigod Maui to return the stolen heart of an Earth-mother goddess. Moana (voiced by Hawaiian teen Auli’i Cravalho) is reclaiming her people’s true nature after years of denial – and, implicitly, reclaiming her potential as a woman after years of repression.
The gender-studies aspect isn’t overstated, though Maui (voiced by Dwayne Johnson, whose Samoan roots give him a pass on the authenticity front) does needle Moana by wondering why she isn’t home having babies and changing diapers. Mostly, however, Moana wears its pretensions lightly, scoring instead on visuals, action and comedy. The images are predictably breathtaking, especially the images of water (the dominant element here) – greenish-blue in the shallows of a tropical island, silver-grey at night under moonlight – while the action includes some kinetic set-pieces: an escape from a cave, a fight with piratical coconuts, a leap into the void that ends with Moana stuck to the tongue of a sea monster. (The film may be scary for very young children.) There’s comedy too, in the banter between vain, silly Maui and the plucky, persistent girl using the susceptible male ego as her secret weapon. And of course there’s Heihei the chicken.
Just as Scrat often seemed to be mocking the Ice Age franchise, sending up its neat little story arcs with his single-minded pursuit of that damn acorn, so Heihei’s spaced-out looseness comes off (inadvertently) as a veiled rebuke to the film’s reliance on familiar Disney beats. Moana is a grand cartoon adventure – but it’s also the kind of film where you just know that, at some point, Maui will abandon Moana in a fit of pique, and at some point Moana will be on the brink of giving up only for her grandma’s spirit to appear and encourage her (Grandma also sings a song, this being probably the first week ever when three of the four new releases at the multiplex are musicals). It’s also overlong, like most of these Hollywood ’toons; then again, I assume it’s hard to keep a movie down to 80 minutes when you’re spending $150 million on it and treating it as a cultural artefact.
Moana was directed by John Musker and Ron Clements, who hold a special place in the Disney pantheon; they made The Little Mermaid in 1989, giving the studio its first hit in years and inaugurating Disney’s march to world domination. That little mermaid – who fell in love with a prince, and upended her life for her lover – is a long way from tomboyish Moana, who doesn’t seem to care for romance at all; whether that’s a positive step or just a sign of the times, Disney have nothing to be ashamed of with this bright, well-made movie, which is endearing as well as righteous. When Heihei the chicken pecks at a rock then swallows it without missing a beat, though? That’s entertainment.
DIRECTED BY Ron Clements & John Musker
WITH THE VOICES OF Auli’i Cravalho, Dwayne Johnson, Rachel House
US 2016
107 mins.