Moana - 2016

This one really just fires on all cylinders. A pacific island buddy adventure flick featuring Lin Manuel Miranda at his least annoying, exactly the correct amount of Dwayne Johnson, and the eponymous lead voiced by a real teenager. Lots of Disney flicks look great and have stellar soundtracks, but only one has Jemaine Clement doing his Bowie impression as a giant crab.

My first viewing I called it Wind Waker The Movie, as a compliment, and that still feels right. A plucky youth leaves their tiny island home, becomes friends with their boat, dodges flaming projectiles on rocky barrier islands, and makes big discoveries about hidden identity. The ocean is everything here, a literal character that moves things along and has a genuine sense of humor. There’s swells and storms and pirates and marooning and monsters and everything you’d want in a maritime tale.

The ocean likes Moana, probably because she takes after her grandma, the village crazy who is actually a powerful mystic. This film does something very smart in the way it depicts the culture of Moana’s people. Tradition binds them to their island, reinforced by generational trauma. But leaving the island to chase the horizon isn’t the “progressive” move, it’s actually conforming with a deeper tradition that is all but forgotten. Moana moves her people forward by taking them back, and reconnecting them to a proud legacy.

Moana not only benefits from not having that “friendly character turns out to be a secret villain” trope that seems like it was in every other movie from its time, but it has the reverse: the horrible monster that has been set up as the Big Bad is, in fact, a hurt and misunderstood creature. What annihilates me every time I watch the ending is that Moana wins by seeing clearly, extending compassion, and righting an old wrong. The climax turns into a slow-motion, intimate, deeply felt moment between two women, and then all of the knots just fall apart. THAT’s what I keep coming back for.