Pink Elephants

digging thru my drafts and found this really old writeup of after watching Moana...my 2c...since i always gripe about not putting my reviews out more...

Ok, getting this out of the way: yes I liked this better than Frozen. Okay no more comparing.

So Moana is a simple adventure/epic story, fairly linear and not too many sidetracks that keep the pace of the film going well, imo. So it passes my “ok, decent movie” bar with that. What really makes this movie so magical is:

1) the use of culture in the story! Not used as a background/“unique factor” but really influenced the story. I went to the Polynesia cultural center like nearly 2 years ago, and it was such a wonderful eye opener to Polynesia culture. So to experience it in movie was even MORE wonderful. It was beautiful, and I looked up articles on how the community worked with them on it and their criticisms, and I think it was generally respectful and still appealing to outside eyes as well. I am sure that there will be some criticisms, so do make sure to listen with open ears and understand how to treat things that are treasured by others.

2) the music!!! Yeah, I’m in love. I’m listening thru a lot of the older soundtracks and I think Lin-Manuel did really well. It could be a style preference, but something about…maybe because it has some great themes throughout that is well used and catchy, easy to sing, and easy to hear. Plus cutting out weird kinda pop culture references that I feel broke up some of the other past songs. Plus strengths of using choirs! Something about the simplicity of it makes the characters come fully fleshed out, vs just some smashing music number. Omg. I could go on. But I shadn’t.

You’re not lame at all ❤️ I still see you make bombass gifs and it makes me proud cuz I knew you when you were a wee gif baby :3 but yeah, started dating the dude like 5 years ago (time flies), changed jobs, got married 2.5 years ago, bought a house over a year ago, and popped back on tumblr a bit because zootopia and Moana is such love. i feel a lotta people I used to follow and talk about movie discourse are all gone now….we all grow up and can’t do the same stuff we used to…but it still feels nice and familiar out here since im not like frustrated at it like some other social media sites (now, if they’d just stop showing me the same ad like every 5 posts)