Virtually everything about Disney’s latest fairy tale, Moana, is familiar from past Disney films. The studio is still following the broad parameters it started laying down in 1937, with Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, by reshaping a culturally specific fairy tale to fit a family-friendly, accessible template. Once again, there’s a young woman leaving a safe, comfortable home, venturing into a dangerous world, and finding her destiny, all while singing catchy songs about what she wants and how she’ll get it.
All the narrow parameters are familiar too, this time from Disney’s Tangled. Like Rapunzel in Tangled, Moana (Hawaiian newcomer Auli’i Cravalho) is brave and ambitious, but also naïve and sheltered, because she’s been held back by overprotective parents with their own agenda for her life. Like Rapunzel, Moana defies family to pursue her own quest. And like Rapunzel, Moana seeks the help of a more worldly and experienced man, who holds her in dismissive contempt until she’s proved herself enough times to earn his admiration. The fact that he’s a boastful demigod instead of a smug thief seems almost beside the point: Both Maui (Dwayne Johnson) in Moana and Flynn Rider in Tangled are flashy, arrogant, and headed for breakdowns when they realize the limits of their talents. And they’re both overshadowed by their plucky young protégés, who start out less cocksure and brash, so they suffer smaller falls whenever they hit a crisis of confidence. Naturally, in both films, there’s an animal companion, a lot of bantery comedy, a solemn moment where the heroine has to decide to press on alone, and some big explosive action when she does.
But the familiarity of the formula doesn’t matter nearly as much as the execution. Moana makes Tangled feel like one of many experiments at tinkering with the formula, getting it exactly right. All the beats proceed exactly as expected, but they hit with admirably precise timing, amid a strikingly beautiful landscape where every leaf is rendered with loving clarity. The humor, the wonder, and the awwww moments all hit home comfortably. This is such a perfect execution of the Disney formula, it feels like the movie the studio has been trying to make since Snow White.
It’s no wonder Disney keeps coming back to different forms of this fairy-tale-derived story, which encourages viewers to relate to a character with boundless drive and goodwill, then lets her triumph in a world that seems determined to make her fail. The Disney-heroine formula isn’t just a standard feel-good underdog story, it’s specifically a story about how determination and good intentions count for more than experience and age. That narrative is particularly friendly to younger viewers, who get to see their fantasies of heroism play out onscreen. But it’s a satisfyingly idealistic stance for older watchers, too.