Great fun. A traditional Disney Princess film but with a little more depth to it, being abut personal discovery and bravery.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 4, 2023

... A great example of the studio putting a modern sheen on traditional formulas.

| May 1, 2023

It's a deeply moving and beautiful film that celebrates it's main character, her culture and her self-empowerment... but she could have been a lot more meaningful and authentic if she reflected and honored a specific Pacific Island culture.

| Aug 18, 2021

One of the Mouse House's most sumptuous looking films from an animation standpoint.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 20, 2017

I have a soft spot for the gigantic, arrogant, avaricious crab named Tamatoa.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 6, 2017

Who knew the Rock could belt out giddy showstoppers like an old Broadway ham?

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 30, 2016

Perhaps the most encouraging part of Moana's feminism is its subtlety. It presents female agency as nothing out of the ordinary - it doesn't comment on it, there is no patriarchy she's fighting back against and there's no love story.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 22, 2016

In the next election, can I just vote Disney?

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 4, 2016

Directors Ron Clements and John Musker here segue seamlessly into their first CG feature, embracing the malleable magic of digital animation while retaining the clear lines that underpinned their previous work.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 4, 2016

It's a treat, for family audiences and musical theater geeks alike.

| Dec 3, 2016

In Disney's latest refreshing take on the princess genre, Moana is a feisty, sea-voyaging chieftain's daughter without any pink satin in sight.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 2, 2016

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.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 1, 2016

Moana lacks the zest we associate with Disney's greatest creations.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 1, 2016

This is Disney's way of having its formulaic cake and eating it, too: "We know what we're doing here, and we know that you know it, too. So please stop fretting and enjoy while the pieces fall into place."

| Original Score: 1/5 | Dec 1, 2016

No matter who wrote the songs, there was always going to be a line about listening to your 'inner voice' - it's pretty much Disney company policy.

| Dec 1, 2016

The narrative is a fairly predictable hero's journey -- Maui even calls her "The Chosen One" -- but the movie is refreshing for its lack of a love interest; instead Moana learns how to chart her own course.

| Dec 1, 2016

There could be umpteen charges of kitsch, political incorrectness and mongrelised cultural history. Yet this South Seas hurricane of a film blows us away, scattering our faculties and effects and substituting its own.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 1, 2016

What impresses most here is the way the filmmakers combine the traditional Disney elements -- the sentimentality, the slapstick and the iridescent animation -- with a storyline rooted in South Sea island myth and culture.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 30, 2016

Even if it isn't exactly unique, that doesn't make the movie any less rapturously entertaining

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 30, 2016

Moana functions as well as it does because the story team ultimately focused on finding everything about Disney stories that worked in 2016, and improving everything that didn't.

| Nov 29, 2016