Times I Got Emotional During 'Moana'
A case for seeing a movie
Have you ever heard of Disney? They make feature films and release them around major holidays so that we can see them with our families and feel okay-to-nice together a couple times a year. Sometimes this business plan works great for them and they give us something like Wall-E or Monsters Inc., and other times they biff it bigtime and fart out Pirates of the Caribbean 12: Still Out Here, but no matter the case it usually ends up being not the biggest waste. It’s because every Disney movie ends up being about family and love and ethics and what it means to be alive and good, so if you have a stance on any of those topics, you may inadvertently find your heart warmed by a film you weren’t even planning on seeing.
Take Moana, for instance—their latest release about a Polynesian girl born to lead the people of her island who ends up wondering, “Uh, hey, are we coming at this governing thing from the right angle?” I found the film to be Extremely Good, but I also understand that it is Oscars season and maybe you’d like to spend your dollars seeing Hidden Figures or Fences or any of the other ones that aren’t La La Land. But eventually, invariably, you will be confronted with the opportunity to see Moana, and I’d like to suggest that you take it.
Maybe you’ll be on a plane, maybe you’ll be home with a cold and clicking through the New Releases section on Prime—all I can tell you for sure is that you’ll probably have a very nice time. In lieu of a formal review, please accept this chronological list of points where I either teared up or felt like I could tear up during Moana:
- When Moana talks to her dad.
- When Moana talks to her mom.
- When Moana meets the ocean.
- When Moana talks to her grandma.
- When Moana sings her song about believing in herself even though she feels different from everybody else.
- When Moana believes in herself even though she feels different from everybody else.
- When things get hard and the ocean is like, “But I love u tho.”
- When Moana tells Maui a nice thing he needs to hear.
- When Moana thinks, “This is hard,” but then does the right thing anyway.
- When Moana yells, “I AM MOANA!”
Doesn’t that sound like a movie you’d want to see? Yeah, I know. Me too.