Sets the bar for animated movies higher

Rating: 8/10 (30 May 2018)

The main reason I saw this movie is because Alessia Cara sings one of the songs. Sure, she sings it during the end credits and the same song is sung by Auli'i Cravalho during the movie, but that's the main reason I wanted to see this movie. I admire Alessia Cara, check out her songs, she's great! I also listened to some of the other songs from this movie on YouTube and I really liked them, so today I sat down and finally saw "Moana".
I loved this movie from the beginning. The opening scene where we're told the mythological history of the island is beautiful. Little moments like Moana's scene with the baby sea turtle make her character even more adorable. Little moments like the adult sea turtle swimming next to Moana in the water, the chicken tripping and walking into the fire, the pig and more are beautiful as well and they add so much to the movie.
The animation is gorgeous. Even though I didn't see it in 3D (but I would like to some day), at times you just wanted to grab into the screen. Everything in this movie looks so pretty. I saw this movie in full HD which was perfect. You could feel every single leaf of the flowers and trees and every single hair of the characters and the lighting they integrated into the animation is really nice.
The soundtrack for this movie is amazing. I really like the Polynesian score, but what's really special are the songs sung by the characters, especially "How Far I'll Go". I might actually buy the soundtrack soon. What I don't like about lots of modern musical movies is that the lyrics are mostly irrelevant to the story, but here they are part of the story and they are meaningful.
The story is great, interesting and continuously unpredictable, this movie has realistic characters, I cared about all of the main characters and I was invested in Moana's journey and the fact that she's clumsy (like me) makes her more interesting and relatable. Maui and the chicken are great comic relief while Maui is also a very serious character. This movie has a great screenplay. There's great funny and light-hearted scenes contrasting with emotional, sad, meaningful and tense scenes and the transitions don't feel abrupt. I also liked that this movie poked fun at the fact that people use "men" as a gender-neutral word for "humans" in one scene. The dream sequence isn't fooling us either which is a rarity these days. Another thing this movie does well is using slow motion with a purpose, there's a beautiful slow motion sequence towards the end.
Another thing that I really liked about this movie is that the location is not irrelevant. The culture of the island is distinctly Polynesian and I love to see that culture being portrayed on the big screen.
The voice acting is great, particularly Auli'i Cravalho is doing a great job, especially considering that this was her movie debut. I like that they cast voice actresses and actors that match what you think the characters would sound like.
This movie also has a great message about people not being what they seem like on first sight, but actually being really beautiful inside even though you might not see it at first, it has a great message about believing in yourself and it has a great message about forgiving.
I have a few flaws with this movie on first viewing, mostly little things that don't make sense but don't really have an impact on the story, like some gimmicks in the animation that don't make sense if you think about them, but they're pretty little moments which enhance the movie in the long run. Also, it's unlikely that Moana is doing that well escaping the pirates' arrows. And Moana has no access to food and water while she's off the island, yet she's never shown to be hungry or thirsty. I think the movie started off really good, but I thought the monster character who appeared an hour into the movie was really boring. Fortunately it's only in the movie for a few minutes. In the long run, "Moana" is a great movie with flaws. The second act was good, the first act was great and the third act was just beautiful. It was a little boring towards the middle, but the middle part that I didn't like is so short that I'm not going to downgrade it because of that and I give it a 10/10. I hardly ever felt that invested in the characters, emotional and at times even tense in an animated movie. This definitely sets my bar for my ratings of animated movies higher.