Approval Voting, Plurality, Plurality with Runoff, Approval/Disapproval Voting, Majority Judgment, Borda Count, Cumulative Voting, and Range/Score Voting are just a few of the voting systems that have been theorized in social choice theory and/or practiced by democracies. The fairness of a democratic election is something that many of us take for granted, but there are actually a lot of problems with many of the most common methods. Consider Approval/Disapproval Voting, in which the voter expresses which candidates he/she would accept and which candidates he/she would not – essentially the thumbs-up/thumbs-down system of Reddit (as I understand it). For candidates in an election, it would make some amount of sense for the candidate who most people gave a “thumbs up,” even though he/she wasn’t their favorite, to surpass the candidate whom many loved most and many hated. In this scenario, most people would get a leader of whom they approved, and fewer people would get the candidate they hated, which is fine for politics. When assessing art, however, this seems inappropriate, as exemplified by the fact that the high-quality (but highly divisive) La La Land has a lower score on Rotten Tomatoes than the objectively “good enough” Moana.
The problem with Rotten Tomatoes is that it allows the big movie studios to create the illusion that their films are highly praised simply by making movies that are safe, simple, and reliably passable. Moana is a perfect example of this, because approximately 3% of this movie is special and original, whereas 97% is an old, faithful “hero’s journey” that any movie buff can’t help but find predictable. There is nothing particularly bad about Moana, but nearly all of its parts seem to exist purely to serve their function in the regular machinery of the standard animated adventure. I’ll grant that the twist ending (if it can be called such) did surprise me, but the fifteen minutes preceding it went exactly as I predicted, creating a sense that the writers were merely lazy watchmakers. It seems Clements and Musker assumed they were the only people to have seen the original Star Wars, and I hate to break it to them, but I’ve seen that movie too – and I felt like I’d already seen Moana. While Frozen has certain elements that are quite predictable and embarrassingly trite, at least it manages to find the right balance of tribute and criticism in regards to earlier Disney films, whereas this film lets Maui joke about its adherence to the old formulas without making changes to address this criticism.
Sure, audiences may enjoy this movie a lot – for now – but eventually people will be shocked by just how little of it is memorable. The comedy is nearly all predictable, conforming to the same comic style that has made nearly every CGI family film from the past fifteen years feel bland and lacking in wit, but the jokes still got me at times … I just can’t remember them. The soundtrack has songs that are perfectly serviceable and that employ clever lyrics, but I can’t remember most of them either. I would go so far as to say that there are no more than three memorable songs on the soundtrack, and that’s being gracious. (This film’s “I Want” song is still stuck in my head, but I’m not happy about it – it’s far too contemporary and “poppy” in style, so it’s sure to become dated.) Most of the performances are rather forgettable as well, with only The Rock having his fair share of fun in the recording booth. That being said, as cliché and forgettable as it may have been, the music and story still worked on me, creating truly beautiful and moving moments at times that I hope I will remember.
The reason why I would recommend this movie, in spite of all I have just said, is that it has many strong moments that everyone should see, albeit in spite of itself. True, most of the visuals have the usual, boring “Disney CGI” look – what one would expect from a PIXAR short – but some scenes threw the usual conventions away in favor of artistry. As a giant crab sings the almost anti-melodic “Shiny,” the lights go out, and everything starts to glow in neon colors against dark blues and black. In terms of visuals, this is about the best I’ve seen from any CG-animated film, and it is accompanied nicely by the portion of “You’re Welcome” that discards any sense of realism for a properly theatrical musical number. The latter example makes use of Hawaiian art styles to add a special flare, making for one moment in Moana that actually makes it quite distinct in comparison to other films in its genre. The “You’re Welcome” number is also separated from the rest of the film in that it feels like a Disney classic, as though this was the only song for which Miranda was given more than ten minutes to write it. It even seems to borrow from Mary Poppins‘ “Jolly Holiday,” giving it a particularly timeless feeling, yet it still feels in keeping with Miranda’s background in freestyle rap music, ultimately seeming to suggest that Dick van Dyke was rapping in Mary Poppins. Think about that one for a while – the time of the specific moment in Poppins to which I’m referring is 48:05, for those of you playing along at home.
It’s fairly odd to see this kind of film coming from Clements and Musker. This is the team behind Aladdin, Hercules, and The Little Mermaid, among others, so making a merely passable film seems beneath them. On the other hand, this is their first time making a CG film, so hopefully their future endeavors won’t have this same sense of insecurity and will have the kind of creativity continuously that this film has sporadically.
