Growing up as a princess, knowing that the island of Motonui is to be hers soon, Moana becomes a strong, independent woman throughout the new Disney movie Moana. This movie stars Auli’i Cravalho as Moana and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as Maui, the demigod that Moana save her island. The movie also features music by Lin Manuel-Miranda and Mark Mancina, Tarzan, and Brother Bear.

The movie starts with the song “Where You Are.” This song introduces us to Moana’s village and all of their traditions. During this song, Moana is pulled to the edge of the water which is not allowed. In this song, she is getting older and is becoming a leader. However, she is not happy on this island because of her dad’s rules, one being no one is allowed to go to the water. Subsequently, Moana takes immediate action and becomes a leader as she finds out that her island’s food supply is running low, there are no fish in the water and the coconuts trees are sick.

When Moana hears this, she feels that she needs to go deeper into the water to save her island. The next song is called “Here I’ll Go,” which some claim to be the new “Let It Go.” This song talks about how Moana has no control over how she is drawn to the water and feels that she cannot be a good leader. After this song, Moana goes in the water, and sets sail, by breaking the rule, but she runs into a storm. Due to the severity of the storm she and her pet pig almost drown.

When Moana gets back, her grandma is waiting for her on the shore. Her grandma takes her to a cave, and they see a bunch of sail boats, and discover that her ancestors were voyagers through the song “We Know The Way.”

Moana goes to tell her parents and she notices her Grandma is not with her. She finds out that her Grandma is dying. Right before the Grandma dies she tells Moana that Moana needs to go out and gives her a necklace with a stone that will save her people.

For Moana to save her island she needs to go find the demigod, which is a God that is half human, like Hercules, Maui to save her island.                  

With the songs being written by Lin Manuel-Miranda, a lot of them sound like songs you would hear in Hamilton which lent to more raps, by Lin doing this, the songs sounded more like pop songs rather than musical-esk songs. Also, all the music is written so well and, it sounded like it embraced the Polynesian culture very well.

This was a great movie because of so many reasons. The water in this movie is beautifully animated.I really felt like I was on the water during this movie, and has a life of itself which makes this movie so much better. Also, all of the acting and singing was so amazing. One of the songs that I really liked is “You’re Welcome,” which is the song Maui sings when he meets Moana. Whenever I hear this song I become so happy because it is an upbeat song.

The only bad thing about this movie, that I felt, was that I left wanting more music and content.

Overall this was a good movie and I would highly recommend this movie to everyone, even if you’re not a Disney fan.