OVP: Raya and the Last Dragon (2021)

Film: Raya and the Last Dragon (2021)

Stars: Kelly Marie Tran, Awkwafina, Izaac Wang, Gemma Chan, Daniel Dae Kim, Sandra Oh

Director: Don Hall & Carlos Lopez Estrada

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Animated Feature Film)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

The long drought is over.  While this was over a week ago (and I have since been to another movie in theaters), Raya and the Last Dragon was the movie that got me back into theaters.  I sat, ate my chicken fingers (I had just had popcorn the night before, and honestly I cannot stress enough how much fun it is to eat chicken fingers in a movie theater), and watched in awe (and yes, I cried during the opening credits of the movie just as I realized that I felt at home for the first time in months).  I have said for a long while that it was going to be difficult to rate the first movie I watched when I got back into the theaters, and it was made particularly challenging because it was a film that checks a lot of boxes for me.  I generally like Disney's animated fare (in the past decade, more so than Pixar's output), and this is a gorgeous, colorful movie (though not a musical).  However, I'm not blind, and do see that while Raya has its moments, it does suffer from a simplified plot & a repetitive story structure.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Raya (Tran), a young warrior princess whose father Chief Benja (Kim) protects a sacred orb that supposedly keeps an evil called the Druun at bay.  When Benja invites the four leaders of the neighboring kingdoms, who assume that Benja's Heart kingdom is prosperous because of the orb, the daughter of one of the chiefs, Namaari (Chan) tries to steal the orb, but instead breaks it & the result is that the Druun is released, turning Chief Benja into stone.  Years later, Raya uses her orb to free Sisu (Awkafina), the last dragon, to help her in her quest to best the Druun.  Sisu is kind of the runt-of-the-litter in terms of her dragon siblings, but they go on a quest to steal the pieces of the orb & put them back together with Namaari, trying to steal the orb pieces for herself & the protection of her kingdom, following in pursuit.

It's a Disney movie, so you can guess how things turn out (hint-everyone is happy & harmonious), but Raya for a while does tread some new territory that Disney hasn't always trod in the past.  It's hard not to see the indictment in people's greed in the way the orb is broken as people want it to be theirs even if it means no one can have it (everything from climate change to democracy is under the microscope there, and though it was made before, it's hard not to see the spread-of-the-pandemic & people needlessly skipping masks & vaccines at the sacrifice of others, in that sequence).  Disney isn't usually so obliquely political (save for Zootopia), and I liked it.

But the rest of the movie doesn't have this kind of tenacity, and is bogged down in a script that basically has Raya go to a kingdom, find a piece of the orb, find a new sidekick, and learn the same lesson.  Raya isn't an interesting leading princess, her single-minded determination never letting her get out of her shell, and while she has a complicated relationship with Namaari (with clear queer overtunes if your antennae are up), it doesn't work for me.  Awkafina's Sisu is the highlight of the movie, as her comedic skills are aces with the dragon character, but the script isn't quite funny enough to make this a Genie or Dory situation, where a film is brought to another level by a comedian capable of such things.  Instead, it's beautiful but kind of blah, a movie that is great to see in theaters...mostly because it's always great to see a movie in theaters.