This is the one big blemish on an otherwise engaging film, as our characters lavish praise on the idea of credit. The only time you won’t be laughing is during a particularly cynical gag about credit cards midway through the movie. You’ve got the cute supporting characters, the lovable animal sidekick and a merry band of misfits along for the adventure, jabbing audiences constantly with a barrage of crazy antics and laughs. These two traits become integral to the plot the longer the story goes on for.Ĭounterbalancing these heavy themes is the humour, which is absolutely on-point almost the entire way through.
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The movie still plays with strong central themes – a hallmark of Disney animation – settling this time on ideas around friendship and trust. Raya’s story is certainly unique too and with no romance, no male protagonists and very little in the way of Disney princess tropes, this film stands out next to other movies in Disney’s illustrious catalogue. Thankfully, the film makes up for these shortfalls with an eclectic, memorable supporting cast. At times it almost overpowers the enjoyment of the picture.
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In fact, a good chunk of this movie is chock full of exposition that grinds the story to a halt. I won’t spoil anything here but the story rockets forward at a pretty lively speed, stopping every now and then to catch its breath and fill us in on exposition. With no dragons this time, it’s up to Raya to save the day, collecting up fragments of a special relic to bring about the end of the Druun – and the return of the dragons. Unfortunately this peace is shattered when a dramatic event leads to the Druun returning and threatening to destroy life in Kumandra. At the center of all this is Raya, who follows her Father’s lead in tribe Heart as he tries to bring about peace by opening his arms – and land – to the rival clans. In fact, these divisions manifest themselves into five distinct clans (each notably named after parts of a dragon). Skip forward hundreds of years and the world has never been more divided. Following an attack by the evil Druun, the dragon sacrifice themselves to save the world, leaving humanity to point fingers at each other. Our adventure takes place in a realm known as Kumandra, where dragon and human live harmoniously together. While that may sound bizarre, the execution is actually pretty good and the story is intentionally segmented into different parts of this mission to keep the pacing as tight as possible. In its simplest form, Raya and the Last Dragon’s story combines elements of Moana and Mulan with a more conventional video game fetch quest. The story zips by at a breathless pace, the action comes thick and fast, while the emotional climax rounds everything out with a neat little origami bow. It’s a gorgeously rendered, distinctly Asian-flavoured picture that combines adventure, comedy and thrills to excellent effect. Throw in a fluid foot-chase through Talon and a booby-trapped gauntlet-run in Tail (complete with explosive-farting beetles), and Raya is a rare family film with genuine action-blockbuster chops.Raya and the Last Dragon is a wonderful movie. Veteran Disney director Don Hall ( Big Hero 6) and Blindspotting’s Carlos López Estrada deliver impressively impactful fight sequences that hit harder than typical Disney fare - using crash-zooms and speed-ramping to accentuate the fighting techniques of Raya and her nemesis Namaari ( Gemma Chan) while invoking the cinematic language of Asian action cinema. The complex mythology does make Kumandra feel properly epic, and every stop on Raya’s journey - the desert wasteland of Tail, the lantern-lit market-town of Talon, the dense, foggy forest of Spine - has a distinct, gorgeously realised identity. But the screenplay - from Crazy Rich Asians co-screenwriter Adele Lim and Vietnamese-American writer Qui Nguyen - is pacy and propulsive, punctuating the necessary narrative groundwork with bursts of action and excitement. It’s a lot of lore, and the opening act of Raya has plenty to unfurl – there’s a prologue to a prelude, exposition to dispense about dragon magic and the five factions of Kumandra (Tail, Talon, Spine, Fang, and Raya’s homeland of Heart), and a MacGuffin-driven mission to establish, along with the introduction of Awkwafina’s anxious water dragon Sisu. A rare family film with genuine action-blockbuster chops.