Oceania

Moana strikes again. The memory of the Italian porn star prevents the protagonist of a film suitable for children from being named after her. So, to preserve the metre in the songs – which have been translated because Disney has always made a point of honour of doing so, regardless of whether children are now singing the songs in English anyway – the heroine becomes ‘Vaiana’, no longer the chubby cartoon character but portrayed by flesh-and-blood actors and actresses, who, in their efforts to mirror the animated film’s characters, come across as rather flat. Not even the plot is original: it’s an exact carbon copy of the previous film – forgetting ‘Oceania 2’, which was even sillier than it needed to be, because a film featuring a young girl must necessarily be feminist – they call it ‘empowering’, which sounds more chic. Young girls of our time will thus be able to learn to research their ancestors, and, like them – if they’re Polynesian – set sail in a canoe. The film’s premise, in fact, suggests – one might even say ‘claims’ – that certain Polynesians have stopped going to sea and have retreated to the mainland. With flower crowns, and some truly enviable sarongs, and gods and demigods such as the tattooed Maui (Dwayne Johnson – there’s enough space on his skin to write the entire “Odyssey” – other adventures, other seas). The actors were chosen for their resemblance to the characters, and so inevitably come across as less expressive than their animated counterparts.