The latest animated feature from the Mouse House is a typically visually sumptuous ethnic affair (taking place in what looks like Thailand) where a fractured populace (separated into five provinces) is besieged by a force which can turn the inhabitants into stone. What keeps the evil at bay in one province is a magical stone (granted to them by the once teeming dragon population) to protect them. During a reunification attempt between them & the outlining areas (who are stoneless) goes bust (a daughter of one the leaders uses her wiles to trick Raya to take her to the stone only for her steal it where it's then accidentally broken up into pieces). Years later Raya, voiced by Kelly Marie Tran, & her trusty Tuktuk, voiced by Alan Tudyk, roam the lands hoping to reunite all the stones again before the impending evil force engulfs the land & luckily, after successfully acquiring the first piece of the stone revivifies a dragon, voiced by Awkwafina, Raya gets much needed help to succeed in her mission. As usual in most Disney stories, the heroine has abandonment issues (her father was waylaid & turned to stone), the dialogue seems to be written for 21 century characters when the setting belies that fact & touchy/feely aspects of sworn enemies banding together to fight a common foe is straight out of Mickey Mouse's handbook. After scoring w/recent hits like Moana, Wreck-it-Ralph & Zootopia, this feels like a return to bad form for the animation studio w/its over-reliance on quirky speak bordering on annoying rather than endearing keeps derailing the action & mood the film is trying to set. Other voices are provided by Daniel Dae Kim as Raya's dad, Gemma Chan as Raya's nemesis, Benedict Wong as one of Raya's traveling companions, Sandra Oh as Chan's mom & other voices, which include Ross Butler & Sung Kang, round out the other supporting players.
Review of Raya and the Last Dragon
