“RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGON” IMPRESSES.
The chief antagonist in “Raya and the Last Dragon,” an enjoyable new adventure from Walt Disney Animation Studios, is something called the Druun, a shrieking, sludgy purple monster that turns people to stone. It’s an archetypal formless villain, a distant cousin of supernatural scourges like the Nothing from “The Neverending Story,” but it also carries a whiff of real-world metaphor. No, the Druun isn’t the coronavirus, even if it does leave broken societies, devastated families and tribalist impulses in its wake.
Women rule, literally and figuratively, in “Raya and the Last Dragon,” starting with Raya, an intrepid warrior princess. The Druun has devastated her homeland, but Raya, voiced with pluck and determination by Kelly Marie Tran (“Star Wars: The Last Jedi”), refuses to accept defeat. Armed with a powerful sword, an ancient scroll and a giant armadillo-like sidekick named Tuk Tuk , she travels the fantastical realm of Kumandra in search of answers, carrying nothing less than the weight of humanity on her redcaped shoulders.
And also, at least temporarily, the weight of one of the world’s most recognizable family-entertainment brands. Arriving March 5 in theaters and as a premium offering for Disney+ subscribers, “Raya and the Last Dragon” marks the studio’s latest attempt to diversify its animated features for a global audience — something readily apparent from Raya’s Southeast Asian lineage, a first for a Disney protagonist. But it’s also apparent from the apocalyptic, world-saving nature of her quest: In these dark times, onscreen as well as off, “happily ever after” isn’t as simple a proposition as it used to be.
Which is not to say that “Raya and the Last Dragon,” smoothly directed by the Disney veteran Don Hall (“Big Hero 6”) and the animation newcomer Carlos Lopez Estrada (“Blindspotting”), doesn’t make room for music, lightness and whimsy. Its vigorous sword fights and chase sequences play out over a lovely, catchy score composed by James Newton Howard. The story features the usual Disney complement of cute critters and likable supporting players, some of whom spout comic banter that hews more anachronistic than mythic. One of these is an aquamarine dragon, Sisu, who, awakened from a 500year slumber, quickly becomes Raya’s bestie and part-time therapist: “Wow, you’ve really got some trust issues,” she says, before later adding, “C’mon, I got you, girl, who’s your dragon?”
Your dragon, in this case, is voiced by Awkwafina, as delightful and irrepressible a comic force here as she was in the liveaction “Crazy Rich Asians.” (Adele Lim, one of that movie’s co-writers, also scripted this one, with Qui Nguyen.) Sisu hails from a lineage of glorious, multihued dragons who roamed Kumandra centuries earlier, and who inspired the names of its five kingdoms: Heart, Fang, Spine, Talon and Tail. In keeping with Asian folklore, these dragons are not enemies but guardians of humanity, aligned less with fire than with the life-giving elements of water and air.
The question at the heart of the movie is whether people at odds can ever learn to trust one another, let alone lay down their lives for one another, and submit to the realization that their fates are ultimately entwined.
As with most of Disney’s past stabs at multiplex multiculturalism, the representational value of “Raya and the Last Dragon” will be lauded, debated and found wanting in roughly equal measure. (Some have already criticized the principal voice cast for featuring more actors of East Asian than Southeast Asian descent.) The movie is an ambitious, imperfect stew of cultural inspirations, in which sharp new flavors and textures jostle with flat, derivative ones.