Raya and the Last Dragon

At its best, this movie is charming, fascinating and even moving. At its worst, it is superficial, silly and sometimes downright stupid. So I guess you could call it a mixed bag. The strengths: beautiful to look at, emotionally true, and effective in its use of its Southeast Asian cultural milieu (at least as far as a total outsider can tell). The weaknesses: the story, though overall fine, has some real holes in it, not the least of which being, why isn’t everyone immediately on the same page once the dragon shows up, given she is otherwise treated like a god? A lot of the conflict should just melt away once everyone knows who they’re dealing with. Also, the secondary characters, though eventually integral to the climax and resolution, are at first really annoying (and kind of stay that way, to be honest). Given the foregoing, one might expect this to be a mid-range movie—but that would be grading on too steep a curve. After all, I did enjoy much of the film, and what I didn’t appreciate—besides the plainly-selling-to-toddlers silliness—may have been just me missing something culturally. So let’s let this one squeak in just at the barest lower echelon of the PURR range, and declare it a qualified success.