(CNN) Disney continues its animation roll with "Moana," a seafaring quest that sails past its one rocky patch with visual brilliance and several Broadway-ready songs, the latter conjured in part by "Hamilton's" Lin-Manuel Miranda. People magazine's newly anointed Sexiest Man Alive might be a great marketing hook (and he even sings), but Maui's arrival shifts the movie onto a different track -- from a young girl's emotional coming-of-age story to something more broad and jokey. Moana (newcomer Auli'i Cravalho) grows up in an idyllic Polynesian island paradise, where the only rule laid down by her father is not to venture beyond the reef. But his daughter yearns to explore, which she announces in a song titled "How Far I'll Go" (not to be confused with "Frozen's" "Let It Go"), the kind of show-stopping anthem that, with Cravalho's soaring belt, would bring a legit theater crowd to its feet. As it turns out, Moana has a good reason to get out and see the world, and not just because her sage old grandma urges her to do so.

Source: CNN November 22, 2016 18:22 UTC