Next Up On Critical Me: Moana, Beauty and the Beast, and Priceless

Moana 

I thought I would not like this movie, but I ended up enjoying it.

The first most impressive thing about this movie would be the animation.  Twas fantastic.

Moana is about a Princess who sets herself on a voyage to find the demigod, Maui, in order to save her island from disaster.  Along with a 'follow your dreams' moral, there really wasn't much plot aside from that, which made some of the scenes rather undeveloped and awkward.

The character development was so-so.  I really liked some, while really disliking others.  But those great characters (Maui) made the movie worth it.

Music was fantastic.  Obviously.  I mean, Lin-Manuel Miranda.  What more can you ask for?

I can't exactly judge the quality of the dialogue on whole.  The bad characters had horrible dialogue.  The good characters had fantastic dialogue.

The humor was excellent...Most of the time.  Again, it all depended on the character.  A lot of the humor coming from the undeveloped unlikable characters was awkward.  (But Maui made the movie).

The ending was terrible.  Zero conflict.  Zero plot twist.  Everything worked out a little too well.  Which I should be merciful, considering it was a Disney Princess movie, but still.

I'll give it points for some good emotion.

So on whole, I enjoyed this movie but would probably never sit down and watch it again all the way through.  It was worth watching once.

On a scale from 1 to 10, I would give Moana a 5 1/2 

Priceless 

Very very well done.

The plot of Priceless is hard to explain without getting into too many details.  Basically, a man finds two girls in the back of his truck, and he makes it his mission to save them from trafficking.  I would compare it to the the movie Taken.

The worst part about this movie would be the beginning and ending monologues.  Full of quite unnecessary information that would have all been explained any way, and could have made the motive of the movie stronger.
The story was well done.
Dialogue wasn't bad.

The emotion and conflict of the movie was fantastic.
The acting was very good.  (And this is a Christian movie, so I give them an extra thumbs up for that).

The characters were well developed.
I really enjoyed this movie.

On a scale from 1 to 10, I would give Priceless a 8.

Beauty and the Beast 

Had kind of an awkward beginning...

The acting was great.  They had a fantastic line up of actors and actresses.  Unfortunately I didn't like Cogsworth, or Lumiere, or any of the talking castle items for that matter.  That was a big disappointment to me.   I liked the characters aside from them.

There really was nothing different with the story, besides a slight insight on Bell's past and an extra song or too. This was very accurate to the movie, even with the costumes and setting being the same.  So if you liked the story for the old cartoon, you will most likely like this version too.
The animation was pretty, but not as well done as I thought it might be.

I actually enjoyed some of the extra elements they added to this version.

The humor was good.  Still not as funny as the cartoon, despite the similarities.
There's not much more I can say, it really was just a live action version of the cartoon.  I must say I liked the cartoon version better.  Beauty and the Beast in general is one of my favorite stories.

On a scale from 1 to 10, I would give  Beauty and the Beast an 8.