In any case, the gender politics of the recent live-action “Mulan,” which some found to be retrograde, puts “Raya” in perspective: There’s no doubting our heroine’s abilities, nor is there mention of her being exceptional. Is Disney paying tribute to these cultures? Or are these cultures instruments of corporate strategy? Places as different as Mexico (“Coco”), the Polynesian Islands (“Moana”) and now Southeast Asia are flattened along the Disney continuum, with each feeling like one in a collection. The Disney treatment, like the Druun itself, seems to neutralize whatever it touches, no matter how hard it works to preserve the distinctive elements of the non-Western cultures it has brought under its label, especially recently.
The animators don’t stray far from the overall style of recent Disney fare like “Frozen” or “Moana,” though the film’s meticulously detailed environments - rainforest shrines teeming with visible moisture, snowy mountain fortresses shrouded in fog - are particularly impressive. Raya and company traverse multiple lands to collect the scattered pieces of the stone, giving the creators an excuse to indulge in expansive world-building, while snappy editing and rousingly choreographed action scenes animate these settings with comic strip panache. In typical Disney-princess fashion, our brooding heroine acquires a joke-slinging sidekick in nonhuman form: Sisu (Awkwafina), the titular last dragon, who (like Mushu in “Mulan” before her) isn’t a menacing behemoth so much as a klutzy, shape-shifting My Little Pony-like creature. Faith in the goodness of other people - even those from distant lands and of different persuasions - is the governing theme of “Raya and the Last Dragon,” which the directors Don Hall and Carlos López Estrada, and the screenwriters Qui Nguyen and Adele Lim, set in a fantasyland version of Southeast Asia complete with floating markets, water taxis and lots of shrimp congee.
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