Rory Henry, a 2-year-old living in Fort Worth, is plagued by an obsession.
She’s watched Disney’s Polynesian animated film, “Moana,” about 40 times in the past year and a half. She has a pig toy in the shape of Pua, Moana’s sidekick. A karaoke microphone that plays a song from “Moana 2”. And “Moana” dresses, sunglasses and hair clips.
Rory’s mother, Stacey Henry, 38, and his father have to be careful about the use of the “M word” in the house, Henry said.
“She’ll immediately raise her very serious eyebrows and say, ‘Come on my boat,'” Henry said with a laugh.
Rory is not alone: Since its theatrical release in 2016, “Moana,” which tells the story of a chef’s daughter who goes on a journey to save her island from destruction, has become the most-watched film of all time on Disney+. It has been streamed for over 1.5 billion hours, the equivalent of playing “How Far I’ll Go” on repeat for over 170,000 years. “Moana” and its 2024 sequel, “Moana 2,” are both among Disney’s Top 10 highest-grossing animated films.
So what is responsible for the affliction that hundreds of parents on social media have dubbed Moana Mania? It’s a disease that will likely affect more families with the July 10 release of the live-action “Moana,” which returns Lin-Manuel Miranda as songwriter and stars Dwayne Johnson in the role he previously voiced, the demigod Maui.
The songs from almost every Disney animated musical film released in recent decades pose a danger to parents’ peace and quiet.
There was “You’re Welcome,” the jazzy melody from the Polynesian show that Johnson sang in “Moana”; “Let It Go,” Elsa’s barnburner of a self-acceptance anthem from “Frozen”; and “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” from “Encanto,” another catchy number from Miranda mixing salsa and Latin pop.
In each case, Disney deployed an age-old formula: take a highly engaging narrative, wrap it in catchy tunes, and watch the views pile up.
Cristel Antonia Russell, a marketing professor at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, studies why people like to consume the same stories over and over again. There’s a name, she says, for the urge to seek the comfort that comes from watching a beloved show: the paradox of choice.
The concept, coined by psychologist Barry Schwartz in his 2004 book of the same name, is behind a phenomenon sometimes called the Chinese menu effect. When there are too many options, we often return to a choice that is familiar to us, like eating orange chicken again.
“It’s the one thing you’re sure to love,” Russell said.
This attraction is particularly strong among children, said Sam Wass, a child psychologist who directs the Institute for Early Childhood and Youth Sciences at the University of East London. Repetition of a familiar story can help children’s brains process information, make predictions, and master the rhythms of language.
The sweet spot for maximum learning, he says, is somewhere between knowing exactly what’s going to happen and not being able to predict what’s coming next. “Psychologists sometimes call this the Goldilocks zone,” he said.
Because young children have less experience to draw on, they are able to reach this zone either with a predictable narrative or with a more complex story — like “Moana” — that has become familiar through repeated viewing.
“What seems incredibly repetitive to us may, from the perspective of a 3-year-old brain, be exactly the right level of challenge,” he said.
Each viewing allows children to strengthen and refine their predictions, he said. At first, they may just learn the basic outline of the story. Later, they pick up on emotional expressions, jokes, motivations, vocabulary and subtle relationships between events.
“In a sense, they are running the same experiment over and over again, but extracting new information each time,” he said.
Which means, for a nuanced tale like “Moana” — with its multidimensional, layered story arc — parents might want to make peace by memorizing the lyrics to “You’re Welcome” and “How Far I’ll Go.”
“The more complex the content and the younger the brain, the more you have to rewatch something until it becomes too predictable and you stop learning by watching it,” he said.
This cognitive feedback loop helps explain why children don’t just rewatch movies. They also demand to hear the same book repeatedly, insist on eating the same foods, wear the same clothes, and sometimes delight in dropping the same spoon on the floor 20 times in a row.
“From an adult perspective, nothing new is happening,” he said. “But from the child’s perspective, they are refining and testing thousands of little predictions every second.”
It’s not just about children. Adults, of course, return to the movies they may have watched as children for comfort, Russell said. But they also often manage to understand themes that they may not have grasped when they were young.
“When you rewatch something, the story hasn’t changed, but you have changed,” she said. “You see it with a new perspective. It’s like, ‘Oh, I didn’t notice this little thing before,’ or ‘Oh, I remember liking this character so differently when I was a teenager than now as a mom.'”
But why “Moana” specifically, and not, say, “Brave” or “Tangled”?
It’s a triple threat, Russell said: The film features a protagonist “who’s not your typical blonde, blue-eyed Cinderella,” a theme of empowerment and “upbeat songs and dances that are just pure joy.”
This last factor is perhaps the most important. Miranda’s infectious soundtrack is full of earworms like “You’re Welcome,” “We Know the Way” and “How Far I’ll Go,” which won a Grammy for Best Song Written for Visual Media.
Memorable songs can go a long way in making a story compelling, Russell said.
“You don’t necessarily need to see a musical again to enhance the movie experience,” she said. “You can hear a song of it on the radio and still feel all the positive emotions associated with replaying it.”
Music is one of the reasons why many parents are addicted to sailing and singing themselves. Krizza Mae Matias-Lizardo, a 31-year-old family blogger who lives in Manila in the Philippines, admits to rewatching the film with her husband occasionally after her daughter, Viel Matias-Lizardo, 3, went to bed. (Her husband has the songs on his Spotify playlist, she said, and he will sing along even when he’s alone in the car.)
Matias-Lizardo also appreciates the film’s positive message for his daughter.
“I love teaching her that being strong doesn’t mean being perfect,” she said. “It means having a good heart, caring for others, achieving your goals even if it means being afraid. As a mom, I think that’s a lesson for me too.”
It remains to be seen whether the live-action film will be able to replicate this fixation for a new generation. But the signs are worrying (if you’re a parent not on the Disney payroll, at least): There’s the same cast of eccentric characters. Johnson and his robust baritone voice are back. Younger viewers will be able to hear Miranda’s original earworms (and a few new tracks).
Matias-Lizardo, her husband and Viel plan to see it in theaters the day it is released in the Philippines, she said.
“We are so excited,” she said. “I hope they do more.”
