Pleasant Moana 2 Sails into Troubled Animated Seas
It’s been three years since Moana of Motunui (voiced by Auli’i Cravalho) and the demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson) restored the heart of Te Fiti and reunited her people with the Ocean. In that time, she’s been scouring the seas and searching island after island for other people her tribe could connect with. While she has found her share of clues that these civilizations exist, frustratingly all of these investigations have proven to be in vain.
After receiving a vision from an ancestor and a visit by her grandmother Tala’s (Rachel House) spirit, Moana is tasked with finding the lost island of Motufetū and stopping the angry god of storms Nalo from keeping humanity eternally separated. To complete this quest, not only will she have to reunite with Maui, but Moana also needs to assemble a crew of newcomers who will provide vital assistance in this journey into the unknown: agriculture specialist Kele (David Fane), shipbuilder Loto (Rose Matafeo), and historian Moni (Hualālai Chung).
Moana 2 was originally meant to be a television series. It was recontextualized as a big-screen event sequel to 2016’s smash success Moana, which allowed for the bringing back of almost all of the previous adventure’s core vocal cast, including the essential Cravalho (who is once again wonderful) and Johnson. However, while composers Mark Mancina and Opetaia Foa’I are back in the fold, lyricist Lin-Manuel Miranda is noticeably absent. Same with veteran Disney directors Ron Clements and John Musker, the pair replaced by David G. Derrick Jr. and co-directors Jason Hand and Dana Ledoux Miller.
None of this is necessarily a bad thing, and the filmmakers, the animators, and the sequel’s technical team certainly make the most of a flimsy hand. But while younger audiences will almost certainly thrill to seeing Moana and Maui back in theaters where they belong, there’s still something sadly underwhelming about all of this. The sequel is only sporadically interesting and, considering its TV roots, it’s not altogether shocking that each act of the narrative feels like its own individual episode (that are all only missing their own intermittent commercial breaks to complete the illusion).
Still, the opening sequences reintroducing Moana and outlining what she needs to accomplish are extremely effective. The bonds between the young heroine and her three-year-old sister Simea (Khaleesi Lambert-Tsuda) are emotionally potent on a level I did not anticipate. There’s a adorable sequence where Moana introduces her pint-sized sibling to her friend the Ocean. The entire moment is breathtakingly animated and subtly sincere. It even brought a couple tears to my eyes.
Additionally, the final confrontation with Nalo is legitimately solid. Not nearly as spectacular as the climax of the previous film’s masterful conclusion centered on Moana and Te Fiti, true, but still wonderful all the same. It has energy and pizazz. Best of all, it takes Moana’s story to a suitably authentic, creatively deserved conclusion. She comes into her own as both a hero and a leader, and in doing so never loses sight of who she is at her core and what it is she’s fighting so hard to protect: Her family and her people.
A gigantic set piece with the returning Kakamora and a giant, ship-eating clam is peculiarly inert. An entire sequence in the undersea lair of batty demigod Matangi (Awhimai Fraser) comes across as nothing more than a Marvel-like setup for a character who may (or may not) play an essential role in future stories. Here, she is annoyingly just a convenient plot device to add needless exposition and get the characters pointed in the right direction and precious little else. Even though Fraser gives it her all, she’s also forced to sing the sequel’s worst song, too.
On a side note, there’s also a post-credit scene. Let me recommend that no one sticks around to witness it. It’s flat-out terrible.
As bad as much of that sounds, this sequel still brought a smile to my face. If Disney had allowed the filmmaker more time to iron out the screenplay’s more obnoxious kinks (and maybe redo all the songs from scratch), I do think this could have been a worthy follow-up to its groundbreaking predecessor. Kids will almost certainly love seeing Moana transform into an even greater hero, and the animation is thankfully stunning. Moana 2 is hardly smooth sailing, but it does have its charms. I’ll leave it up to the passage of time to discover how lasting they are, and just how far this sequel can ultimately go.
Film Rating: 2½ (out of 4)
