Movie Review – Moana 2
Principal Cast : Auli’i Cravalho, Dwayne Johnson, Hulalai Chung, Rose Matafeo, David Fane, Awhimai Fraser, Khaleesi Lambert-Tsuda, Temeuera Morrison, Nicole Scherzinger, Rachel House, Gerald Ramsey, Alan Tudyk.
Synopsis: After receiving an unexpected call from her wayfinding ancestors, Moana must journey to the far seas of Oceania and into dangerous, long-lost waters for an adventure unlike anything she’s ever faced.
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Conceived as a series for Disney’s streaming platform Disney+, Moana 2’s voyage to the screen shares many of the same problems the film itself has from the get. Oh, please don’t think I didn’t enjoy this quickfire sequel, because both I and my kids had a blast with the fabulous visuals and energetic screenplay. There’s just something indifferent about Moana 2 I have struggled to put my finger on for a while now, and I suspect the fact it started as an episodic series rather than a fully fleshed out feature film has something to do with it. The respective component parts of the original film’s cast roster all return – Auli’i Cravalho and Dwayne Johnson in particular were standouts there and once again do their best here – and the animation is nothing short of astonishing at times. However, the lack of a compelling villain, at least one we see on the screen, and a convoluted plot and expanded secondary characters who amount to very little, turn this box-office bonanza into a mild diversion with limited staying power.
Picking up several years after the original film, Moana is now a “wayfinder”, and after briefly returning to her island home following a search for other ocean-faring folk, is given a vision from an ancient ancestor indicating her tribe is soon for extinction should she not break an old curse. Moana is tasked with locating the mysterious sunken island of Motufetu, which once connected all the islands of the Pacific, with the help of Maui and three new explorers – Moni (Haulalai Chung), a fanboy of Maui, Loto, a quirky yet talented engineer, and Kele, an elder farmer who is along to provide food on the journey. Embarking on their voyage, Moana recruits Maui yet again and they set off in search of the god Nalo, who has placed the curse upon Motufetu and for whom humans are among the most hated of all Earthly creatures.
The original Moana instantly became a beloved Disney property, thanks to a dynamic Polynesian plot and characters, Lin Manuel Miranda’s toe-tapping lyrics and music, and the aforementioned vocal performances from Cravalho and Johnson, all of which spurred the 2016 computer generated animated film to a half-billion dollar global box-office. It has since gone on to become a standard-bearer for the studio’s modern post-Tangled animated canon, driven by young girls who see themselves as the young Moana striking out across their own oceans. Naturally, Disney was never going to let this IP sit idle, and saw potential in an animated Disney+ series to fill a need for “content” to draw in eyeballs. As time passed, however, the studio decided to turn the in-production series into a feature film, rejig some things and release it theatrically to capitalise on the property’s inherent value. It’s here that things, in my opinion, start to go wrong for the film.
Moana 2 is a cracking good time at the movies. It’s bright, zany, filled with the same slapstick humour as its predecessor, and comes with a number of thunderous show tune songs that kids of all ages will enjoy. Cravalho and Johnson, together with new characters voiced by Rose Matafeo, David Fane and Hualalai Chung, as well as returning cast in Temuera Morrison, Nicole Scherzinger and Rachel House, deliver solid performances and ably convince us they’re inhabiting their on-screen roles superbly, and yet again the imbecilic rooster Heihei steals every scene he’s in. But there’s a problem even here, and it boils down to the screenplay credited to Jared Bush and Dana Ledoux Miller, both of whom are holdovers from the film’s genesis as a television project. The script feels too convoluted, despite efforts to remix the first film’s themes of searching and discovery. The plight of the islanders is once again in jeopardy, and once more Moana is called to search for some mystical resolution – in this case, a sunken island known as Motufetu – with tattooed demigod Maui along for the assist. Troublesome for the film, Maui, arguably the central reason to have all the magical shenanigans going on in the first place, isn’t in the early going much at all, randomly shoehorned in with a subplot involving the bat-like Matangi that never elaborates itself. There’s a lot of Moana soul-searching again, and a lot of overly complex narrative reasoning to get Moana and Maui into the same story again, and not a lot of it makes real sense other than, well, I guess we’re going on another voyage.
The fact the film feels so piecemeal about what Moana is supposed to do, and the central conceit is so esoteric, a lot of the first film’s destiny manifest overtones kinda stumble into position here, almost without meaning to. I guess it all works if you don’t think about it too much, and the bright animation and well designed action set-pieces do the big screen justice, but even saying that it feels a tad too oversold. Moana 2 just feels too clumsy as a feature film, too stuffed with prerequisite character beats (Heihei and that darn pig get a fair run of comedy relief, it must be said) and very obvious dramatic development to overcome the thinness of its plot or the barely salvaged grand finale, which lacks import thanks to an absence of any real antagonist. It also has a problem with a trio of secondary characters accompanying Moana on her voyage this time, none of whom amount to much at all in the grand scheme. One of them is a slightly dense Maui fanboy, another is a fast-talking brainiac engineering whiz who comes to the rescue of the canoe periodically, and the third is a grumpy old man whose only purpose is to grow food to eat on the voyage, and is never once spotted doing just that. None of these characters has a serviceable arc throughout the film other than minor comedy relief or exposition anchor, and none of them play any significant part of the film’s climactic emotional beats… they’re just… there.
What the film also lacks is the input of Broadway superstar Lin Manual Miranda, replaced here by rising musical stars Barlow & Bear, aka Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear, who composed all the film’s songs. The anthemic “We’re Back” is a thunderous good time, and “Beyond”, the spiritual descendent of the first film’s iconic “How Far I’ll Go” is solid if not quite as complex a tune, but the rest of the lyrics and music is generic cartoon Disney stuff, and hardly memorable. And none of them feature a giant crab singing “Shiny”, more’s the pity. Mark Mancina and Opetaia Foa’i deliver the score again, and the Polynesian rhythms and thumping drums are a delight (the reprise of some of the first film’s grand themes is on-point) but you get the distinct impression that there’s not quite the same heartfelt tones moving through this movie. It feels conscripted, manufactured to seem powerful or deeply rich, much like Shrek might have parodied had he had more sequels. The direction is overseen by no fewer than three credited creatives, in David Derrick Jr, Jason Hand and Dana Ledoux Miller, which might be part of the reason the film feels fractured from too many hands on the steering wheel. There’s so many competing ideas, so much subtext and so wide an ensemble at work here, adults will feel the lack of depth to it all even while the kids will squeal at the bright colours and fancy visual effects. There’s no singular vision holding it all together, it’s a committee-led film that, while it might make a bazillion at the box-office, won’t hold up for repeated viewings. Which is weird, because I did have a great time with it, in the moment. It’s only on reflection that some of the holes start to manifest themselves.
While it might satiate the rabid attention of adoring kids for whom this film is the target demographic, discerning adults and older children will perhaps find it all a touch bewildering, if not downright disappointing. The storytelling isn’t poor per se, but the plot, lack of a specific bad guy, mediocre song choices and weird feeling of episodic story beats make for a less-than-stellar feature film outing. While not bad, Moana 2 never reaches the heiheights (pun intended) of the original.
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