THE STORY – Moana journeys to the far seas of Oceania after receiving an unexpected call from her wayfinding ancestors.
THE CAST – Auliʻi Cravalho, Dwayne Johnson, Temuera Morrison, Nicole Scherzinger, Khaleesi Lambert-Tsuda, Rose Matafeo, David Fane, Hualālai Chung, Rachel House, Awhimai Fraser, Gerald Ramsey & Alan Tudyk
THE TEAM – Dana Ledoux Miller (Director/Writer), David Derrick Jr., Jason Hand (Directors) & Jared Bush (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 100 minutes
The direct-to-video Disney sequel is a proud tradition dating all the way back to the halcyon days of the Disney Renaissance. The fast-tracked, cheaply-made sequels like “The Return of Jafar,” “Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas,” and “The Lion King 2: Simba’s Pride” may have their fans, but even they would widely acknowledge that none of them hold a candle to the original classics, dealing as they do in rehashed plots, subpar songs, and lowest-common-denominator kid-focused humor. While some have an infectious energy and interesting character development, these cash grabs mostly feel like pale imitations of the films that inspired them. Enter “Moana 2,” originally slated to go straight to streaming network Disney+, but now given a prime Thanksgiving week run in theaters. In many ways, it feels like one of those direct-to-video sequels, presenting as a thinly veiled rewrite of the original with thinner characters and plot, perfunctory songs, and lowest-common-denominator kid-focused humor. However, it features some beautifully vibrant animation and an important, resonant lesson for children of all ages. The problem is that it’s clear that the film has mostly been made for actual children, not those of us who are merely in touch with our inner child.
Since the events of “Moana,” our intrepid little Wayfinder (once again voiced by Auli’i Cravalho) has been spending much of her time sailing the ocean in search of other islands with human inhabitants. When her people bestow upon her the title higher than chieftain, in honor of her wayfinding prowess, she is struck by a vision from her ancestors: She must find the mysterious island Motufetu, which used to connect all the people in the ocean. Since she must go farther than she ever has before, she takes a crew with her: Shipbuilder Loto (Rose Matafeo), tribe storyteller and huge Maui fan Moni (Hualālai Chung), and grumpy old farmer Kele (David Fane). Together, along with animal sidekicks Pua the pig and Heihei the chicken (Alan Tudyk), Moana and her crew must learn to work together in order to find the demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson), who just so happens to have beef with the god who plunged Motufetu deep into the sea to cut the people off from each other, taking power away from them to gain more for himself.
Unfortunately, that’s about all we get regarding the film’s supposed villain, who ends up being even less of a presence in this film than his counterpart was in the original “Moana.” This is indicative of the film’s overall thinness. While the story is a logical next step from the first film, the addition of three supporting characters to the bulk of the film’s plot gives us less time with Moana and Maui and not enough time with the new characters for them to register as anything other than stock types. Meanwhile, problems are encountered and overcome with relative ease until the big finale, giving much of the film a perfunctory feeling that won’t satisfy anyone with an attention span longer than a minute. The film’s positive message about how we need to work together to solve problems (an uneasy fit with the “chosen one” narrative of “Moana“) resonates strongly at this particular moment in history. However, the film doesn’t do much with that idea despite the fact that an all-powerful God separating people to become even more powerful himself ought to sound familiar to everyone watching. This is simplistic, surface-level storytelling, with nods to real-world relevance to keep the target audience’s parents engaged.
Not that there’s anything wrong with making a film strictly for kids, but that also implies that kids don’t respond to nuanced storytelling as much as they do to fart and snot jokes, something that Disney’s own output has proven false time and again. Children are more perceptive than you think, and while even “Moana” didn’t employ the most sophisticated storytelling techniques, it certainly had more subtlety than this. This sequel never truly shakes the straight-to-streaming ethos of getting something done relatively quickly and cheaply – Barlow & Bear’s songs are pleasant enough but lack the earworm melodies of the best Disney song scores; the character arcs aren’t carbon copies of the original, but they’re close enough that they don’t resonate as strongly; and the film plays out beat for beat in exactly the same fashion as the first, without any increase in stakes to give it more weight. The one place where “Moana 2” doesn’t feel like a cheap cash-in is the animation itself, which looks even more gorgeously colorful than the original and features some impressively sweeping camera moves. Co-directors David Derrick Jr., Jason Hand, and Dana Ledoux Miller keep everything light and bouncy so that it’s a pleasant enough time, but it’s hard to watch this sequel on the big screen and not feel like it doesn’t quite belong there.
