Moana 2 is what happens when you love the idea of something but forget what made it special and meaningful. Where Moana eagerly reached out to you and made sure your hand was clutched before running away on an adventure of self-discovery, Moana 2 takes us on an odyssey into myth and legend without bothering to check if your seat belt’s on. This time, it doesn’t have to because there’s no danger in this rehash that pales in every comparison to its predecessor.
If you’re looking for a fun movie to enjoy with the kids, you’ll be well-satisfied, as Moana 2 keeps its pace and our ears crackling with funny and spunky dialogue, exciting action, and a returning voice cast game for this second outing. There’s no denying that this flick moves, flying from one set piece to another with big urgency. Doing their thing that we came to love in 2016, Auli’i Cravalho and Dwayne Johnson step back into their hearty roles with gusto and delight. No joke, it’s wonderful to hear Cravalho as Moana, now older, wiser, and a big sister to Simea (Khaleesi Lambert-Tsuda), to boot. Moana has grown and continued to be her village’s maritime leader, a position into which she’s stepped bravely and confidently.
Quickly set up in the early goings as having a mission to find island neighbors, Moana – through pretty hair-raising and hilarious circumstances – discovers proof of a possible civilization nearby, kicking off this film’s raison d`être. Through visions of her ancestors, she’s directed to find these distant peoples; it’s too far for her to go alone, and since Maui (Johnson) has gone AWOL from Motonui, she needs a crew. Enter the A-Team – that’s A for “archetype” – consisting of resident brainiac Loto (Rose Matafeo), artist and Maui fanboy Moni (Hualālai Chung), and grumpy old man Kele (David Fane), in addition to her animal pack, Pua and Heihei (Alan Tudyk).
Now… if you’re looking for something that expands on and deepens the original’s strong themes, you might want to temper your expectations. Moana 2 is a strict action picture, dangling our heroes in one precarious situation after another with music acting as a break so we can catch our collective breath. A barely-there script holds everything together long enough for us to get to the next big wow scene, relying solely on Moana and Maui to carry the film’s scant emotional content and leaving her paint-by-numbers crew to provide the laughs. Don’t get me wrong – it’s fun to watch Loto, Moni, and Kele have their respective times to shine, and their voice actors make so much life out of their meagerly written caricatures. Their purpose is as deep as their characters get, and while a little more layering might’ve served each of them well, we’re good with what they’re about and what they do.
The movie feels incomplete, calling back too often in its speech and lyrics to the first and not living a life of its own, and rushing past while a severely underdeveloped character gets to take center stage. The reason why Maui has been waylaid, goddess Matangi (Awhimai Fraser), drops into the story and disappears when we don’t need her anymore. However, with how Dana Ledoux Miller and returning screenwriter Jared Bush throw this mystery woman at us, we need more. More of who she is, why she’s got a revenge jones for Maui, and how and why she’s cursed to live under the sea. This seems to be the first half of a two-part story, but while the mystery behind Matangi and why she’s in Moana’s way is established with her head-scratching appearances, it feels like she’s been tactically placed and ill-defined, a blatant commercial for Moana 3.
As the adventure never stops, we never get the sense of growth that made the first film so raw and powerful. Each action scene was punctuated by a moment that feels earned and, for lack of a better term, right. Moana 2 speeds from beginning to end without Moana and her crew stopping to take stock of themselves (except for a linchpin scene which attempts to make up for a lack of humanity afforded to the crew in one fell swoop), all the way to its anticlimax. It’s strange, because this should be the fight of the film, right? Sure, it’s visually exciting, but it’s been dulled by the four action scenes before it. Usually, there’s a good break before the third act of a movie to get us ready for what’s to come, but you’re at the final scene before you know it, and it’s rendered utterly meaningless because of some flimsy, goddess-given advice and a lack of knowing exactly what they’re fighting.
Moana 2’s greatest offense is in tries too hard to recapture lightning in a bottle instead of fully becoming its own thing. From plot to music, the film relies too much on sound bites and plot points from the first. These aren’t little winks and nods; these are full-on vibe photocopies and lyric drops that reinforce the film’s inability to forge new paths – ironic, since “new paths” is the film’s theme. Songs written by Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear – with returning writers Opetaia Foa’i and Mark Mancina – hew thematically and musically close to those of the first, which were co-written with Lin-Manuel Miranda. (Miranda does not return here and is only credited for a reused song from the original.) Johnson gets a funny rap song, Cravalho gets a song about adventuring and another about who she’s meant to be, the village gets the breezy and big (re)introduction number, and so on, but it’s not… precisely like what happened to the “Ecce Homo” fresco, but something a little less dire. Barlow and Bear are terrific songwriters who use major-to-minor transitions with great emotion, but their songs feel desperate to keep up with the original’s.
Moana 2 is such a mixed bag. Its purpose and story are admirable, as well as the voice cast, all of whom lift this into “fun” territory. Seeing our heroes – even Grandma Tala (Rachel House) – back on the big screen is a cause for celebration, and there’s a rousing adventure afoot. However, beat for beat, we’re given the same songs, action sequences, and personal moments as the first, only written and executed by people trying to put their own spin on what came before. The film would’ve been better served by less spin and more punch, which is what the world of Moana deserves. Both films are about going into the unknown; had Moana 2 been less hesitant in traveling in new directions, it would have been better than the thinly-veiled retread we have in its place.
