Released: 27th November
Seen: 15th December
In the screening for Moana 2 that I went to, the cinema was pretty packed with a ton of parents bringing their children to see the sequel to the 2016 original. Kids who were so young that it’s possible they weren’t even alive when the original Moana came out. These kids probably have only seen a handful of films in their life and one of them is going to be Moana 2, a formative feature film in their lives that will linger for a while as it introduces them to the magic of cinema. When you see little kids watching Moana 2 and see the joy it puts in their eyes, it’s kind of hard to say anything particularly negative about the film in general because it makes it clear how much it does not matter. The target audience does not care about critical reviews, they do not care about story structure or pacing because they’re just there to see this super awesome girl called Moana do some super awesome things and that’s great. I’m glad that Moana 2 is going to be a good first film for a lot of kids… I just wish it lived up to its potential to be a great first film.
Moana 2 picks up shortly after the first film where Moana (Auliʻi Cravalho) is going on regular trips on the sea to try and find other people to help her tribe grow. It’s a near impossible task though and soon Moana learns that the reason why is that an ancient god named Nalo sank an island that connected all of the other islands which is why Moana can’t find anyone else. So, with a little help from some of the local townspeople and of course the demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson), Moana goes out on a quest to find this missing island and raise it in hopes that it will connect all the tribes and bring more people to live on her island… as long as the strange lady who controls bats doesn’t get in their way (She won’t, she’s barely in it, but she’s a thing that happens)
Something that becomes pretty obvious as you watch Moana 2 is that it feels unfinished, the structure of the story straight up doesn’t work. It feels like it’s just coasting for a bit until it remembers to have a climax and a villain for a few minutes and then kind of ends. It sets up that the boat full of villagers is going to be interesting, but never does anything with any of them which is why I have not named them because they do not matter. Everything feels like it’s been cut down heavily for some reason. That reason, of course, is the same reason that a lot of 90s straight-to-video Disney sequels felt disjointed… this film was originally a TV series and was then sewn haphazardly together in order to create this 100-minute-long feature film. This was done all the time in the old days, the first three episodes of some Disney animated show would be blended into a film and it was always a little off but was fine for little kids. It was lazy but it was fine… this just feels kind of lazy.
The plot itself feels like it needed a lot more time to explore the characters and their dynamics, and probably got to do that during the planned series but here it all has to be cut out. The extra characters on the boat are pointless, they’re there for the odd joke early in the film but minimal point afterwards. The bat-controlling villain is in exactly one scene and then vanishes, which might be a little similar to the Shiny Crab from the first movie except this bat-controlling lady is set up and referenced enough times that you’d think she’d actually matter in some way but nope, pointless. Even Maui feels pretty pointless, relegated to a few little moments where he barely does anything and it’s wild to waste the character played by the biggest name in your cast but they do it here. It means that Moana isn’t so much going on a quest as much as she is having a quest done around here that she happens to be part of.
Also not really helping is the fact that the soundtrack is not great, mostly because we don’t have the talents of Lin Manuel Miranda to elevate everything. This is particularly noticeable in the two big musical moments, Moana’s number Beyond which feels like it’s trying to have the feeling of How Far I’ll Go but never quite gets there and then there’s Maui’s song Can I Get A Chee Hoo which is a pale imitation of You’re Welcome. You can almost feel them trying to copy what Lin did so well but not quite getting there, the spark just isn’t what it should be and you’re left with songs that’re certainly OK and well performed by the cast but they don’t feel as transcendent as the originals did.
What does match the original, possibly even surpassing it, is the visuals in the film which are nothing short of spectacular. They really put a lot into elevating the animation as much as possible, every single shot is gorgeous and so well-designed that it’s a glorious thing to just stare at. Everything from the motion of the water to the way that Moana’s hair moves in the wind is effortlessly beautiful and shows that there was a lot of work put into the film. You can feel it in how they designed all the new characters, in how they pushed certain moments as far as they could visually. It’s so well thought out that you wish that the rest of the film was able to live up to the standard of the visuals because clearly they put a ton of effort into those and it’d be nice to see that reflected in the story structure.
Moana 2 is fine but it could’ve and should’ve been great. It’s not the best structured and I won’t be humming the songs any time soon but it’s pretty, has a few funny moments and doesn’t feel like it’s insulting the intelligence of the audience. It’s meant for small children and they will probably enjoy it quite a lot but they also deserve better, they deserve the full version of this that was meant to be a series at some point instead of this edited cliff notes version that will be their formative film memory. It’s almost inevitable that there’ll be a third one, though not until long after the live-action remake comes out (Who allowed that BTW? I just want to talk to them) and maybe that third part will feel like a movie that has a complete and well thought out story but this sequel is unfortunately just fine which is a let down considering what came before it.
Movie Meister Reviews 