Moana 2 Review

Moana of Motunui follows in the steps of Elsa and Anna by going on a second cinematic adventure. This time she forms a crew to go on her oceanic travels.

After returning the heart of Te Fiti, Moana has become a wayfinder and explores the open seas for other people. Moana finds evidence of human habitation and when she returns to Motunui she has a vision from the ancestors who tell the princess that she needs to find the lost island of Motufetu. Due to the voyage’s length and danger, Moana recruits a crew and follows a comet that has appeared in the sky.

During the 2010s Disney released hit after hit, like Frozen, Wreck-It Ralph, and Zootopia. Moana was up there with them. It was a fantastic modernisation of Disney princess formula which led to Moana being made part of the Disney Princess pantheon and was a terrific musical. It’s one of my favourite Disney animated features. However, Moana ended up on a conclusive note and a sequel didn’t seem necessary. The original plan for Moana 2 was to be a series on Disney+ before being reworked into a feature film.

Disney Animation has had a rough run lately. Their previous four films underperformed at the box office, and the last two, Strange World and Wish were critical flops. Disney needed a hit so went back to the well of their successes. Their next films after Moana 2 are a third Frozen movie and a sequel to Zootopia. A lot is riding on Moana 2 being a success.

There were some notable changes in the sequel. The previous film was a story about a young woman taking control of her destiny and fighting to save her people from an environmental disaster. If Moana failed then Motunui’s crops and fisheries would have failed. Moana 2 had more traditional villains since the threat was a human-hating god and his servant. An all-powerful god should be a mighty threat, but the stakes in Moana 2 felt lower since the consequences of failure weren’t as severe. There was danger but it didn’t match the heights of Moana.

The characters were broader than in the predecessor. Moana underwent her character arc in the film with no room to grow. Her crew were broad archetypes since Moni (Hualālai Chung) was a Maui fanboy, Loto (Rose Matafeo) was a quirky engineer, and Kele (David Fane) was a grumpy old farmer. There wasn’t much to them beyond their basic character traits. Loto was the most memorable since she was a high-energy character and was voiced by Matafeo who has done a lot of work in the UK.

Maui (Dwayne Johnson) was the character who changed the most. He was humbler after his adventure with Moana and he had grown protective of the teen. Maui had less of an ego and still had a sense of fun and life to him. Despite having demigod powers, Maui still made mistakes and became humiliated like when he got captured and tried to retrieve his fish hook. Johnson has been on a cold streak with his films flopping, like Jungle Cruise, Black Adam, and Red One flopping at the box office and many of his characters have become too serious. Reprising the role of Maui was an attempt to recapture Johnson’s 2010s success and he showed why people liked him in the previous decade.

Moana 2 had more physical and visual comedy, and the tone was lighter. The animation looked more cartoon, like when Moana danced, or Moana trying to fight off the Kakamoras. There was gross-out humour due to some of the creatures that were involved. This showed the sequel’s TV origins since this happened in a TV series based on Disney movies.

A notable change for this film was the songwriting team. The previous film’s songs were written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, known for the Broadway hit Hamilton. He has moved on to The Lion King prequel so a new team took over, Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear, the creators of The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical. The songs in Moana 2 were nowhere near as memorable as the ones in the first film. Moana produced some great Disney tunes like “Where You Are”, “How Far I’ll Go”, “You’re Welcome” and “Shiny.” The best songs in Moana 2 were “What Could Be Better Than This” and “Get Lost.” “What Could Be Better Than This” was a comedic song as the Moana’s crew tried to convince a sourpuss to participate, and “Get Lost” was musically different from the rest of the film. The rest of the songs in Moana 2 were pale imitations of the songs from the first film.

Moana 2 has been financially successful and looks set to be one of the biggest films of 2024. It made $221 million during the Thanksgiving weekend and made more money domestically over five days than Joker: Folie à Deux did in its entire run. My screening was incredibly busy and alongside Paddington in Peru, Gladiator II, and Wicked cinemas are having a terrific time after hyperbolic reports earlier in 2024 saying cinemas were dead. The lessons major Hollywood studios will learn is to make more sequels, family films, and female-ordinated films.

On its own terms, Moana 2 was a perfectly serviceable film that could please young audiences. Considering the amount of work required for a big-budget animated film, there was a level of quality control. However, as a sequel to Moana, the film struggled to justify its existence.