Moana 2 (2024)

Score: 3 / 5

Away, away -- this franchise ain't going away anytime soon. Moana -- firmly and somewhat angrily declared, in this film, to not be a Disney princess -- is back in a sequel to the 2016 original that, though lots of fun, never quite manages to do anything interesting. It also sets up much more to come, which is neither interesting nor encouraging for those of us who love Disney at its most inventive.

The novelty of the original fades with memory as Moana 2 begins, feeling more like a spiritual sibling to what we've already seen. The plot is mostly a retread of familiar currents, pushing us along at breakneck pace to up the ante despite decreased stakes and much more vague dangers for Moana, now identified as a "wayfinder," which the laborious screenplay takes great pains to emphasize and explain repeatedly. Evidently, Moana's theme song hasn't been fulfilled, and she hasn't gone far enough to the open Pacific; her island nation of Motunui will apparently die out if she doesn't make contact with other seafaring peoples. This seems strange and unlikely, after the events of the previous film, but we're not given any rationale for this isolationist problem. To see how far she'll need to go, she recruits several unlikely acquaintances (including an aging farmer, a beefy fanboy of Maui, and a clever shipwright) to build a larger canoe and travel far beyond the horizon.

It's clear fairly early on that this plot was intended to be strung out over a miniseries at least; its mashed up episodic structure feels at once crowded and without trajectory. Despite the numerous new characters, we aren't given access to any, losing dramatic heft and stakes at nearly every turn of this trippy voyage. For an adventure, they don't actually venture to new or exciting places, merely running into the coconut pirate creatures, getting swallowed by a nightmarish clam, traveling to a strange netherworld limbo, and ultimately raising an inhospitable island from the depths of the ocean to break the curse of isolationism.

What?

Well, that's about it. Moana searches for Motufetu, a spiky island of apparently obsidian slate shaped like a keyhole, to and through which the various ocean currents of the globe converge. It had been sunk by Nalo, a new character who apparently is a vindictive god of storms and wanted to be worshipped more by islanders cut off from each other. There could have been much more thematic import given to this aspect of the story, but once it's mentioned, it's all but forgotten in favor of silly antics between the motley crew of wayfinder wannabes, with annoyingly repeated gags of the pig and rooster as potential food. Instead, we're given a secondary villain -- much like Tamatoa in the first -- in Matangi (Awhimai Fraser), a witch who works as an enforcer/enabler for Nalo. Matangi is currently holding Maui prisoner, but the gang frees him and convinces Matangi to help them find Nalo, who is apparently a terrible boss. The witch, apart from having what might be the only memorable new song in the film, is less a villain than a Mother Gothel stand-in with bat minions, and, having arrived suddenly and strangely, she passes out of the story without ceremony. Just like Tamatoa. There is a mid-credits scene that brings those two characters together, but it's less exciting than it is gear-grinding.

Mercifully, the film is quite short, so by the time the wayfinders discover their destination, the film ramps up its climax and ends soon after. Maui himself, still voiced by Dwayne Johnson, is charming as ever but barely featured, and his witty repartee with Moana (Auli'i Cravalho, who feels more confident and fun this time around) is almost absent from the film. It's a bewildering choice, as their banter from the first film has become a cultural touchpoint, and is sure not to win over many kids, who surely would want more of the demigod's flavor of humor. And then there's Moana, who does so very little worthy of her actions in the first film. By this movie's climax -- spoiler alert -- Moana sacrifices herself to break the curse and a weeping Maui calls on the spirits of her ancestors to revive her. They do so, and she awakens with new tattoos and a glowing oar that seem to mark her as a new demigod, which is pretty damn cool. But the film does nothing with this, and it doesn't really feel earned after such a brief adventure without much by way of worthy heroics.

My other notes are more vague, but perhaps important to include here. Lin-Manuel Miranda, who supplied the songs from the first film, is not part of this installment. While I'm fine with that -- a couple songs from the first are memorable, but I didn't much enjoy any of them -- his replacements here are desperately trying to recreate his style without earning it, making wonky attempts at Broadway-esque tunes aimed for TikTok rather than honoring Oceania and its people. Maui's song is a mess, Matangi's song is lovely but doesn't belong in this world, Moana's new theme song is basic at best, and there isn't much motif work to tie them all together thematically. On the other hand, Disney's animation artistry is its typically state-of-the-art best, and if all you want is some delicious imagery to absorb for 90-ish minutes, this'll do that for you. I'd have just liked a bit more heft from the intriguing, magical, and potentially epic source material.