Despite never reaching the emotional or musical heights of its predecessor, Moana 2 is a rousing, entertaining, and inspiring family adventure that hits all the right notes. It’s one of those sequels that gets the band back together, takes them out to accomplish a new quest, and wraps things up in a tight, ninety-ish minutes package. Moana 2 isn’t breaking a lot of new ground, but it retains the original film’s dazzling sense of visuals, consistently taps into the talents of its voice cast, and follows an entertaining current from start to finish.
After proving her worth in the first film, Moana (again voiced by Auli’i Cravalho) has cemented their legacy amongst her people as the greatest wayfarer in all the land, adventuring the high seas and returning to the island of Motonui with ancient treasures and tales to tell. But on the evening when she is to be honoured with a grand ceremony, Moana gets a vision of her next quest, following in the footsteps of her most notable predecessor, Tautai Vasa (Gerald Faitala Ramsey), who a thousand years prior attempted to find the lost island of Motufet?, which was sunk to the bottom of the ocean by Nalo, the God of Storms. The island sits at a point where all the ocean’s currents meet, and is seen as a gateway to all other peoples of the ocean. If Moana and her team of fellow sailors (including her trusty chicken, Hei Hei, and piggy friend, Pua) don’t locate and set foot on the island, her people will be doomed. The quest brings Moana back into contact with her one time demigod partner Maui (Dwayne Johnson), who warns her that this mission could cost them their lives, and they might be playing into the hands of Matangi (Awhimai Fraser), a mysterious fellow demigod with a bat army whose motivations are both devious and unclear.
Directors David G. Derrick Jr., Jason Hand, and Dana Ledoux Miller and the writing team keep things simple on the storytelling front, but pleasingly authentic. With a keen eye for indigenous cultures and a profound amount of respect, Moana 2 takes the form of a lesser known tale of mythology, another quest from a revered figure that finds them providing for their people. It’s a classical fit for something that’s essentially a classical sequel. No one has really changed since the original film, nor do they need to. There’s a new threat and challenge at hand, and our hero has some new friends to help/hinder things along the way, but anyone looking for character progression could be let down. Moana is still Moana. Maui is still Maui. The players are the same, but the game has been changed.
Visually, although the directors at the helm have changed, Moana 2 remains more of the same. But since the dynamic images of its predecessor were so entrancing, there’s no backsliding here. The waters are crystal clear, the jungles are lush and dense, the skylines are breathtaking. Technically, the filmmakers are delivering on what is expected, and while it isn’t going far into any new directions, Moana 2 also isn’t ruining things. To that same effect, the score from returning (and perpetually underrated) composer Mark Mancina and Grammy nominee Opetaia Foa’i is just as propulsive and percussive as ever.
The new elements in Moana 2 aren’t moving the needle very much in either direction. The songwriting duties this time fall to Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear, and while they don’t have the same cache as the previous film’s songwriter, Lin Manuel Miranda, the tunes being belted out here aren’t slouches, and are performed with delight and emotion by the cast. The villains here aren’t particularly easy to get a handle on, as both Matangi and Nalo are more like thinly sketched concepts than forces of danger, but they serve enough of a purpose to keep things going.
The voice actors are still led by the reliably charming and likeable Cravalho and Johnson, but this time out Moana has a posse of misfits that need to come together as a team. David Fane voices a crusty old farmer who reluctantly boards Moana’s ship to provide food. Rose Matafeo plays a hyperactive engineer of sorts who’s always trying to make modifications to the ship, whether Moana likes it or not. And Hual?lai Chung brings some good natured laughs as the giddy, strong, and chronically geeking out on-board history keeper who can’t stop writing fan-fiction about Maui and Moana long enough to actually be much help on the mission. Those characters add about as much as the new songs do, which is to say they’re pleasant enough and give all of the actors and animators something interesting to do.
Moana 2 could leave some fans of the original wanting more (which, if this film is any indication, they might get thanks to the expanded world it creates), but it’s hard to argue the effectiveness of the movie overall. I was a fan of the original, and Moana 2 had me consistently engaged and wondering what was going to happen next. But I can understand if some viewers find this a bit flat. Part of the reason for that could be found in the fact that this sequel was originally conceived as a streaming series before being turned into a movie, and the final results – while still cinematic in nature – bear those scars of tinkering. But by the time Moana 2 reaches its admittedly rousing conclusion, it becomes clear that making this a placeholder sequel might’ve been the right move. The film introduces the concept of a much larger Oceania where adventures and perils could be numerous, and if this is a jumping off point for that, Moana 2 works nicely. And if things don’t pan out in that way, at least it’s not a bad movie.
Moana 2 opens in theatres everywhere on Wednesday, November 27, 2024.
