I don’t know if anyone really believed how far Moana would go. At this point she’s a sensation: a new modern Disney princess for our modern times, backed by some of Lin Manuel’s best songs. So can Moana 2 recapture the magic? With LMM possibly, without him, um…
Thankfully, our powerful leading lady (Auli’i Cravalho) has lost none of her ambition. Similar to How to Train Your Dragon’s sequel, with the whole world available to her, Moana is venturing further and further out to sea, searching any trace of people like her. After the chief/Moana’s father Tui (Temuera Morrison) awards her the tribe’s lead wayfinder, she has a vision about a hidden island named Motufetu, a key island in her search of fellow humans. She gathers a lead naval engineer Loto (Rose Matafeo), an older expert farmer Kele (David Fane), and the strong historian/demigod fan Moni (Hualālai Chung) as her team to find Motufetu, and maybe woo her old pal Maui (Dwayne Johnson) out from wherever he’s been hiding as well to join up again.
It can’t be understated how big of a loss Lin Manuel Miranda was to Moana 2. There are attempts to give each character a big catchy jingle, but none of them land anywhere near the best of the 2016 film. The cast is giving their all to try and sell it, but in the end there’s too much of a sameness and droning in the songs themselves that they never swell or feel different enough, song to song. At just over an hour and a half, when 30-40 minutes of your movie are forgettable, we’re usually on our way to disasterville.
Luckily, the talent well of Moana is deeper than just Lin Manuel. Auli’i Cravalho is as charming as ever as Moana, evolving and growing in this one from teenager to adult, assuming more leadership roles and responsibility for others while also being the wayfinder queen. Her and Dwayne Johnson have lost none of their prickly repartee, bouncing off each other not nearly as much as we want but always leaving us wanting more. Newer cast members Rose Matafeo and Awhimai Fraser give new interesting supporting players besides Moana/Maui/Alan Tudyk’s stupid sweet Heihei to play off of, giving me hope for the inevitable Moana 3. And finally, all that saved LMM money went to the animators, making a worthy beautiful successor, bursting with colors and epic creature creations like a cool clam, gross slimey fish, alive waterspouts, and more diversified Kakamora, very much the R2D2 of Moana’s world.
Moana 2 mostly ends up a placeholder for the eventually bigger trilogy ender that is coming. So if we need this one to get to the finale, so be it: could’ve been way worse. Let’s learn from our mistakes though: try to get Lin back, or if not, just work on making the music incredible again: You’ll definitely get a “You’re Welcome” from me, and not in the condescending Maui way either.