Moana 2 (2024)

What can I say except I'm sorry?

The production history of Moana 2 is very instructive of the resulting film. Viewers worldwide have streamed Moana more than any other movie ever created since Disney+ launched in late 2019, so it was inevitable that Disney would push for more Moana content to refill the juicer. Disney conceived the sequel in 2020 as a Disney+ mini-series, the highest-profile non-Marvel/Star Wars series for the streamer. The House of Mouse announced a reworking of the material into a feature-length film four years later, after five twenty-ish-minute episodes were already deep in production. What was most surprising was the timing of the announcement: Disney CEO Bob Iger revealed the change in a February interview with CNBC, sharing that Moana 2 would have a theatrical release that same November. Given the production, marketing, and distribution pipeline, this gave Disney barely half a year to finish the film. Film Twitter and other sources leaked rumors that Disney decided on a theatrical release only a week or two before the public announcement, and that they informed the animation team of the rushed November date the day of Iger’s interview.

The result is rather obviously the originally planned TV series stitched together and shipped to theaters. Nothing else was possible given the timeline, really. High-end, big-team animation just takes too long to produce for any sort of major overhaul. And so what we have is a more polished version of those direct-to-VHS sequels that Disney milked for a fortune in the late ‘90s and ‘00s. This is not an artistic product; it is mercenary. On that metric it is a resounding success: its box office intake is a day or two away from passing Wish, Strange World, and Encanto combined.

You can see the seams of the original episodes with clarity; it’s no surprise that 20×5 = 100, the exact length of Moana 2 according to Letterboxd. The conflict divides neatly into five parts. Kudos to Disney for editing out the “Skip Intro” button. It’s honestly not the worst of problems for the film, though; the original Moana was episodic, so it’s at least similar in spirit. But this absolutely ruins the film’s most interesting new character, Matangi (Awhimai Fraser). Episode 1 teases her, Episode 3 stars her as the villain, and then she promptly disappears. The demigoddess gets some horror, vampire-flavored direction and animation, flitting around like a bat only to vanish when the camera pans to her. It was the only moment of the film to elicit even a fraction of a frisson.

The more problematic hangover from its streaming series roots than the structure is the narrative ambition. Moana 2 is a retread of the original in almost every sense: It’s a seafaring quest for Moana (Auliʻi Cravalho) that doubles as a coming-of-age story. She teams up with Maui (Dwayne Johnson) then comes face-to-face with an angry god, only for an act of selflessness to abruptly shift the climactic setting to one of peace and harmony. Moana’s world has both metaphorically and literally expanded. Second verse, same as the first. This sure makes sense as a storytelling approach if the idea is to get 6-year-olds to watch more Disney+ so their parents will renew their subscriptions.

Except, for a major theatrical release, the repetition and lack of stakes is movie-ruining. We know that the status quo will not materially change by the end of the film. The story was written on the assumption that a “real” Moana sequel would not require an audience having seen this. It’s pure filler. Anytime the ending hints at actual danger, I rolled my eyes. It’s all bait for chumps. Uh oh, is Moana really going to die? Or could this sad music maybe be a feint?

When I review a film, I use the rule “context matters,” but I also say “art must stand on its own.” These are in contradiction with each other, so I have means to rationalize how much or how little I want to let a film’s production history and critical reception and popular discourse and paratext impact my rating of the film. In this case, I am using all of that to color this film to its detriment. Disney props up Moana 2 as a real film, making it more insidious than any direct-to-video sequel. It is going in the annals as a Walt Disney Animation Studios release as the sister to a Clements and Musker gem. This story is being sold as real and meaningful, not just the wallet-fattener it is. It is very easy to ignore Cinderella III: A Twist in Time when reckoning with the Disney brand and Cinderella specifically because it’s obviously an off-canon grace note for freaks and toddlers. (I suppose I fall in the former camp.) But Moana 2 waters down Moana. In doing so, it not only results in an inferior sequel but actually harms the original; Moana’s world and storytelling now look a bit more tame and less provocative. More is less. Much less.

I would be lying if I said that the film outright fails as a story. It is only rarely noticeably unpleasantly (the half-assed return of the Kakamora comes close). The adventure stays just barely afloat as watchable and never boring. I guess this is a side effect of having a mini-climax every 20 minutes. The animation is a solid B- most of the time, with every bit of execution (character animation, water effects, colors, etc.) just a few slivers worse than Moana, so that no individual piece comes is a glaring downgrade. Honestly, if this were a streaming series, I’d spin the same observation positively: it looks nearly as good as the beautiful 2016 film! But, yeah, context matters. (The one big downgrade is Maui’s tattoos. The vibrant, living design of the original has been reduced to a single sketched sidekick character who tweaks nipples.)

Aside from Matangi, the aspect of the film that works best for me is Simea (Khaleesi Lambert-Tsuda), Moana’s adorable little sister, who provides a human and potent connection from Moana to her tribe. Simea’s character design and voice acting are wonderful. The palpable sisterly affection between the pair really shines.

All of this barely touches on everything else in the film that is anywhere between perfunctory and sloppy: A script that does a poor job developing characters and clarifying the scope of the story; music (sans Lin-Manuel Miranda) that sounds like the pitch was “third-rate Encanto knock-off”; many more of the nauseating anachronism jokes that grated in Moana (at one point Maui makes a modern reference, winks at the audience, and announces “you’ll get that one in 2000 years,” suggesting that these events are happening on our Earth during the life of Jesus Christ, which is one of the few insane moments that could have been piped in from a direct-to-video Disney sequel); the big ensemble of forgettable side characters (including an old, fat Pua); an over-reliance on the sentient ocean gimmick; etc. Honestly, I feel like I could describe nearly every part of Moana 2 as “sloppy” or “perfunctory.” It’s all barely-fine, inoffensive content pushed through the toothpaste tube.

Much of Moana 2’s warm-ish reception among both critics and audiences stems from the much-repeated notion that, hey, it’s better than most of the other recent Disney films. But I’m not sure that’s even true. It’s certainly worse than the atmospheric mess of Frozen 2, which has a terrific soundtrack and gestures at some bold ideas that it fails to follow through on. Raya, Encanto, and Strange World all have some flavor and take some risks even if they fall well short of greatness. I don’t think I can even say with a straight face that Moana 2 is better than the much-panned Wish; as broken as that film was, as misguided as its Disney-multiverse shenanigans were, it at least had some rich and groundbreaking animation ideas and some solid color design and a whiff of ambition.

In isolation, as an animated quest story in a vacuum, I’d probably mark Moana 2 just on the south side of a positive grade. And yet my resentment towards it wants me to pound this thing with a deep failing grade. I’ll fall somewhere in the middle, a half-hearted sigh of a thumbs-down to match a half-hearted sigh of a movie.

Is It Good?

Not Very Good (3/8)

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Dan is the founder and head critic of The Goods. Follow Dan on Letterboxd. Join the Discord for updates and discussion.