Moana 2 review

There are a few things that go into making a great Disney movie for me. But the most important are a good story plus interesting characters & character development. Moana 2 only has one of those three. The story is mediocre and while there are some interesting characters, they aren’t able to do much. 

That’s not to say it’s all bad – there are some other positives within the film. But for me, they didn’t do enough to make up for the rest of it.

Moana is back on her home island several years after the first film, and while she is doing well at helping the people on her island, she is also finally allowed to go exploring on the ocean. One thing she notices? There are no other people on any of the nearby islands. 

After she has a vision from her ancestors, she learns there is a dangerous mission which must be completed – so she gathers up a crew and heads out to the ocean.

Please note: minor spoilers will follow within this Moana 2 review.

The plot problem of Moana 2

I’ll start with the plot, because it’s probably the part of the movie that was the most frustrating for me.

I recently heard an interview with a Pixar employee who talked about storytelling. They stated “if your story isn’t sound from start to finish and through to its core, all of those [other] fabulous elements combined will not turn an okay movie into a great movie.”

That’s what you get here. You have a basic plot set-up, but the story becomes confusing and haphazard. Moana 2 was originally supposed to be a streaming TV series on Disney+, and trying to re-fit that into a film results in a lot of plot issues.

You could almost feel where things should have been broken down into episodes. Certain plot points were rushed that probably would have had more time in a TV show.

And while there are a lot of obstacles in the plot, they feel mostly superficial. They don’t truly help the characters grow or change in any new or interesting ways.

With a 5 episode TV series, you’d need one new “big obstacle” each episode, and you could delve into it a little bit more. What you have here instead is 5 big obstacles, one after the other, spending minimal time on each. 

Characters, but no character development

Returning favorites are back, like Moana, Maui, Heihei, and Pua, but we also get a whole slate of new characters introduced. And they have a lot of potential, but the movie is not able to do anything with them.

So you end up with a bunch of entirely one-dimensional new characters. Moana gathers a new crew of 3 islanders who join her on this adventure, and they all have their basic personality trait. You’ve got the grumpy old man who doesn’t want to be there, the brilliant scientifically-minded young woman, and the Maui fanboy.

Each of them could have had a few nuances to their character that could have helped them seem more realistic or interesting, but they don’t get the chance. I have a feeling we got more interactions with them when they were part of a streaming series, but things needed to be cut down for the big screen. And so these characters are good for a laugh here and there, but they ultimately fall flat.

This is probably most obvious in the plotline with Matangai, the “bat lady,” who has Maui kidnapped in the beginning of the film. Her character pivots so quickly and without much explanation (except for a few rushed lines in a song), that you could get whiplash. She could have been a really standout character who was involved in much more of the story, and you’d have a fascinating and complex villain/antagonist. Instead, we just don’t quite get there.

Moana herself doesn’t have any true character growth. She struggles a bit at one point with a sort of “imposter syndrome,” and thinking maybe this quest was too much to take on. But that’s pretty similar to the original character arc of Moana. An interesting element is that she now has other people with her, and feels responsible for them, which she does struggle with briefly. But it’s a more fleeting moment. If it had been woven into her character throughout the entire story, I think we could have had a much more interesting character arc.

The voice work was great, and Auli’i Cravalho in particular remains a truly talented actress and singer. Dwayne Johnson is funny as always, but it takes a long time for us to get to him in the movie and so we also miss out on a lot of the Moana and Maui banter that made the first film so fun.

The music isn’t Lin-Manuel Miranda – but it’s not bad

The music has been getting a lot of negativity for this film, but I actually liked the soundtrack overall. It’s not Lin-Manuel Miranda, and you can feel that – but you would notice it no matter who attempted to replace him.

I’ll be the first one to sing Lin’s praises (I have his lyrics tattooed on my arm), but I mostly enjoyed the tunes even if they weren’t the most brilliant, or as memorable as his songwriting.

I think it’s kind of a no-win situation without him on the project – new songwriters come in and they want to try and be consistent with the first film, which means imitating his style. But no one can do it like him, so it comes off as a poor copy. But if they’d tried to go in a different direction, it wouldn’t have the right vibe and would feel out of place a sequel to the first one. 

And frankly, the story and character development was so weak I’m not even sure what Lin-Manuel Miranda could have done to fix it. I’m not sure if he chose not to work on it because he was busy with other projects or because he wasn’t excited about this one, but I wouldn’t blame him if the latter had any influence in his decision.

So that being said, I actually enjoyed some of the songs. In particular, “Get Lost” is a fun, upbeat tune that I really liked and which has made an excellent addition to my running playlist. I did find that Maui’s song felt a bit disappointing. Some of the lyrics in a number of songs were a bit lackluster, but it felt most obvious here with lyrics like “Come on-a / Moana”.

A few other random thoughts:

• Overall, it just seemed to lack the charm and humor of the original.
• Moana was not given a romantic storyline, which I appreciated.
• I could have used more Hei-hei!
• The Kakamora are back and they are probably my least favorite part of the first one – but I kind of liked them here.
• I did find it to be visually very beautiful and interesting.
• I have very little doubt that we’ll be getting a Moana 3.