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Moana 2 Movie Review

Moana 2 is a 2024 animated musical adventure film directed by David Derrick Jr. It is Disney’s 61^st film and one of their more lackluster efforts.

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“Why didn’t you bring the pig last time?“

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Moana journeys to the far seas of Oceania after receiving an unexpected call from her wayfinding ancestors. This movie was first supposed to be a television series, but was then changed to a movie format when Disney realized that they could make big bank from it, which did happen for them, but at the cost of quality sadly. The original ‘Moana’ is one of the best recent Disney films, so it was a shame that it received such a lackluster sequel.

I was not looking forward to this movie at all, and although the end result is better than I had expected, this doesn’t mean much as I had rock bottom expectations going in. And this is a bigger sign of what is going on with Disney right now – the Revival era is officially over and we are currently going through what is clearly their third dark age with inferior originals and even more forgettable sequels.

While the first movie was a gorgeously animated and enjoyable adventure with a great soundtrack, this movie never reached those adventure and musical heights. The script is its worst offender. You can easily deduce that it was first a series even if you hadn’t known this fact going in – the pacing is totally off, the film lacked a cohesive structure, and worst of all – too many character arcs and subplots are either quickly abandoned or never resolved properly.

The result is a messy film that is still very enjoyable, but mostly sailing high on the strength of its likable personalities and a terrific setting. The third act fared much better than the rest of the picture as this is where some stakes were introduced as well as a couple of cool and/or moving moments. But then it ended with a post-credits scene that was just an ad for the third movie that will undeniably be made after the massive box office receipts of this one.

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This just made this movie feel like a middle part afterthought. The villain is thoroughly uninteresting, underdeveloped and just discarded in the third act prior to that post-credits scene. She did not matter to the story and I don’t know why she was included at all if they weren’t ever going to give her a proper arc or goals.

Thankfully, Moana and Maui still shined bright in this sequel. Moana is just as likable and charming as always while Maui is just as funny and charismatic. The voice performances from Cravalho and The Rock even further elevated their characters as they were very much alive and energetic. I loved their friendship as always and I wished that they weren’t separated in the first act as they are at their best when they’re together.

One of the main issues of this movie is the lack of character development given to the supporting cast. The Kakamora are hilariously goofy as these little coconut people who can poison all enemies with their venomous arrows at once. I loved Pua the pig and Heihei the chicken. They always make me smile. The animal sidekicks worked for me and the other creatures they encountered on the journey were quite intriguing and memorable. But the humans are thoroughly underdeveloped and uninteresting, not to mention clichéd. You got the grumpy grandpa type, the feisty girl friend, the goofy fanboy etc. None of these characters got much to do and they easily could have been entirely discarded and we would have lost nothing.

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Moana 2 also has the problem of having a plot that is very similar to ‘Raya and the Last Dragon’. The globalist propaganda from Disney once again is rearing its ugly head, though this time in a less obvious manner. The similarities between the two movies in the messaging and main theme are overwhelming. I found some of the humor to be pretty strong actually and I laughed out loud a couple of times, but overall the writing of the dialogue and characters should have been much better.

Let’s talk about the soundtrack, which is honestly quite subpar. This is in fact one of the weakest Disney soundtracks of all time. I only liked one song and that is obviously Beyond. That one at least had some gravitas in singing, lyrics and refrain to take it to the professional Disney level that we’d come to expect from them. It’s not a great song, but it’s a solid one. Others, however, are quite mediocre. The visuals in Can I Get a Chee Hoo? are terrific, but the number itself is silly and uninteresting.

Then you got numbers like What Could Be Better Than This? – songs that are so lazily written, so annoying in their beat and so damn forgettable that I quickly entirely forgot about them. Lin-Manuel Miranda did not need to do the soundtrack again, but clearly a more competent composer should have been brought to the table. Mark Mancina did the soundtracks for ‘Tarzan’ and ‘Brother Bear’ before, so it was weird that he missed so hard here.

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Moana 2’s animation too is weaker this time around. The ocean simply did not look as good and most of the background work was rushed and not as polished. The character designs are strong and the movie is still colorful to look at, but nowhere near as polished as the original. I liked the action scenes quite a bit and the humor appealed to me too, but the writing and pacing issues plagued this sequel to the point that it was inexcusable.