Disney's Moana 2 sails slightly off course: review

She is Moana of Motunui: you will board her boat, you will bring your family to the cinema, and the young children will have a great time exploring the ocean again with their favourite wayfinder.

As for everyone else on this voyage, prepare for some choppy waves. Moana 2 is a well-meaning yet inconsistent movie that will leave casual fans pleased and most viewers wanting a little bit more.

Disney Animation’s latest is poised to be a gargantuan hit at the multiplex this week, continuing the adventures of teen oceaneer Moana (Auli’i Cravalho, also star of January's Mean Girls) and demigod trickster Maui (Dwayne Johnson) in this new sequel to one of the studio’s biggest hits ever.

Unfortunately, while Moana 2 features technically spectacular animation and a commendable respect for Polynesian cultures, the film is also missing many of the key ingredients that made the first film both a success in theatres back in 2016 and a subsequent juggernaut on Disney+ in the years since.

Read more here: Moana masters the Disney magic - Review

The first Moana told a clear story with high stakes for her family, her village, and her purpose with a singular quest that was the plot’s single focus for the entire film. It also featured outstanding, chart-topping songs and a balance of both modern and timeless humour.

Moana 2, on the other hand, is missing all of those things. Moana’s new ocean-crossing journey is filled with pointless detours and stops, forgettable songs and enough fourth-wall breaking and gross-out humour to make you feel seasick.

All of the film’s disjointed elements make it hard to assess how enjoyable watching the movie really is. The best scenes and characters are charming, brave and heartfelt - which makes the whiplash into juvenile, pandering dialogue or jokes all the more disappointing.

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Moana 2 was originally commissioned as a TV series that just under a year ago was restructured as a feature film, mainly to bolster Disney Animation’s revenue after the box office flops of 2022’s Strange World and last year’s musical disaster Wish.

What wasn’t changed, however, was three different (until recently) storyboard artists sharing the director’s mantle - all for the first time. That’s the likely reason behind both the film’s disjointed tones and styles.

The pivot from television to film would also explain why the plot feels so thin, generic and rushed, with several episodic scenes in a long journey suddenly being confined to an hour and a half run time. And that’s before addressing the several gaping plot holes: How do characters teleport in the clamshell? What does demigod Mating want and why?

Among the highlights are definitely the production design, Mark Mancina and Opetaia Foa’i’s lush score and traditional music, and some truly funny new side characters (especially David Fane as grumpy farmer Kele and Khaleesi Lambert-Tsuda as Moana’s new younger sister Simea).

But those elements are bogged down by metafiction, lazy dialogue writing, and worst of all, a batch of bland and amateurish new songs by up-and-coming songwriters Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear - whose only professional credit to date is the parody musical The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical.

This is the second Disney musical in a row with forgettable songs written by inexperienced writers. The syllable counts are awkward, the lyrics feel forced (and are sometimes indecipherable), the melodies are simple and they’re juxtaposed with the more effective traditional sounds of actual Polynesian artists throughout the film.

Moana 2, as a whole, feels like it was rushed and made with the same care and attention like the dozens of direct to DVD spin-off movies Disney produced between 1994-2010, all marketed to preschool age children. There’s just bigger production and marketing budgets at play here.

At my opening day show, the children all had a mixed reception to the film. Some applauded, while others were fidgeting in their seats, confused at what they'd just seen. I'd expect most reactions from kids to fall somewhere in between.

This is the latest in Disney Animation’s latest creative slump, still short of producing anything really show-stopping since the release of Encanto on this same weekend three years ago. Oddly, this is also Dwayne Johnson’s second misfire, with his action comedy Red One still playing in theatres too.

Fans of the first Moana will likely have a bit of fun spending time with their favourite characters. But for a movie supposedly about togetherness and charting your life’s true course, it feels like the wayfinders at Disney animation were lost at sea.

The Snapshot: Despite great animation and some fun new characters, the directionless Moana 2 is sailing across troubled waters in a shallow sequel.