In Moana, our Disney princess (or, well, maybe not princess) starts with perhaps the most iconic, and least ambiguous, “I want” song in recent memory.
“I can lead with pride, I can make us strong / I’ll be satisfied if I play along,” she sings in How Far I’ll Go, setting the stage for every action and regret associated with her character from then on. “But the voice inside sings a different song / What is wrong with me?”
It’s triumphant, it’s conflicted. It’s empowering and realistic — it’s defining. And, most important of all, it’s interesting.
In Moana 2, she opens with a slightly different refrain.
“Sailing from the horizon / Can’t wait to reach my island,” she chirps in the song We’re Back. “The home I’ve been missing / And the life I’m meant to lead / We’re back!”
The “back” she’s referring to is the fictional island of Motunui in ancient Polynesia, and her return is the low-stakes starting point for what turns out to be a low-stakes movie. Voiced once again by Auli’i Cravalho, Moana shifts from a hesitant explorer fighting for the right to leave her home and search for her own identity into a fully established wayfinder who now wants the one thing she was originally trying to escape.
This character invalidation is up there with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice turning teen rebel Lydia Deetz into a timid sellout shill, but Moana does have a little more going for her.
It’s not long before she heads out again, this time in search of Motufetu, a legendary island and nexus point for all the tribes of the Earth now lost to one another.
On the way, she gathers a requisitely motley crew. There’s the inventor to fix up the ocean-going canoe. There’s an irascible old farmer to produce their food (who also serves as the meta-complaint about everyone singing everything that all modern musicals seem to require). There’s the folklorist ostensibly meant to interpret their history along the way, but who almost immediately finds himself with nothing to do — that is, beyond operating as a pathos-prop for a movie desperately in search of conflict and a reason, any reason at all, to justify its runtime.
And then, of course, there’s the return of Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson’s demigod, Maui, and the introduction of a mute martial-artist coconut, both of whom are sure to at least move some merchandise.
What they don’t gather, though, is an antagonist, or at least one that gets much screen time. The closest thing to an opponent Moana 2 gets is a particularly bad storm, and its own uninteresting premise. Though that’s not enough to keep it from a projected opening that could give “Glicked” a run for its money, barely a week after the Wicked/Gladiator II pairing broke records of its own.
Really, there is nothing incredibly wrong with Moana 2. Beyond Johnson’s disappointing Your Welcome follow-up, Can I Get a Chee Hoo?, the songs aren’t unlistenable. In fact, a few might even earn a listen or two outside the context of the movie itself, though the overwhelmingly generic soundtrack makes it obvious this time around that Lin-Manuel Miranda wasn’t involved.
The Pacific Islander representation the first movie was built on is still present, and it provides a sort of suit of armour guaranteeing at least a few positive headlines, however insipid, formulaic and same-y the studio’s films have become.
The jokes — as millennial-coded as moments like its camera-mugging dancing boy can be — are enough to earn a chuckle of acknowledgment And the story — as sparse, uninspired, rote and antagonist-free as it is — is probably enough to entertain your toddler.
Which brings up the biggest problem when it comes to talking about Moana 2. Forget war, gender identity or religion. The hardest conversation to have when it comes to movies is ones made for children.
‘It’s not that serious’
More than any other genre, this is the one protected by that ever-growing sentiment: “it’s not that serious.” But as myopic and art-destroying as it is, maybe here it does raise fair questions. If it’s good enough to entertain a five-year-old, what does it matter how interesting the songs, story or sentiments are? Do we give the corporate product — slick but soulless, serviceable for kids but depressingly empty — a pass because it does what it says on the tin?
Are empty displays of representation in big-budget media overvalued? Or is it still worthwhile to make purposeless rehashes just because they include non-European-influenced music traditions, buried beneath pop instrumentation of otherwise average songs? Does this deserve critical thought at all? And how far above forgettable is the bar for inoffensive sequels?
There are few outright failures in Moana 2, but the bar should still be higher for its successes — especially when compared to how the industry used to work. Disney’s The Rescuers sequel, The Rescuers Down Under, at least had the courtesy of being original. Meanwhile, the studio’s immediate Aladdin follow-ups had the decency to go straight to VHS.
Moana 2 is built from a staggering $150 million US budget, set for an international theatrical debut shortly ahead of the franchise extending into a live-action remake — all within a decade of the original’s premiere. It’s a heap of cash for something eminently toothless — in song, in narrative, in commercial tie-in characters, in lack of big bads or hardship or character development.
Moana 2‘s one showstopper, which contains the rallying cry “I am Moana,” actually works as an encapsulation of that unintentional theme. It’s a line copied and pasted from the original, in a song that sounds good but not great, pointing out a fact that seems powerful but is mostly meaningless. Moana already found her footing in the first film. Now, the story’s thematic raison d’etre seems to be to infuse its characters with self-confidence — which is unearned, unopposed and unnecessary.
While it may have worked as a cable-TV spinoff, as it is, Moana 2 is at best sub-par escapism. At worst, it’s an anger-inducing waste of time.
But it doesn’t deserve to be the target of anger. Considering how glaringly it showcases Disney’s disdain for providing its audience of children anything innovative — so long as their parents continue handing back a billion dollars for an unending line of live-action Lion Kings — the real emotion Moana 2 should inspire is pity. Pity for the film, and pity for us.