At the 89th Academy Awards, the first Moana (2016) was nominated for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song. It grossed over a half-billion in the box office. The first Moana also did extremely well on Disney's streaming service. It did so well that a sequel series was green-lit for Disney Plus in 2020. However, when Bob Iger returned as CEO in 2022, plans changed and the series was redeveloped to be this feature. As a result, it feels as if a lot of things were cut from the overall story and the rest got incredibly rushed. The narrative feels very lacking. The overall story doesn't feel very filling, and the whole thing feels rather sleight. Like most sequels, it feels like a rehashing of the first film's story beats, but there's nothing grander or more substantial that's given to make the venture feel more important. That wouldn't matter if there were other things about it that gave it more depth or insight, but that's not the case here.
Dwayne Johnson (Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and Fast Five) reprises his role of Maui, a demigod, a big, buff, highly muscular, Polynesian man who has tattoos covering his whole body. One of which is alive and can move around his skin. Maui also has a large, magical fish-hook that gives him all kinds of powers, including shape-shifting. He's also a trickster and a bit of a comedian. He's also a bit narcissistic or very self-confident. If you were to compare him to any character from previous Disney animated features, he's most like the Genie from Aladdin (1992), as voiced by Robin Williams. Johnson isn't as great a vocal performer and improv comedian, but their characters' archetypes are similar. Maui even sings a song in this film that's similar to "Friend Like Me" from Aladdin.
The unfortunate difference is that unlike Aladdin, this film doesn't have an interesting villain or much of a villain at all. Most Disney animations have a good bad guy or bad girl, going all the way back to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). Jafar from Aladdin is probably one of the best villains that Disney has ever concocted. Here, there isn't a villain. The film name-checks a bad guy named Nalo, but we never meet this bad guy. What we learn is that Nalo isn't really a person. It's some vague storm god that doesn't operate with any kind of understandable motive. Therefore, we never understand why Nalo has done what it's done and therefore we never understand what it is that the main character is fighting. One could compare it to a film like Twister (1996) where the protagonists are fighting a force of nature, but that film and natural disaster films like it have human villains or conflicts between the humans that make those natural disaster films even more compelling. This film doesn't have those human villains or conflicts. The series that was in the works originally could have had those things, but this feature might have cut them.
Auli'i Cravalho (Mean Girls and Moana) reprises her titular role. She starts out searching for other people who live on other islands. She does find other islands, but they're uninhabited. She's hoping to find other people because her job as way-finder is to explore and to voyage to unknown territories. The reason she's not having luck finding new nations of people is because years ago Nalo put a curse over the ocean and prevents people from finding each other if traveling by water. Moana realizes that she has to break the curse if she wants to be able to find all these others.
The film gives Nalo a vague motive for placing the curse. It would have been more interesting if the film had crafted a more decent reasoning, but Nalo isn't a character in this narrative, so we learn nothing about it. It's not clear what time period this film is set, but it's likely some time before European settlers started visiting the Polynesian islands and other places by sea in the 14th or 15th century. Once the Europeans arrived, things started to change through missionaries and imperialists or colonizers taking over. It would have been interesting if Nalo had foreseen this and did what it did in order to protect the Polynesians. However, this film offers no such intrigue or interesting motivation for its villain. It remains simply a nebulous thing.
Awhimai Fraser voices a character named Matangi, a potential villain in this story who gets a pretty good song called "Get Lost" that could become a breakout hit for this film. The song and the scene that precedes it establishes Matangi as a really amazing, potential villain or antagonist of some kind. She's called a "bat lady" and how she's rendered is exciting, creepy and also beautiful. Yet, that character disappears and doesn't return after she sings that one song. The most interesting or intriguing new character here is given such short shrift as to almost be criminal.
The film instead introduces us to a trio of new characters. Yet, they all remain as superficial cartoons as the so-called wordless animals that get taken along for the ride. Literally, Moana goes for a ride at sea on a large canoe and she takes three new characters on the boat as her crew. One of the new characters is named Loto and she's good at building and fixing things, so she's there with a functional purpose. Another new character is Kele, an old farmer who also has a utilitarian purpose. Kele provides the food that Moana and her crew eats. Yet, there's a third person named Moni. Despite being a tall and slightly muscular guy, he doesn't really have a functional or utilitarian purpose. He's mainly just there to be a fan of Maui. Moni is introduced as an illustrator or a person who makes drawings that depict the island's history, but it's not something that requires him to be on Moana's boat. Otherwise, he does practically nothing while on this trip. He could've provided insight or context for the island and its culture, but he's not given much dialogue and the film doesn't really slow down for that kind of dialogue to even occur. The story could've slowed down if this had remained a series for Disney Plus, but as a kid's movie, it feels urged to keep a pace that ultimately wastes these new characters.
All of this could've been forgiven if the adventure itself were more interesting or thrilling, or if there were a more substantial message at the heart. I compare this film to something like The Sea Beast (2022). The reason is because, like Moana and Maui, The Sea Beast is also about a young girl of color and an older man out on the ocean having an adventure. That film also incorporated large creatures, but it had a more substantial message about political demonizing and critiquing authoritarian power. This film also has large creatures, such as a giant clam and kaiju-sized electric eels. Yet, there isn't really much of a message behind this film's yielding of such things. Ostensibly, it's great to see a film that centers Polynesian people and depicts them in such beautiful ways. Yet, their depiction is almost too beautiful, too perfect, as Moana is a total Mary Sue. Beyond that, why is anything we see here happening and what's the bigger point?
Rated PG for action and peril.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 40 mins.
In theaters.