Moana 2 Review: Disney's Sequel Fails To Recapture The Magic Of The Original

Fairytales don't have sequels, and for generations, children have been perfectly fine with accepting that no more story is required beyond a happily ever after. This is the same approach that Disney maintained for decades, avoiding sequels that weren't of the straight-to-video variety like the plague, knowing that any addendum to their fantastical tales wouldn't be as essential as what had already been told.

The monster success of "Frozen" didn't transform this line of thinking overnight, but did cause these preconceptions to thaw; six years after its release, "Frozen 2" became the highest-grossing animated film of all time, justifying the business decision. There was just one crucial flaw: ask anybody on the street (who doesn't have young children that force them to watch it on repeat) anything about the plot, and they will likely draw a blank.

"Frozen 2" is an unexceptional addition to a story that didn't require more chapters, with the majority of its songs feeling like deliberate attempts to recapture the magic of specific numbers from the original. It is also, unfortunately, the template that has been adopted for "Moana 2," initially produced as a straight-to-streaming series that got reconfigured into a big-screen tentpole somewhere in post-production. The highest compliment I can give the sequel is that it doesn't show any signs of being a TV show in a former life, and if that sounds like damning with faint praise, well, that's because it is. Very little about "Moana 2" is memorable even while watching, to the point it becomes more invigorating to try and detect any signs of a tortured production in the margins. It's too well-oiled a machine to have any of those on display, with the machinations visible being the obvious ways the story contorts itself to replicate its predecessor as much as possible.

In the first "Moana," the titular heroine (voiced then and now by Auliʻi Cravalho) leaves her secluded Polynesian Island on a quest across the ocean to help resurrect the Goddess of Nature, the living island Te Fiti. It turns out — spoiler — that Te Fiti was actually alive and had taken the form of villain Te Kā, who she transformed into when she lost her heart. Moana succeeds in saving the day and returns home as the new Wayfinder of her island.

Picking up three years later, "Moana 2" gets the ball rolling on the narrative in its very first scene, as Moana hears a call from across the ocean that suggests other disconnected communities are out there, waiting to be found. Her journey leads her to another island that has been plagued by a curse, which she must defeat in a near-fatal quest to help restore life. There are a few differences in her mission — such as a rogue's gallery of bumbling sidekicks from her village helping in her quest — but nothing to radically transform the movie from feeling like a beat for beat retread of the first.

Arguably, the most daunting area in which this carbon-copy approach to storytelling makes itself apparent is via the songs. With "Frozen 2," it was easy to feel the songwriters struggling with the burden of writing something with the stratospheric hit potential of "Let It Go," falling at the first hurdle by struggling to better something they'd never be able to. The big showstopper in "Moana" was "How Far I'll Go," a ballad which ticked both the musical theater and pop chart crossover boxes by being a broad empowerment anthem, albeit with lyrics inextricably tied to the character's journey within the plot. The songs of "Moana 2" never quite shake the allegation that they're designed to mirror those of the first, but songwriters Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear do a far better job of making their earworms feel distinct to those of their predecessor, something the "Frozen" franchise didn't manage.

The songwriters on "Moana 2" been gifted the unenviable task of stepping into the shoes of Lin-Manuel Miranda, and love him or hate him, there's a reason he's become one of the Mouse House's resident hitmakers. But even if Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear's songs don't sound like bargain bin Miranda knock-offs, they share the same narrative preconceptions in a way that makes them pale in comparison. Take "Here," a power ballad complete with Auliʻi Cravalho belting "I am Moana!" in the final chorus, which is so transparently an attempt to recapture the magic of "How Far I'll Go," that the team behind the movie has already referred to it openly as a "spiritual sequel." As for "You're Welcome," the cheeky up-tempo number sung by Dwayne Johnson's Demigod Maui, it also gets an unflattering mirror in the form of "Can I Get A Chee-Hoo," by far the worst number on the soundtrack, if only because it's the only time when the voice actor performing it feels like they're phoning it in. If the other songs never quite feel as shameless in the ways they mimic numbers from the first film, then you have Cravalho's impressive pipes to thank.

Elsewhere, you can never quite shake the feeling that this movie has little reason to exist beyond shipping entire warehouses full of "Moana" toys before the holiday season kicks in — there's a reason this is getting a prime Thanksgiving release, likely with an eye on capturing toy sales on Black Friday. This isn't exactly a novel criticism for a Disney project, but there's usually enough substance within the films themselves to make it barely worth mentioning; as with, you guessed it, "Frozen 2," it's clear that new characters and deep bench supporting characters from the first have been given a bigger platform purely for toy purposes. Yes, Heihei the chicken is back along for the ride, but now we've also got more of Moana's pot-belly pig Pua, and a battle with an even bigger army of coconut pirates than in the first. The latter especially remain among the most delightful creations in the movie from a pure animation standpoint, but even with that in mind, it's hard to justify exactly why they've been brought back into the fold. I can't exactly complain that a film aimed at children takes this jingling keys approach to bringing back familiar characters for the sake of it, but there is an inherent laziness to the justification here that you wouldn't find in, say, a Pixar animation sequel.

None of this will matter to the young target demographic, who will likely make this endure as much as the original via endless rewatches. But whereas parents and kids alike will have been charmed by the first, "Moana 2" will be overshadowed for anybody other than the youngest kids watching. It will likely make a billion dollars regardless.

"Moana 2" premieres on November 27.