Moana 2 Review

Moana 2 Review 

We got a new Disney animated movie hitting theaters this week with Moana 2. As it’s a Disney animated movie, I went to go see it with my mom yesterday. I wanted to share my thoughts on the movie. I’m a fan of the original film, but not a mega fan. It's not one of my personal favorite Disney animated movies, but it’s still a solid movie. So I was curious to go see this movie and see how well it holds up the original. What did I think about the movie? Let’s get started! 

NOTE: Before we get started with the review I did want to say, there is a mid-credit scene for this movie. If you stay around for the credits, there’s a tease for where things could be going in a possible third movie. Given that this movie is likely to hit $1 billion, we’re almost certainly going to get a third movie. The sequence itself is fun, I think they tease some interesting directions for a third movie so if you’re interested in where things could go, stick around for the credits. 

The Review: For this review, it’s going to be structured a bit differently because I don’t feel like there’s enough to sort things into the good or the bad category. This is just going to be a review talking about the movie as a whole. 

• The word that keeps on coming to mind with this movie is fine. I thought this movie was perfectly fine and harmless. Currently the Rotten Tomatoes score for this movie is a 65%, that is a fresh score but it’s mixed positive. That seems to be a general reaction to this movie, it’s fine and good enough. There’s nothing in this movie that I thought was fantastic, there also wasn’t anything that I thought was a total dud and misfire. It’s a perfectly serviceable enough sequel that I think families and little kids will have fun with. If you don’t know about the history of this movie, this was announced back in 2020 as a Disney+ tv show. Literally back in February of this year, they announced that Moana 2 was happening and they converted the tv show into a movie. Some people took that to mean that Disney thought the show was so good they wanted to make it a movie. I took that to mean that Disney’s last three animated movies all bombed at the box office, so they were trying to find a big money maker and they knew that Moana 2 would be that (and it’s looking like it will be that). With that knowledge in my mind while watching it, you can tell that they converted a six to eight episode show into a 90 minute movie. I feel like you can see where the different episodes would be and I think this conversion definitely hurt the movie. Where there’s a bunch of side characters introduced in the movie and they aren’t bad characters, but it feels like with more time they could have been good characters. I don’t know how different the movie would have been if you removed those characters and that’s frustrating when you have three side characters that are along with Moana and Maui on the journey and feel like throw-away characters. They all have one character trait about them and that’s all you remember. I don’t remember their names and these aren’t going to be Disney side characters that go down in history as some of the best side characters in Disney animated history. Not that all side characters need to be that, but they need something fun and memorable so you can look back on them foundly. 

• Beyond that, one of my biggest worries going into this movie was the soundtrack and how it will compare. Now I think Moana may have the best soundtrack of the last 15 years of Disney, that’s a great soundtrack. I don’t need this soundtrack to be as good as that soundtrack, because otherwise that’s putting too big of expectations on it. But when you go to a Disney animated movie, you kind of expect it to have a good and memorable soundtrack. None of the songs really stood out to me as anything special. It seemed like immediately with both Frozen movies and the original Moana they had songs that instantly became a part of pop culture, maybe even multiple songs. I don’t know how many songs from this movie will be remembered in 5-10 years. I don’t think any of these songs will go down in history as some of Disney’s best. Once again, I don’t need them to be some of Disney’s best. I need them and want them to be solid memorable songs and I don’t think that’s the case with this movie. A big part of that was that Lin Manuel-Miranda didn’t return to write the music. He’s of course a legend in the musical industry, he’s written several fantastic soundtracks like Moana (2016). For whatever reason, he didn’t return to write songs for this movie. I think you can tell that something was missing, none of these songs are bad, they're fine and that kind of feels like the theme with this entire movie, it's fine. 

• There certainly are positives about this movie that makes it an enjoyable film. First up, it’s very funny there’s a lot of very solid jokes in the movie. My audience was almost sold out and people were laughing out loud all throughout the movie and clearly having a lot of fun. They do a lot with Hei Hei once again that makes him a great scene stealing side character, he gets a lot of antics to do. Maui gets these jokes that aren’t breaking the fourth wall, but they’re these weird pop culture references that are funny. I said that our three new side characters are a bit forgettable, but they all have different personalities that bring a different sense of humor to the movie. So there’s a lot of ways in which this movie did make me laugh. I was having a good time with this movie and it seemed like the audience was having a good time. 

• Another thing that absolutely blows my mind when watching this movie, the animation here is simply fantastic. They do this opening shot with the water going towards an island and it’s obviously animation, but it also looks so real and the water looks so clear. That was one of the big positives of the original movie and with an eight year difference between the two movies, animation has only approved and gotten better and so this movie looks fantastic. What’s interesting is that this movie had a budget of $150 million, which is still maybe more than it should have been. But there’s been some other recent Disney and Pixar movies that cost $200 million, but don’t look as good as this movie. So it’s interesting that Moana 2 costs $50 million then other recent animated movies, but looks better. 

Final Thoughts: In general, Moana 2 is fine and good enough. I was never bored watching this movie, I didn’t think it was fantastic nor did I think it was bad. It was a sequel that had all of the right elements to make a really good follow-up to the original, but the magic didn’t seem like it was quite there. The songs are fine, the new characters are fine. Just the straight positives about this movie, the humor, the animation style, and this slick Disney production make for a fun sequel that families are going to have fun with. Take this as you well, my audience started clapping when this movie was done. 

The Score: 8.0/10 (B-)