REVIEW:
Talk about disappointing, here’s a movie that just should not have been made. Not without a decent story or characters, anyway. Let’s put it this way… there’s no villain. No credible threat. Instead, we get hints of a villain who is basically being saved for the next movie (as a post-credits scene reveals.) And the closest we get to the villain in this movie is meeting his assistants woman who actually seems to be out to help Moana, going against her boss. Whether or not we can really trust this woman is up for debate, but either way, there’s no threat here, and that’s a pretty big problem.
Like the first movie, this one looks fantastic. The use of colors and things that light up with bright neon-like lights over the nighttime sea are incredible. But looks will only get you so far, and most Disney movies look pretty great (Raya and the Last Dragon being another prime example.) The problem through, is that this movie really doesn’t have much of a story. Moana wants to find other people out there so that she can connect the islands and form a community of island people from different areas in the sea. And so she takes a crew with her (a major change from the first movie, where she went alone,) and together they set sail to search for other people. That’a pretty much the whole story.
At one point Maui (The Rock,) crosses paths with them and joins them, of course, but even that doesn’t happen until about halfway through the movie, leaving us wondering when we will see Maui throughout the first half, and when he and Moana will get back together. Aside from the lame story though, there are some pretty lousy songs. Not one of them is memorable. This is completely the opposite of the first movie, where one song was better than the next, With a sequel to a great movie, you would think that all they have to do is copy that first film and give us similar beats. But this movie doesn’t do that. There’s no giant monster, like the crab who loves shiny things of the first film, for example. There’s a fight against the Kacamora (the cute little vicious tribal characters who wear coconut masks over their faces,) only it’s too quick and uninteresting. The fact is, other than the great look of the film, this one really doesn’t have anything going for it.