"What would Walt do?" Such was the axiom guiding Disney's animated movie exploits after Walt Disney passed away in 1967. Unsurprisingly, this led to creative stagnation at the House of Mouse. You can only repeat the past for so long before everyone tunes you out. Disney Animation historically restores its mojo back doing things nobody thought possible (Beauty and the Beast in the 90s, Tangled in the 2010s). That precedent hasn’t stopped Disney from retreating to the comforting familiar, though.
Last year's Walt Disney Animation Studios release Wish carried over “What would Walt do?” into 2023. There was a movie bursting at the seams with nods to the past without offering anything new to moviegoers. Even its closing image was just the Disney castle logo. Moana 2 is an equally stiff extension of that philosophy. In a post-Spider-Verse/Wild Robot/Nimona world, the gloves are off for feature-length American family animation. Painterly backgrounds, stylized visuals, and bolder emotional cores are the name of the game. Naturally, then, the Walt Disney Animation Studios team has produced a tepid retread of a movie you’ve seen before.
2016’s Moana was a grand voyage that especially worked because of its mythic nature. Iconic images like Moana (Auliʻi Cravalho) walking towards that imposing lava monster or the final sweeping shot of “I Am Moana (Song of the Ancestors)" were strikingly grand creations. Directors Ron Clements and John Musker (seasoned veterans of boldly designed animated cinema like The Little Mermaid and Treasure Planet) weren’t afraid to deliver the big emotions or sensational showmanship people crave from musicals. Moana 2 constantly reminds audiences of the past (“What would Walt/Moana 1 do?”) without delivering the spectacle. It’s a very hollow encore of a movie endlessly streamed on Disney+.
A key problem is the deeply unengaging premise directors David Derrick Jr., Jason Hand, Dana Ledoux Miller, and screenwriters Jared Bush and Miller have conjured up. A few years after the first Moana, this legendary Wayfinder has become a celebrity on her island home. A mystical vision reveals that an island, named Motufetu, uniting various communities from around the world does indeed exist. However, it's been sunk to the bottom of the ocean by the deity Nalo. This being, like so many blockbuster movie villains, exists as an off-screen entity. He will presumably become a big deal in Moana 3 and other features. This storytelling approach always works out well, just ask Justice League or Artemis Fowl.
That alone gives Moana 2 a significant narrative problem it never overcomes. The primary source of conflict is an offscreen god with nebulously-defined powers. A far cry from the immediately imposing foes of the previous Moana, like a giant singing crab or a lava-covered beastie. Inevitably, this quest for Motufetu brings Moana and her ragtag group of explorers to Maui (Dwayne Johnson), a demigod hankering for some revenge against Nalo. Initially, Maui is held captive by Matangi (Awhimai Fraser), a mystical being utilizing bats to enforce her powers. She enters the story as a potentially ominous force that not even Maui can contend with. However, her presence in Moana 2 very quickly resolves itself unsatisfactorily.
That’s another problem with this sequel. Conflict in the story peters out rather than getting solved in a dynamic fashion. Everything from the return of the Kakamora tribe to the potential demise of one of Moana's crew members is handled in a rushed fashion. There's never any tangible stakes or danger to these developments. The entire script is plagued with weightlessness, including the return of Moana's grandmother, Tala (Rachel House). This should be a big meaningful moment...after all, it means Rachel House is now in the movie! Instead, this transpires with little bombast or impact in the tune "Beyond." She just abruptly shows up, harmonizes a few lines, and then leaves with no real pizzazz. Let this grandma/granddaughter reunion breathe!
Speaking of music, Moana 2's soundtrack is an incredibly uninspired bust. With all due respect to songwriters Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear, I implore you Disney (after last year's Wish debacle as well), to get seasoned Broadway veterans to write your show tunes again. Right away, Moana 2’s songs hit a sour note with the tune “What Lies Beyond,” which has no witty or poetic wordplay. It’s just characters rigidly singing very clinical exposition. Similar writing issues plague Matangi’s song “Get Lost,” which just sounds like she’s repeating the same phrase over and over again.
That’s not a bad lyrical approach when you’re the Zac Brown Band hammering home emotional bonds in the face of poverty in the final verse of “Free.” That is, however, much stranger when Moana and Matangi are zipping across luminous caverns yet never vary their verbiage. A later ditty sung by Dwayne Johnson has a little more spunk and visual imagination (it’s rendered on-screen like one of those shooting gallery carnival games). However, it still features the face-palm-inducing rhyming of “invested” and “bestie”. These songs encapsulate the sheer dearth of energy infused into Moana 2.
These tunes flagrantly lack pop or personality. Losing songwriter Lin-Manuel Miranda could’ve been an exciting chance to redefine what kind of songs inhabit a Moana movie. Instead, Moana 2’s musical numbers just make you wish you could re-listen to “Shiny” or “How Far I’ll Go.” I suppose the 2024 cinema had to get in one more underwhelming musical after Wicked seemed to turn things around for the better.
Even Moana 2 seems to realize it’s running on creative fumes given its desperate stabs at wringing big laughs out of the audience. A gigantic blobfish does that “goat scream” from 2013 animated kid’s movies can’t stop referencing. Endless jokes involve Moana hearing a potentially important noise only for the punchline to be it's just Hei Hei choking on a conch shell. Gags from the first Moana are trotted out again to diminishing effect. These jokes inhabit an animation scheme that isn’t even especially interesting. Everything looks polished, but there’s little imagination in the character designs or backdrops.
The lowest points of Walt Disney Animation Studios have come when this label just imitates what the competition is doing. The Black Cauldron firmly echoed other 80s dark fantasy features. Dinosaur rode the Jurassic Park-inspired dinosaur mania sweeping the nation in the 90s. Chicken Little was Disney’s sad attempt to mimic Shrek. Moana 2 follows in their footsteps with one twist: rather than evoking Illumination or Cartoon Saloon, this is a follow-up frantically trying to make the first Moana happen again. Why else do endless characters repeat variations on the phrase “how far I’ll go” in the first ten minutes? Just rewatch the original excellent Moana, then. "What would Walt do?" was an unwise creative approach in the 70s. "What would Moana 1 do?" isn't much better.