After receiving an unexpected call from her wayfinding ancestors, Moana must journey to the far seas of Oceania and into dangerous, long-lost waters for an adventure unlike anything she’s ever faced.

‘Moana’ was a more than welcome surprise when it came out in 2016, a fine example of the type of movies Disney make at their best and undoubtedly their strongest movie since their last strong run in the early 90s (Pixar, and to a lesser extent, ‘Frozen’ aside!). Of course a critical and commercial smash means one thing and one thing only when it comes to modern day studio filmmaking, and that means an inevitable sequel would go into production in fairly short order. Thus, we have ‘Moana 2’, which reunites our heroine Moana (Auli’I Cravalho) and the demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson) in a new quest where the fate of Moana’s people lie in her hands.

It was always going to be difficult to follow the first ‘Moana’, not least because of the involvement of Lin-Manuel Miranda in writing the songs, and so it has proven. On just about every metric, ‘Moana 2’ is a downgrade, from the story to the songs to the humour and heart, and it just doesn’t connect nearly as strongly as the first movie did. The animation remains impeccable and the voicework is good again, but it is another sequel that feels like it is treading water, almost as if the filmmakers and writers are keeping the characters fresh in the audience’s memories while they try to come up with a better idea for a third movie.

I noticed that the movie had three directors, which is quite unusual (albeit a little less so in animation), and potentially this falls into the category of the old adage ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’, as ‘Moana 2’ never really figures out what it wants to be, besides a poor tribute to the excellent first movie.

Rating: 2/5

Directed By: David Derrick Jr., Jason Hand and Dana Ledoux Miller

Starring: Auli’i Cravalho, Dwayne Johnson, Hualālai Chung, Rose Matafeo, David Fane, Awhimai Fraser, Khaleesi Lambert-Tsuda, Temuera Morrison, Nicole Scherzinger, Rachel House, Gerald Ramsey and Alan Tudyk

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt13622970/