Review of Moana 2

By Avery Loughborough

Moana 2, a follow up to the original Moana movie is a heartwarming, adventure packed movie which came out November 27. I found the second movie to be fun and entertaining, but not quite as good as the original which was where some negative reviews came from.

The movies follow Moana voiced by Chloe Auli’i Cravalho. Moana is a daring teenage girl who wants to save her island and people from a curse. She meets Maui, a Demigod who is by her side in her adventures in both movies. The second movie has a very similar story arc to the first however they add new characters in the second movie that make the risks greater. Some of the new characters are Moana’s team when she goes on her adventures. In the second movie Moana has crew-mates Moni, Loto, and Kele whereas in the first movie she traveled alone. Moana recruits this group which makes the risks greater than the first movie as she is responsible for keeping her crew safe. Although the character who brought the greatest risks for Moana was her little sister Simea who both makes it hard for Moana to stray far from home and adds an endearing sibling bond that was absent in the first movie.

A young female duo Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear wrote the music for the second movie. These two are the youngest songwriting duo to be hired by Disney. There were a lot of critiques of the music in this movie likely coming from the fact Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote the music in the first movie. They had big shoes to fill following his music, but I enjoyed most of the songs and found they followed a similar upbeat theme. My favorites were “Get Lost” which is sung to give Moana advice in a time of troubles, and “Beyond”.

Similarly to the first movie Moana 2 follows the theme of having a strong emphasis on Polynesian culture. It features Polynesian mythology, and almost all the voice actors are Polynesian. These actors include Chloe Auli’i Cravalho who is the voice of Moana and is fromHawaii. Maui is voiced by Dwayne Johnson whose mother is Samoan. While the Polynesian culture is important it is not very specific in the movie with the actors from many Polynesian places and not a specific place emphasized in the movie. The one exception of having all Polynesian voice actors is the rooster, Heihei, who does not have any real lines.