Review of Moana 2, directed by David Derrick Jr., Jason Hand, and Dana Ledoux Miller

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

I recently fell into a spell of unemployment probably during the worst time to be unemployed, as it was very hard to find a job. I was applying to hundreds of jobs, getting interviews, but no offer was manifesting for me in the near future. So during this time, I had a lot of free time, and spent a good chunk of it chipping away at the blog.

Something I have been incredibly grateful for while I’m unemployed is my local library system. I happen to live in an area with a solid library and multiple branches in every neighborhood, so if I want books, DVDs, CDs, or even video games, they’ll provide it for free. They even got rid of fees to get more people to come in, and I don’t think theft has become a bigger problem.

It was through my library I picked up a copy of Moana 2. When it was in theaters, my sister kept insisting that she wanted to see it, but at that point we had already given up our subscriptions to AMC A list. For those not in the United States, a local national theater chain called AMC offers a subscription where you can see four movies a week for a monthly fee.

We had that for the longest time before I lost my car, and then we both ended up just leaving it and not returning until June 2025. Considering we had spent so long barely paying to see movies, it came across as kind of expensive to see a movie on its own considering two movies would more than cover the A List monthly. All of this is to say we didn’t see the film in theaters when it was there.

So when I saw it at the library, I remembered my sister wanted to see it and picked up the DVD. We ended up watching it that weekend, and it was surprisingly short.

All of this said, let’s get into the review!

With the island under threat, Moana sets sail with a new crew to save Polynesia.

This movie takes place only three years after the events of Moana, and the titular character, Moana, is still exploring the ocean with her boat and rooster. She wants to find other people on abandoned islands, as Moana believes wholeheartedly that there is life out there and she’s just not finding it.

Back home, she’s given the symbolic title of tautai by her people, marking her as the first one in over a thousand years. It means someone who has mastered the art of wayfaring. We learn from the previous wayfinder why this is the case; a storm god, Nalo, wanted to overpower the mortals.

In order to do so, he sunk the island of Motufetu, which is what connected the islands and people to each other. It turns out that if Moana can’t find the island and raise it, her people are going to eventually disappear and become extinct. Horrified by this, Moana decides to recruit a team to go out and find the island with her: Loto, a local craft maker, the farmer Kele, her pig and rooster, and Moni, who is a historian who tells their history through weaves.

Together, they set off to find the island, but don’t have much of a clue on their own to find it. Good thing Moana has a bond with not only the ocean, but a comet in the sky provided by the divine to lead them to where they need to be. At the same time though, Maui is trying to find the island, but Matangi, a woman who controls bats, kidnaps him and holds Maui hostage inside of her lair.

Moana and her crew end up coming across the Kakamora from the previous movie, and they viciously attack the crew. However, once they realize that Moana is looking for Motufetu, they decide to help her. Turns out they are forever banished from their own island because of how the island was sunk. With the help of a Kakamora dubbed Kotu, the crew ends up inside of a giant clam that leads to Matangi.

Moana ends up down a different path than the crew. The crew meets Maui, who realizes who they are and that Moana is with them. Now they need to find her before Matangi gets to her. Turns out though Matangi is sick of working for Nalo and wants a change of pace, and she helps Moana and her crew get out of there, even if it has consequences.

She also shows them the portal to Nalo’s dimension, where the ocean is dead and when night falls, deadly creatures come out of the water. Maui tells them this is where their ancestors passed, and he helps them get to a deserted island after the monsters break their raft. As Moana’s shoulders slump and she feels hopeless, but Maui reminds her of what she fights for every day.

The crew repairs the raft and they set off again. This time, Nalo sends a huge storm after them, as he wants to prevent them from raising the island. Moana realizes that Nalo will only go after the boat, so she tells Maui to go and raise the island a little bit. However, just as he starts raising the island, Nalo completely takes away Maui’s powers as a demigod and leaves him stranded in the ocean.

Moana then dives in to touch Motufetu, but just as her fingertips brush against the island, Nalo sends a lightning strike that kills her. Maui goes in after her and sings a magical chant that brings together all of Moana’s ancestors, who turn her into a demigod herself. Maui’s powers are also restored, and together they raise Motufetu.

Soon, people from other islands emerge in the distance. The crew heads back home with all of the new people they’ve met, much to the shock and joy of those on the island. The movie ends with this, and a scene where Nalo decides to get revenge with the crab Tamatoa.

Overall Thoughts

I think one of the biggest complaints about this movie that I’ve seen is that it acts too fragmented throughout its run time, as it was intended for television episodes. Quite frankly, I agree with these sentiments. It feels very choppy and awkward throughout its run time, and my sister and I agreed this wasn’t the best film.

Moana is a consistent character, but even her new crew was a bit forgettable at times. The only person I personally enjoyed was the tired old farmer who wonders how he got into this situation, and that was probably because he’s my spirit animal in this film.

The other glaring absence was the fact that Lin Manuel Miranda didn’t write the songs for this movie. The music in the first Moana movie was incredible, so to compare this movie to the last one is like oranges to apples. I prefer the first movie’s soundtrack to this one, as the lyrics were a bit dull and didn’t strike as well as the original.

I mean I’m glad I watched this, and I can see how someone else out there might find it more enjoyable than I did. Taste is so incredibly subjective, so if someone likes this a lot more than I did, I salute them. Neither of us are wrong with our opinions.

Go watch it though if you’re interested and have some free time. Opinions are meant to be shaped after you watch the film—and movies are indeed meant to be watched, not read about.

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