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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n2016\u2019s \u201cMoana\u201d is probably my favorite animated Disney movie of the modern era. I have plenty of nice things to say about \u201cFrozen,\u201d \u201cZootopia,\u201d \u201cEncanto,\u201d and several others, but \u201cMoana,\u201d with its timelessly-relatable main character, sharp physical comedy, and multiple memorable songs, puts it just a coir above the competition. When an evidently-rushed sequel was announced earlier this year, I became nervous. What if the new film was so disappointing that it affected my opinion of the original? Now that I\u2019ve seen the film, I\u2019m happy to report that my enjoyment of the original is not tarnished by this underwhelming sequel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The film takes place three years after the original, with Moana (Auli\u2019i Cravalho) now her island\u2019s premier wayfinder, or boat navigator. The community is thriving, and she\u2019s gradually finding clues that will hopefully lead her to discover more islands with communities that can be joined. But she receives a vision that if she doesn\u2019t find far-off island Motufetu very soon, everything she holds dear will be lost. She throws together a mission with a ragtag crew that includes overeager builder Loto (Rose Matafeo), grumpy farmer Kele (David Fane), oafish historian Moni (Hual\u0101lai Chung), pet pig Pua, and chicken Heihei, and sets off on an adventure with more self-doubt than she\u2019s ever had in her life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Along the way, she meets up with an old enemy: the tribe of sentient coconuts known as Kakamora. The two sides battle until they discover that they both need somebody to find Motufetu, at which point one of the Kakamora joins the quest as an enforcer. Not long after, the crew find themselves swallowed by a giant clam, which is home base for new villain Matangi (Awhimai Fraser), who has abducted Moana\u2019s former ally, the demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson). It turns out that Matangi needs Moana to find Motufetu as well, though her motivations probably aren\u2019t as pure as the Kakumora just wanting to find their way home. With Maui now officially on the crew, it\u2019s a race to reach Motufetu before unhappy god Nalo (Tofiga Fepulea\u2019i) can stop them with his storm-conjuring powers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Slowly but surely, the downgrades from the first movie come to light. New songwriters Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear try valiantly to give Moana an anthem as powerful as \u201cHow Far I\u2019ll Go,\u201d but \u201cBeyond\u201d falls just a bit short. \u201cGet Lost\u201d from Matangi isn\u2019t quite as memorable a villain song as \u201cShiny.\u201d And as far as Maui goes, \u201cCan I Get A Chee Hoo?\u201d is a fall off a cliff from \u201cYou\u2019re Welcome\u201d that matches Johnson\u2019s own falling star power. His tired, somehow-mugging-for-the-camera-even-in-animation schtick is probably the worst thing about this movie, other than an inexplicable overreliance on gags that involve creatures excreting from various orifices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The movie still gets a recommendation from me. Cravalho is great as always, the new characters are compelling enough, the jokes hit at an acceptable ratio, and there\u2019s an overall agreeable tone for an animated adventure. There\u2019s nothing here that makes me want to turn against the \u201cMoana\u201d brand, which is good because we\u2019re going to be getting a lot more of it in the future. Supposedly this movie was supposed to be the first few installments of a television miniseries, and harsher critics will say that it should have been stuck on television. I don\u2019t agree with that assessment, I think theaters are lucky to have \u201cMoana 2,\u201d even if it\u2019s a step down from the original. But Moana\u2019s journey is clearly far from over, and however it continues, I hope it doesn\u2019t lose any more magic than it already has.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Grade: B-<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMoana 2\u201d is rated PG for action\/peril. Its running time is 100 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Bob Garver 2016\u2019s \u201cMoana\u201d is probably my favorite animated Disney movie of the modern era. I have plenty of nice things to say about \u201cFrozen,\u201d \u201cZootopia,\u201d \u201cEncanto,\u201d and… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":60223,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[2876],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60222"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60222"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60224,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60222\/revisions\/60224"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}