WENLEI MA: Moana 2 is a satisfying sequel that can’t quite hit the euphoric highs of the original

Do you remember that feeling when you first saw Moana almost a decade ago?

Did you float out of the cinema, on a high from this incredibly uplifting and emotional story about a teen girl who ventured beyond the reef and everyone’s expectations of her, proving in the process that there are no limits to curiosity and courage?

Did you immediately start playing on repeat the soundtrack and you’re still dirty that “How Far I’ll Go” lost the original song Oscar to La La Land.

That’s a very, very difficult act to follow. But, as Moana herself would say, it’s never folly to try.

Moana 2 hits cinemas this week and it’s a good, serviceable and mostly satisfying sequel. It doesn’t hit the euphoric highs of the original but it doesn’t have to.

The firsts always have an underdog quality to them, even when they’re made by a behemoth corporation such as Disney. In an era of franchises and IP, just putting out something new and different engenders goodwill.

By the time you get to the sequel, the dynamics have changed. It’s no longer a scrappy newcomer, it’s the status quo. So it comes with lowered expectations and a level of scepticism.

Add to that, the temptation to “go bigger” to justify making another instalment, but in the process, it can overshoot. This is what happens in Moana 2. The storytelling stakes are higher, but it’s also much slicker, as if the edges have been rounded out.

Set three years after the first film, Moana (Auli’I Cravalho) is now 19 years old and a leader in her community, setting off on seafaring adventures and then coming home to a new little sister, Simea (Khaleesi Lambert-Tsuda).

In her journeys, she’s never come across another tribe of people but she’s convinced they must be out there. When the ocean and her ancestors call on her to break a curse that’s been keeping the wayfinding peoples apart, Moana answers it.

But rather than an act of defiance, she now has everyone’s support, and this time, she takes off with a crew with new characters Loto (Rose Matafeo), a manic but smart engineer, Kele (David Fane), an older farmer who can’t swim, and Moni (Hualalai Chung), who’s strong, has an encyclopaedic knowledge of their people’s stories and happens to be a Maui (Dwayne Johnson) superfan.

Speaking of the demi-god, he’s been captured in the lair of Matangi (Awhimai Fraser), a mysterious, kind-of-villain who has a big showstopping number called “Get Lost”.

The song isn’t just broad, it’s Broadway. There’s an insistence to it and many of the new numbers such as “Can I Get a Chee Hoo” under the songwriting duo Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear, who replaced Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Samoan artist Opetaia Foa’i, who worked with Miranda on the first movie, punches the songs up with culturally specific elements such as more percussive beats but you can also clearly hear his influence in the instrumental and Pacifika-led numbers such as “Mana Vavau” and “Finding the Way”.

The signature belter is “Beyond”, this film’s counterpart to “How Far I’ll Go”, and it has emotional depth as well as a catchy hook. In time, the new songs may gain as much of a passionate following as their predecessors.

But everything here is bigger, while the character arcs aren’t as rich, which means it doesn’t hit as hard. Moana and Maui are both still on a journey but the major growth happened in the previous film.

When Moana is an established hero, you don’t feel you have to invest as much in her story because the tension and jeopardy have dissipated. You never feel as if everything isn’t going to work out both narratively and emotionally.

Which is not to say there aren’t moments which are genuinely moving. How can you not love a character as winning as Moana?

Rating: 3/5

Moana 2 is in cinemas on Thursday, November 28