Moana 2: The Disney-Shaped Perils Of Growing Up & Selling Out

MUCH LIKE its “ancestor” in 2016, Moana 2 is a rare Disney movie that captures the childlike wonder of storytelling. Most animated adventures are crafted by adults who imagine what it means to be young again. But Moana 2 is all kinds of young: excitable and colourful and messy and clumsy and wild. The premise unfolds like blotches of bright paint thrown against a wall — unburdened by the ‘sense’ of growing up. Some call it Polynesian folklore, others call it raw flair. It’s like hearing old truths in baby voices.

Sample this: Moana (Auli’i Cravalho), the brave wayfinder, can’t find other ocean people because an evil storm god named Nalo (think Thanos on a beach holiday) sunk the one mystical island that connected all islands. So Moana’s mission is to lift this curse by setting sail with a crew that features her pet pig and rooster, a grumpy farmer, a hunky fanboy, a geeky craft-woman, and of course, the shape-shifting demigod with a motion tattoo, Maui (Dwayne Johnson). The plan is to sail into the eye of the deadly storm and distract Nalo so that Maui can literally yank the island out of the water and clear the skies. This limitless journey also features a displaced coconut race named Kakamora, a huge monster clam that looks like a mountain going through an existential crisis, an ocean that’s alive and friendly, an underwater lair, Maui morphing into a cute shark and much more. Oh, and it’s also a kiddie musical. One of the songs goes: “Remember there’s always another way, even if you have to get lost to find it”.

The message at the core of this film is simple: preservation doesn’t mean insulation. Moana represents not only an indigenous way of life but also the diversity of tradition. She keeps the stories of her elders in mind while hoping to expand their world and mythology — and not ‘protect’ it for the sake of genetic continuity. Be proud, but be inclusive. There’s a lesson in there for countries and cultures that wage war against “minorities”. When the kid behind me stood up for the Indian national anthem at the beginning of the movie, he asked his dad why it didn’t end with “Bharat Mata Ki Jai!” — a chant so common in Mumbai cinema halls that young minds assume it’s part of the anthem. Moana 2 is a sweet lesson in that sense, especially in today’s bifurcated democracies. Here’s a brown-skinned teenager who has been chosen by the ocean to find others like and unlike her — an antidote to this planet’s 30 percent of land life.

But the formless wonder of Moana 2 is often its weakness. The visual language is almost too young, drowned by its own witless and wavy joys. There’s so much going on — the storytelling is so freestyle and loud — that it’s hard to subscribe to it beyond theory. At times, it’s just a soppy gurgle of action. Ironically, some of its art is infected by the commercialism of a movie franchise — including a post-credits scene. You can almost tell that Moana is back because she’s popular, and not because she might mean something to an entire generation of children. She can’t afford to sit around and wait in the age of record-breaking sequels. Auli’i Cravalho’s voice does well to justify its identity as a musical, but it’s this very “innocence” of the film that starts to feel privatised. Every now and then, there might be an old-school moment of magic — the sort that was once found in hand-drawn stories. Maui’s tears for Moana towards the end are an example. But the film isn’t enough to exist on its own. The branded escapism of it all is hard to escape.

It’s a pity because I found myself rooting for the crayon-era imagination. It reminded me of the random stories I used to scribble on a piece of paper in school, where aeroplanes would jump out of the sea and fly on mechanical crocodiles, or where dogs named Woof would save astronauts from outer space by barking loudly enough for a planet to shift orbit and catch the astronauts. It’s a unique and transient stage of thinking. And it’s one that Moana 2 momentarily harnesses — there are no rules because there are no divides. But then a kid asks why the national anthem is incomplete, and Moana duly listens.