Dwayne Johnson Continues to Bore in Moana 2, an Unnecessary Follow Up Where His Shtick Isn't Funny Anymore

Moana 2 is a true anomaly: an arbitrary sequel motivated by greed rather than self-expression

When I was a video store clerk at Blockbuster in the 1990s, customers regularly complained about sequels. They argued that these follow-ups were arbitrary and unnecessary, opportunistic, and fueled by greed rather than idealism or self-expression.

This felt pointless to me. Complaining about sequels was like complaining about the weather; it served no purpose and changed nothing. Of COURSE, sequels were arbitrary, unnecessary, opportunistic, and fueled by greed rather than idealism or self-expression. That’s the nature of the beast. That’s why quality sequels are an anomaly. Sequels that are better than their predecessor are rarer still.

Moana 2 embodies everything wrong about sequels. It’s not bad, just screamingly unnecessary. With sequels, the question of “Why?” generally has one answer: “Because there is a great deal of money to be made.”

That explains why a project that began life as a streaming series for Disney+ washed up in multiplexes as a one-hundred-and-fifty million-dollar exercise in brand extension.

There’s no point getting angry at the mere idea of sequels, yet I am working myself up into a fine frothing frenzy over Moana 2’s existence. At least I have Regal Unlimited. I would be REALLY annoyed if I had to pay twenty dollars to see this stinker.

I was not grateful for this turkey this Thanksgiving. When I saw they were making Moana 2, I asked that eternally irritating, easily answered query: “Why?” Then I remembered that the answer is almost invariably “for the money.”

In Moana 2, the titular heroine, who came of age in the last movie, finds her true destiny as an adventurous “wave finder,” traveling far from home in a quest to find the legendary sunken island of Motufetu.

The lost land holds the key to uniting all of the islands (fucking woke globalists with their Commie propaganda!), so Moana puts together a crew to find Motufetu, consisting of her fan-favorite pet pig and chicken, cantankerous, geriatric farmer Keke, the crafty Loto, and finally Moni, a super-fan of Maui, the swaggering demigod Dwayne Johnson voiced delightfully the first time around and less entertainingly here.

In the eight years separating Moana from its spectacularly unnecessary sequel, Johnson’s shtick has gone from fresh to stale and from funny to eye-roll-inducingly corny.

I used to be a fan of the former wrestler formerly known as The Rock. Now, however, I cannot smell what he’s cooking.

Johnson’s Maui even has his own endlessly repeated, spoken, and sung catchphrase, “Chee-Hoo,” the movie’s answer to “Hakuna Matata.” If you enjoy the same phrase being spoken over and over and over and over and over again, you’re in for a treat! There’s a lot of repetition in Moana 2. They unnecessarily say the same things over and over again.

Johnson plays Maui as a preening peacock of a super-man, a cocky super-celebrity who gets off on public adulation and whose own incredible gifts. And he can shape-shift.

Imagine how insufferably full of himself Johnson would be if his father were a literal god instead of a successful Canadian wrestler, and you have a sense of how off-puttingly arrogant Maui is here. If that were the case, he’d never shut up about Black Adam being a secret success.

Moana 2 suffers tremendously from Johnson’s overexposure and increasingly desperate and pandering public persona.

Johnson has worn out his welcome. I’m intrigued that his next project will be a biopic of a troubled MMA fighter for Benny Safdie because I’m bored with the typical Dwayne Johnson vehicle.

It seems like only two weeks ago, he was wasting my time and my son’s time with his glowering, charmless turn in Red One. Now he’s back, before any of us even had time to miss him, in a performance every bit as tired but for different reasons.

Johnson lays on the charm and the shtick here, but what was appealing and fresh before feels tired now. Moana 2 does not need to exist, but it really does not need Johnson and Maui to return beyond the popularity of the character and actor.

Moana 2 hits all the expected beats in ways that betray the film’s origins as a streaming series that got a big, unearned promotion to a feature film for reasons that have everything to do with branding, synergy, and merchandising and nothing to do with artistic merit.

The forced follow-up is rambling and episodic. The marketing, for example, plays up the Kakamora, savage, silent coconut-people warriors, but they only factor prominently in the proceedings for about twenty minutes.

They’re introduced as a serious, albeit tiny and adorable threat, before making a babyface turn and working alongside our bland heroes to help them with their quest.

The Kakamora setpiece feels like an episode of Moana: The Series (as it was to be called) wrapped up in 22 minutes, shoe-horned into a feature film. That dynamic repeats itself when Matangi, a terrifying enforcer of Nalo, the unseen villain, similarly decides that, actually, she doesn’t like serving an evil monster and decides to help the protagonists.

By that point, they included Maui because they sold a lot of Maui dolls and action figures, and he tested very well with focus groups.

Moana 2 is all about teamwork, believing in yourself, friendship, destiny, and the eternal battle of good and evil. It’s like every animated film in history, except for Ralph Bakshi’s filmography.

Bakshi remains, sadly, the only true original in the history of animation.

Without the sense of yearning for escape and self-realization that defined her in Moana, the title character comes off as highly skilled in every way, relentlessly chipper and upbeat, but otherwise bland and non-distinct.

She’s a Polynesian Pollyanna: PolyNesianna, as it were. Maui has even less to offer this time around.

It does not help that the songs are uniformly forgettable. Moana 2 did not need Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson to mug his way through another hammy star turn: it needed Lin Manuel-Miranda to lend the proceedings a genuine sense of emotion and yearning instead of the cheap simulacrum offered here.

In even more unpromising news, Moana 2 went into production at the same time as a live-action version of Moana produced by and starring, you guessed it, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

If there’s anything more exhausting than Dwayne Johnson vehicles where he plays a big, cocky, oblivious beefcake, it’s live-action versions of animated films.

Before Moana 2, my son and I were afflicted with trailers for a live-action Snow White, the live-action Lion King prequel Mufasa: The Lion King, and a live-action How to Train Your Dragon.

None of these movies look remotely promising.

At the risk of being controversial, original, and incendiary, it’s almost as if they ran out of ideas and now are just recycling the same old shit over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

We did not need mo’ Moana. We similarly don’t need this story to be told all over again in live-action form.

Two stars out of Five