It’s not the first time Disney has been criticized for its rushed writing, and Moana 2 still suffers from this problem.

As the year 2024 draws to a close, Disney is playing its last big cards to try and dominate the Christmas box-office, which has no shortage of competition this year with Wicked or Gladiator II. While the first Moana didn’t reach Disney’s commercial heights when it was released in 2016, it was widely remembered, unlike some of its counterparts. Returning for a second installment under the direction of David G. Derrick Jr, Jason Hand, Dana Ledoux Miller, it’s rather disconcerting to see how little attention Disney gives to its princess of the seas.

In her quest to find the island of her ancestors, Moana (Auliʻi Cravalho) is accompanied by members of her village and Maui (Dwayne Johnson) to face the various trials along the way. A tortuous path that struggles to reach its conclusion. Beyond its fairly generic secondary characters, Moana 2 suffers more from its writing. It seems to constantly lose itself between hellish exposition and a series of jokes that struggle to find their audience. In a way, Moana 2 points to a deeper problem with certain productions. Ever since the huge success of Deadpool (and the MCU more broadly) and its mix of adventure sprinkled with humor, Disney and studios like Netflix have been endorsing scripts that rely heavily on this mix. Every situation lends itself to laughter, no matter what. The problem is that, by turning everything into humor or cynicism, these films lose all sincerity, towards themselves and their audience. How are we supposed to react when we go from a long gag-filled sequence between Maui, the crew and Moana to a dramatic sequence appealing to our feelings?

Inevitably, when the film fails to take a step back and loses its balance, other elements fall by the wayside, not least the pace. Between its musical sequences, its long bursts of humor and its short dramatic scenes, Moana 2 deals with a jagged tempo.

Of course, Disney’s production is once again a visual feat, with magnificent landscapes embellished by broad color palettes. This is a given for Disney productions, but it’s still important to point it out for the many, many animators who worked on it. And this is perhaps the most disappointing aspect. Disney productions have an established aesthetic, perhaps dated, but largely functional to tell all possible stories, as long as the writing keeps pace. Because without a story worth telling and exploring, it’s not worth spending hundreds of millions of dollars on such animation. You’d think that the script would be the first thing to look out for before launching a project like this, but the sheer number of dialogues going round in circles and simply explaining what’s already been shown on screen proves otherwise.

Because in the end, Moana 2 is a magnificent animated spectacle marred by narration and dialogue that oscillate between long and tedious. And the contrast between the attention paid to the animation and the writing couldn’t be more striking.