Bringing it: More of the same and a bit more in ‘Moana 2’.
MOANA 2 ***1/2 (100 minutes) PG
Poor Moana. Having confronted Angry Giant Lava Man and transformed him into Placid Giant Green Goddess at the end of Moana, you’d have thought the fates would have left our heroine alone to preside over her verdant island home in perfect peace and harmony.
Yet as we all know, there can be no peace for any hero of a hit film when the studio abacus determines there’s a dollar to be had in putting them through the ringer once more.
Cynical as that might sound, this sequel to the smash 2016 animated musical continues the adventures of the feisty, sprightly Polynesian island girl with admirable aplomb, replete with the music, magic, myth-making and action that made Moana such an adored family fave.
This spin around we find Moana as the benevolent leader of her ever-smiling, ever-singing island community, now a more mature figure eager to mentor children and preserve tradition.
Only now Moana learns of how her people were forcibly separated from other peoples by the curse of a horrid people-splitting entity who cared not for the values of togetherness and communal singing.
So, off she sails with select members of her tribe to break the curse and bring the peoples of the magnificently rendered ocean together again, even though the benefits of such a reunion are left to benevolent supposition and are never made clear.
Yet fools be those who seek to trip the film up on such trifling story points.
Abandon all cynicism, the film implicitly declares in its opening moments as it runs through a series of references to the first film to assure viewers – many of whom are now adults having seen Moana as children – that they are being served a sequel that will honour their familiarity from repeat screenings while giving them enough points of difference to make the price of admission worthwhile.
On that score, Moana 2 does its duty very well and with great artistic industry.
The animation is arguably more beautiful than the first, both in the large-scale action sequences and the realistic movements of face and body. The design is lush and inventive, though it’s high time to point out how the water tentacle in James Cameron’s The Abyss (1989) appears to have inspired those that emerge from Moana’s helpful ocean.
The story-propelling songs are bright and catchy, the visual humour on par with the first and, perhaps most importantly, the Moana mythology is again treated as real, thus ensuring that pervasive magical theme that made the first film so…well…magical.
Having proved herself a strong-willed individual brave enough to defy her father’s commands and sail beyond the reef to complete her quest, here the chief theme driving Moana’s mission is unity – a very universal and welcome value, especially in these times of division and hysteria over differing opinions.
Notably, veteran directors Ron Clements and John Musker – responsible for such classics as The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, The Princess and the Frog, Hercules and, yes, Treasure Planet – have not returned to guide this one through. Nor has lyricist Lin-Manuel Miranda.
So, it’s some tribute to the first-timing trio of directors David Derrick Jr., Dana Ledoux Miller and Jason Hand that they’ve done such a swell job emulating what came before. The film can’t recapture the novelty of the first – an impossible task – but it’s certainly not a case of diminishing returns, the syndrome that typically applies to most sequels.
And though the film’s running time is officially listed at 100 minutes, the actual feature clocks in at about 88 minutes before the credits roll.
Of course, should you nip out at that point, you’ll miss the teaser for Moana 3 as a villain reminds us of some unfinished business.
Another film would also see Moana mature even further into womanhood, raising the hopes that something will enter her life that has thus far been absent – romance.
Yet can such an independent and defiant spirit expose herself to the vulnerability that comes with intimacy?
Hmmm.
HERETIC *** (111 minutes) MA
The ever-loveable Hugh Grant makes a meal out of repurposing his boyish charm to malevolent ends in Heretic, a slick, slow-burn terror tale, set mostly in one ultra-creepy location.
When sweet Sisters Barnes and Paxton (Sophie Thatcher; Chloe East) turn up with their push bikes at the large, semi-secluded house of Grant’s cheery Mr Reed they’re warmly invited in out of the rain to talk about Mormon beliefs over blueberry pie and beverages.
Slowly but surely the conversation begins to veer off in an odd direction as it dawns on our girls that the congenial Mr Reed has a little more on his mind than the Church of Latter-day Saints God and being a good host.
Written and directed by Scott Beck & Bryan Woods (they made the underrated sci-fi actioner 65 and wrote A Quiet Place) the tension and sense of fear builds incrementally, geared to Grant’s captivating, increasingly menacing performance.