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Disney Reviews with the Unshaved Mouse #63: Moana 2

“You sons of bitches, we were so close. We were so close!“

After a string of godawful mediocrities and outright turds the likes of which the canon hadn’t seen since the earliest years of the millennium, the opportunity was ripe for Disney to start filling the executive-grade wicker basket with heads and put some people in charge with fresh ideas and real talent.

But noooooooooooo.

Disney pulled the old “take the first three episodes of a scrapped TV show, wash it off and serve it up as a new movie” trick they used to pull in the direct-to-video sequel era and what did you do? Did you laugh? Did you scorn such obvious desperate chicanery? Did you hell!

ONE BILLION AT THE BOX OFFICE. FOR THIS.

We could have had another Renaissance with a bit of luck. Instead, I’m going to be reviewing Frozen 13 when I’m in my nineties. Because obviously the reason Strange World, Raya and Wish flopped was not that they were poop on a bun, it’s because they were original ideas (kinda). I mean, it’s hard to make the argument that quality was the issue when all it took them to make a billion dollars was to put the number “2” after the title of one of their most popular films.

The future is bleak, and I’m not just saying that because the proliferation of AI slop online means that every time I search for images to use I run the risk of seeing something that will make me want to put my head in a mouse-trap.

If you want to imagine the future, picture pregnant cross-eyed Moana stamping on a human face, forever.

Okay, okay. Let me dial back the vitriol a little.

Is it the worst Disney canon movie?

No.

Are there elements of it at least that I like?

Yes, actually.

Is it kind of impressive that they were able to wrangle three episodes of a TV show into something that looks like a conventional movie structure if you squint in a few short months with panicked execs screaming in their ears like wounded buffalo?

Yeah, honestly.

Does that change the fact that its success is nonetheless a portent of doom worthy of wailing and gnashing of teeth?

No. But there it is.

Anyway, remember the end of Moana where Moana was leading a massive flotilla of her people to discover new islands after centuries of isolation because of Te Ka’s curse?

Well forget all about it. Never happened. Or if it did, they reached those islands and decided to head straight back.

Or maybe everyone except Moana was eaten by ravenous dodos. Anyway, the voyage failed. It achieved nothing.

All of the islanders are back on Motonui and Moana is now exploring other islands with Pua and Hei Hei. Pua, you may remember, is Moana’s pet pig, who was cut from her voyage in the first movie because the creators decided he added nothing. They were correct, and we were all wrong to doubt them.

I’d call him Happy Meal Bait, but since this was planned as a TV show there were no Happy Meal toys for Moana 2. The pig is just there.
He’s just THERE.

So I do have to give credit where credit is due. If I hadn’t known that this animation was originally intended for a TV show I would not have been able to guess. It’s not quite as good as Moana but definitely of a canon-worthy standard. Mostly. It’s a little inconsistent. Lighting and water effects are fantastic, human skin sometimes looks a little plasticky, hair is a mixed bag. But overall, yeah. Movie looks really good. If looks were everything, this film would be doing just fine. On an abandoned island Moana finds an old clay pot depicting human figures and excitedly takes it back home to Motonui. We meet some returning characters like Moana’s parents, and some new characters; grumpy old farmer Kele, storyteller and Maui fanficcer (yes, the movie actually calls his work “fanfic”) Moni and Bronze Age quirky STEM girl Loto. Of these three Kele is by far my favourite, simply because in a franchise so youth-obsessed as the modern Disney canon, having an old grumpy character feels like a welcome call-back to Disney’s earlier years and also because I just vibe with this guy.

HE’S LITERALLY ME!!!

We also meet Moana’s new little sister Simea who I do not care for at all.

Don’t look at me like that.

Simea exists in what I have just right now decided to call the “Uncutie Valley”, something so obviously and deliberately designed to be cute that your brain rebels. Sorry Disney, you overplayed your hand. Maybe it was the buck teeth. Maybe it was the eyes or the precocious manner but I just find this character insufferable. Bah, and also humbug. Simea sucks.

“Good for you, Mouse. You show that small child who’s boss.”

Meanwhile the action shifts to Maui, played by Dwayne Johnson, presumably inbetween shoots for the live action Moana and pre-production for Moana 3, because we’re all trapped in this crazy Moanaverse together and there’s no escape. Maui visits a strange shadowy realm where he is taunted by a mysterious figure made of bats and quickly defeated.

“But…my contract! I have a “no-lose” clause!”

Back on Motonui, Chief Tui announces that Moana has been granted the title of “Tautai” or wayfinder. At the ceremony, Moana’s ancestor Tautai Vasa appears to her in a vision.

“Moana. You must go to the Dagobah system.”

Vasa tells her that she must reconnect the people of the ocean by finding Motofetu which was sunk by the god Nalo which separated all the tribes whoah whoah whoah whoah.

Back the fuck up. The tribes were already separated by a god. Remember? This bitch?

And sure, Vasa gives this a cursory acknowledgement by saying “restoring the heart of Ta Fiti was just the beginning” but do you mean to tell me that two separate gods put two separate curses separating the peoples of the ocean? One curse could be considered misfortune. Two smacks of carelessness. And oh my God, Motofetu was “connecting” the tribes? How? How?!

IT’S A FUCKING ISLAND. NOT BEING CONNECTED TO THINGS IS ITS PRINCIPAL CHARACTERISTIC.

You might say it was a necessary waypoint but come on, these are Polynesians!

They looked at the largest expanse of open ocean known to man and said “Nah, I’d win.”“Wowza, who’s that?!”“Nobody. It’s just a map. They don’t all have souls.”

And it’s so frustrating! The end of Moana had plenty of places to go. Maybe the defeat of Te Ka could have left a power vacuum to be filled by an even worse threat that could menace the new explorers. But instead we’re basically given a complete reset. All the people are on one island, Moana has to go on a quest to defeat a god and open up the ocean. Again. Maybe this time the bugger will stay open, who can say? Oh, by the way, when was Nalo sinking Motofetu supposed to have happened? It has to have been after the flashback we saw in Moana during “We Know the Way” because Vasa was alive then and we know he drowned trying to reach Motofetu. But if Nalo separated the people before Maui stole the heart of Ta Feti, how did anyone even know he’d done that if they were already seperated by Nalo?

Shoddy world-building, I call it.

Anyway, a comet appears in the sky and, like any good video game protagonist, Moana gathers her party and follows the waypoint marker. Seriously, Moana 2 is the second Disney canon movie after Raya that feels like it has a plot better suited to a video game and, not to sound like a grumpy old man but maybe the scripts for these things would be better if Disney hired writers who watched movies or maybe, I dunno, had read a book at some point.* She convinces Kele, Moni and Loto to go with her along with Hei Hei, Pau and of course Ocean. So, add “character bloat” to the list of similarities with Raya.

Oh, but there is something that Moana 2 has that Raya doesn’t! Songs!

Alright, fair’s fair. Last time this category was less “rock bottom” than “down in the kingdom of the molemen” so let’s be clear: yes, the songs in Moana 2 are better than the ones in Wish. Unfortunately, they are less memorable. This is the Thanks I Get is a lyrical catastrophe but I can at least hum the tune. All of the songs in Moana 2, with the very, very, very slight exception of Get Lost washed over me without leaving so much as a note in my memory. But, they’re not unpleasant. So, yeah, trending positive at least?

Sidenote, this thing has absolutely consumed me and I started imagining if Disney just bought it and animated it in the style of Hunchback of Notre Dame and I’m sick I don’t live in that universe.

Our heroes embark on their journey, following the comet until it explodes in the sky and they cross paths with the Kakamora.

It has been eight years since I told you that in Irish, “Kakamora” means “Large Shits”. This remains true.

The little guy up there, by the way, is Kotu, who is my favourite character in the whole film. He’s the Prince of the Kakamora and is an absolutely adorable little badass. You almost forget he’s a little coconut person because he is so freaking cool. I love him. Anyway the Kakamora are trying to get through a massive clam because they’re trying to get home and it’s in their way.

It’s in their way.

In the ocean.

If only there was some way to avoid going through. If only.

When their raft gets caught in the clam’s wake, Moana grabs a rope trailing from the Kakamora ship and uses it to pick up speed, with Loto exclaiming “she’s using centrifigul force to increase our velocity!”

The Kakamora use poisoned darts to incapacitate the crew but when they realise that Moana is trying to reach Motofetu they decide to help her because they were also separated when Nalo sank it. So, for those keeping track at home, they were one of the things Te Ka was using to separate the humans, while Nalo had already separated them.

Because OBVIOUSLY there is no other way past this obstacle, Moana agrees to help the little coconuts, who reverse the effects of their paralysing darts by having a giant slug slither over Moana and her crew, covering their half-naked bodies with green translucent slime.

Kotu joins the crew, and now I’m invested.

They sail into the clam and incapacitate it with the Kakamora’s neurotoxin and the raft gets swallowed and ends up in a strange spirit realm which just so happens to be where Maui is being held prisoner.

The gang are split up and Moana finds herself face to face with Matangi, Nalo’s enforcer.

And, I’m not gonna lie, guys, my interest was piqued.

Cool design, cool concept (Polynesian vampire god, that’s fucking nifty), great voice performance, introduced with the best song in the whole movie. Within ten seconds of her showing up I was thinking “holy shit, we might actually get a great Disney villain for the first time in twelve years“.

And that really depends on your tolerance for twist villains.

And then! Matangi unveils her devious plan!

Giving Moana some very useful advice and setting her, Maui and her crew free so they can continue on their mission to thwart Nalo. Which she does at heroic risk to her own life.

Excuse me, what?

You know, Disney have queer-baited plenty of times before but I think this is the first time I’ve ever been villain-baited. No wonder the villain community was outraged by this movie and released a statement beginning “FOOLS! WE SHALL DESTROY YOU ALL!”

Ah well, all will be forgiven as long as Nalo is actually an interesting villain and not just a Marvel style light in the sky.

Of fucking course.

Okay, let’s wrap this up. Moana realises that Nalo’s curse will be broken if a human being manages to touch Motofetu. She dives into the ocean and is struck by Nalo’s lightning just as she manages to touch the island. She’s killed but Maui is able to summon Vasa’s Spirit and those of all Moana’s ancestor’s and they restore her to life. And the movie ends with with the people of the ocean free to explore again. Again.

***

Kind of impressive given the constraints it was made under. Visually very nice. Musically unobjectionable.

Harbinger of the fucking apocalypse (yes, I know I’ve been saying that a lot, it’s a big apocalypse).

Animation: 17/20

Not at the level of its predecessor, still probably the peak of the CGI canon era animation-wise, but not too shabby at all given its origin.

Leads: 14/20

Ho boy. Okay, Chloe Auliʻi Cravalho is still excellent in the role but the character has no real arc. Also, the character is now feels so 21st century American in her mannerisms and dialogue that it really detracts from the film’s sense of place.

Villain: 00/20

If you don’t show up to the exam, you don’t get the points. Fair?

Supporting Characters: 09/20

Too damn many, but there are some here that I really do like.

Music: 09/20

The songs are boring and utterly unmemorable, but after Wish that’s kind of a relief in and of itself. It’s the Biden administration of soundtracks.

The Stinger (wait what?)

In his secret lair Nalo (oh! thanks for deigning to show up!) threatens Matangi for her part in his defeat and they are interrupted by Tamatoa who thinks that his being here has something to do with Spider-Man and that they should team up.

And the audience went

Are the actual fucking villains going to be post-credits DLC now?

Hey, what’s Nalo doing?

Nalo is sitting on his chair.

Great. Twenty films of THAT to look forward to, can’t wait.

FINAL SCORE: 49%

NEXT UPDATE: 08 May 2025

NEXT TIME: Hey, it’s the live action Peter Pan that everyone forgot about that came out before the live action Peter Pan that everyone forgot about but after the live action Peter Pan that everyone forgot about.

More reviews and interviews plug plug plug

Here’s a lovely starred review from Shelf Awareness for Readers and HERE is a link to the March 2025 issue of Story Monsters including an interview with yours truly.

Do I wish I lived in a world where shameless self promotion wasn’t necessary to sell a book about fish? Yeah. What’s your point?

And it’s out!(plus new podcast episode!)

My first kid’s book with illustrations by the inestimable Dan Santat is now out! Swim to your nearest bookseller and get your copy of Don’t Trust Fish!

And! Join me on Now That’s What I Call Nostalgia! where myself, Spouse of Mouse and Esther talk about Degrassi Junior High, that classic of Canadian television, and where I probably overshare with a story about a misidentified water balloon.

Distrust is Growing…

Hey all, we are less than a week away from the launch of Don’t Trust Fish and already things are hotting up:

Amazon have selected it as one of their best books for ages 3-5 for April

Dubray have made it one of their Favourites for April

Barnes and Noble have selected it as one of their Best kid’s Books of April

And lastly here’s a lovely starred review from Booklist!

Knock Knock is getting an audio book!

Great news! At long last, Knock Knock, Open Wide will be getting an audiobook version set for release on June 17th. It’s being produced by Tantor Media and will be narrated by Irish actress Aoife McMahon!

Lá Fhéile Pádraig! (which is Irish for “New Podcast Episode!”)

Hello boyos and cailíní, new episode of Now That’s What I Call Nostalgia has dropped and, appropriately, it’s a massive retrospective on Irish themed cartoon episodes from the the 90s like Gargoyles, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Johnny Bravo and *shudder* Captain Planet and the Planeteers.

Enjoy our pain, you foreign devils you.

Judgement at Nuremberg (1961)

You have probably never heard of Theodore Kaufman, an obscure American self-published author who wrote in the 1940s. Hell, even if you’d been living in America in the 1940s you almost certainly would never have heard of him. However, if you were a German living in the Third Reich during the war you would absolutely have known who he was, and would have believed him to be one of the most dangerous men alive.

In 1941 Kaufman self-published Germany Must Perish!, a bright little volume about how Germans are pure evil, just bad on the genetic level, and that the only way to ensure the peace of the world was to sterilise the entire nation and let them die out. Now, you might (I really hope you wouldn’t, but you might) argue that race-based genocide is fine if the other guy started it first, but that’s because you forgot about Goebbels.

You forgot about Goebbels, you utter chump.

Goebbels milked Kaufman’s little pamphlet for everything it was worth, using it to turbocharge Germany’s propaganda machine and convince ordinary Germans, even those who hated the regime, that the war was a literal battle for their survival as a people. Goebbels presented Kaufman as FDR’s Svengali, the intellectual driving force behind America’s war against Germany. When, in reality, he was the forties equivalent of the least unhinged political Tiktoker. Germany Must Perish! was such a gift to Goebbels that the American journalist Howard Smith remarked:

“No man has ever done so irresponsible a disservice to the cause his nation is fighting and suffering for than Nathan Kaufman.”

Which is why, even at the risk of friendly fire, it is so important to call out people on your own side of the aisle who are saying evil, crazy shit. Not just because it’s evil and crazy (though that should be enough reason) but because it’s tactically vital.

We can dismiss Kaufmann’s thesis out of hand, just as any racially essentialist argument should be dismissed out of hand, but that still leaves the questions:

Why Germany? Could it have happened anywhere and Germany just drew the short straw? Or was there something particular about Germany that made its local manifestation of fascism so uniquely malevolent? And if so, how much blame do ordinary Germans bear for the actions of the regime?

My, this is a fun one, isn’t it?

It’s not something that can ever be objectively proved. I’ll keep my own answers until the end of the review but they’re just, like everything else on this blog, my own opinion. Today’s movie grapples with those very questions. And it begins within a man arriving in the ruins of Nuremberg, as the ashes of the last war still cool, and a cold wind has begun to blow in from the East…

Judge Dan Haywood (Spencer Tracey) has been summoned to Nuremberg to serve on a military tribunal trying four German judges and prosecutors for their alleged crimes during the Nazi era. These four men are Emil Hahn, Werner Lampe, Friedrich Hofstetter and Ernst Janning (played by Burt Lancaster). Now you might be, as I was, under the impression that this movie is a dramatization of the famous International Military Tribunal held by the US, UK, France and the USSR between 1945 and 1946 where the top surviving Nazi and military leaders were tried. But, it’s actually a fictionalised version of the Judge’s Trial of 1947. This is a major theme of the movie. It’s been two years since the war ended, all of the really big-ticket Nazis (at least those who aren’t dead or in hiding) have been tried, jailed or hanged and now all that’s left is the relatively little fish. And the question hanging over everything is: what’s the point of all this? How far down the food chain are we willing to go in a country where everyone, essentially, could be argued to bear some responsibility? Public opinion in America has largely forgotten that the trials are even still going on and it really would be nice to have the Germans on our side when the USSR starts knocking on the door. So, again, what is the point of all this? Even Haywood himself is proof that enthusiasm for the whole enterprise is starting to wane. Back in America he’s not even a judge anymore, having lost election and as he tells his aide Byers (played by an impossibly young, impossibly charming William Shatner) he wasn’t the first choice for this job or even the tenth. He’s just the one who was willing to schlep all the way to Germany.

One man who isn’t ready to pack it all in is the prosecutor Colonel Tad Lawson, one of the soldiers who liberated Dachau and who is determined to see every last Nazi brought to justice for what he saw. On the opposite side is German lawyer Hans Rolfe who is defending all four of the accused. Rolfe is played by Maximillian Schell, who originated the part when it was televised as a play in 1959. Schell was one of the few actors to be retained from the original cast and you can absolutely see why, and why Schell got the Oscar for this performance.

Rolfe is the most interesting character in the story. A young, idealistic German who is appalled by the atrocities of the Nazis but despises what he sees as the hypocrisy of the Allies presenting the the Germans as uniquely wicked while glossing over their own atrocities, failings and collaboration with Hitler prior to the war. Rolfe idolises Janning, and hopes, no, needs to prove that Janning was a good man doing the best he could in an impossible situation. As Rolf says him himself, it is not simply Janning on trial but all of Germany.

But this desire to exonerate his nation leads Rolfe down an extremely dark path, as his cross-examination of the prosecution’s witnesses leads him to commit the same sins as the Nazi jurists who preceded him. He argues that a man sterilised for his political beliefs was actually sterilised for being mentally deficient (because that’s better?). He does occasionally land a palpable hit, when reading a tract calling for sterilisation of undesirables to ensure genetic health of the population, he notes wryly that it came not from the Third Reich but from the State of Virginia.

He crosses a terrible rubicon when the prosecution calls Irene Hoffman to the stand. Hoffman is wonderfully played by Judy Garland, in her first film following A Star is Born seven years previously, during which time she’d suffered immense, health, emotional and professional difficulties.

Or, as Judy Garland called it, “a Tuesday”.

This role won her a second, and final Oscar nomination and it was well deserved.

As a teenager, Hoffman’s elderly neighbour, a Jew, was falsely accused of having raped her and was tried in Janning’s court. In a desperate attempt to prove that Hoffman was in fact raped and that Janning’s sentence was justified, Rolfe re-traumatises Hoffman, trying to force her to recant her testimony and accuse her neighbour, just as the Nazis did.

Finally, Janning is so disgusted by Rolfe’s actions that he addresses the court, and fully admits his culpability.

Lawson closes his case by showing the court actual, real-world footage of the scale of death and suffering in the death camps. I will not describe them.

As the three judges deliberate, the US military subtly pressures them for leniency as the Soviets have begun to roll down the iron curtain and the top brass want to start focusing on the next war rather than to continue litigating the last one.

But Haywood stands firm. All four defendants are sentenced to life in prison. After the trial, Rolfe visits Haywood and makes a prediction; not one of the defendants sentenced today will serve more than five years. Haywood sombrely agrees that that may be the logical choice, but not the right one.

Before leaving Germany, Haywood visits Janning in prison. Janning tells him that he has his respect but begs him to believe that he never knew what following the Nazis would lead to.

Haywood replies that he should have know the first time he sentenced an innocent man to death.

***

So. What do we think?

You have your own thoughts, I’m sure. Personally…I think the average German’s culpability is fairly low.

They didn’t know? I mean, sure, I don’t think it stretches credulity that a 65 year old hausfrau in Bremen wasn’t getting top level briefings on the inner workings of The Final Solution. I think very few people in the civilian population who knew the full scale of what was going on.

Ah but, they knew enough!

Sure. Enough to do what? Those quick to remind us that this was a regime that did not punish a single person for failing to shoot a jew should also remember that it was also a regime that guillotined a 21 year old woman over a leaflet. It is, perhaps, a touch disingenuous to suggest that resistance carried no risk.

Ah but they elected Hitler, didn’t they? No. He never won a majority of support in a free and fair election. And those that voted for him, well, how could they know how bad he would be? It wasn’t as if he had previously been elected, shown his true colours and then been voted back in with even greater support.

They supported him, though? Sure. After some stunning foreign policy victories and years of relentless, mind-numbing propaganda. Good thing propaganda doesn’t work on us.

But I don’t think it’s true either that Hitler could have happened anywhere. I don’t blame ordinary Germans for Hitler. But I do blame Germany.

Hitler was no great original thinker. Hitler was a sponge. There was nothing new about Hitler, nothing that was not already thick on the ground in the Germany of his youth. Eugenics, German nationalism, Scientific Racism, Misogyny, Anti-Semitism, Anti-Clericalism, the utter abhorrence of the Christian concept of morality, Houston Chamberlain, Nietzsche, Rosenberg, Wagner, deGobineau, he hoovered them up and filtered them through an obsessive resentment that could crush coal into diamond. But there was nothing new there.

He was a man utterly of his time and place.

He was Germany.

He was the country that made him. They always are.

Next Update: Man, if I had two cents for every time a review of a black and white courtroom drama starring Spencer Tracy turned into a long discursive historical essay, I’d have four cents. Not many, but it’s weird it happened twice. Anyway, I’m going to be spending Lent trying to make some progress on my next novel so I’ll meet you back here April 20th 2025

NEXT TIME: So in the sequel does Maui say “when you use a bird to write it’s called “x”ing?”

Choo Choo!

Join us for the latest episode of Now That’s I Call Nostalgia where we talk about Thomas the Tank Engine Labor disputes! Police corruption! Crime! Prejudice! And an all train remake of The Cask of Amontillado!

Fun stuff!

Waterstones GIVEAWAY!

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