Moana 2 reunites Moana and Maui for a new great journey with a group of unlikely navigators. After receiving an unexpected call from her ancestors, Moana must travel to the distant seas of Oceania, in dangerous and forgotten waters, for an adventure unlike anything she has ever experienced.

“The ocean is not what separates us, but what unites us” could be the plot, in extreme synthesis, as a slogan, of this sequel to the successful Moana which, in much of the rest of the world, is called Moana. Born initially as a series project for the Disney+ platform and quickly changed by the parent company into a film for the big screen, which is fortunately returning, even in animation, to be the main and first moment of encounter with the general public after the intoxication of streaming, Oceania 2 develops with great conviction the premises of the first chapter with a screenplay written by six hands, by Jared Bush (the only one of the three who also wrote the first), Dana Ledoux Miller and Bek Smith, which imagines a further and perilous journey of the protagonist who thus concludes her coming-of-age, perhaps and despite the sequence to watch in the closing credits. Vaiana’s mission is obviously bigger than her and consists in creating a connection between the peoples of the Pacific Islands. Having now become a leader in her village and having found her place in the world – a position underlined by the animation of the character who now walks with her feet firmly planted on the ground and no longer on tiptoe – she is somehow forced to venture out to understand if there are other human forms besides those of her own island. A marine projection that pairs with that of the stars in which we humans are searching for new forms of life. This is the whole paradox, not only of our current era, with the human being reaching out towards the unknown, knowledge and discovery of the new – in short, the future! – but always frustrated by the innate feelings of conservation and fear of the other.

Since this is a title for such a ‘wide’ Disney audience, here Vaiana’s encounter with the unknown ‘aliens’ of the other islands is seen from the perspective of friendship, or rather brotherhood, while the attempt to keep the people from getting closer is entrusted to a capricious and authoritarian god, Nalo, who in ancient times did not like this special bond between humans, preferring therefore to sink to the bottom of the ocean the island that Vaiana will have to find and that connects all the others through phantom channels.
An almost impossible mission for the few means at his disposal but which leads the audience, certainly the younger ones, to empathize and share a journey full of obstacles but mitigated by the characterization of the characters who accompany him on his large sailing raft, with the brilliant inventor Loto who will be decisive, with the delightful and funny non-speaking friends – the naive rooster Heihei and the pig Pua – and with the farmer Kele, a slightly grumpy old man called to grow food for survival. Less interesting is the character of Moni, an imposing boy useful in times of need but almost non-existent in terms of psychology. They will be joined by the protagonist of the previous Oceania, the friend and demigod Maui, full of tattoos (also animated) and capable of changing shape. To make Oceania 2 even more fun, we find the hilarious Kakamora warriors who have been given even more space thanks to one of them, Kotu, precise in carrying out his tasks as if he were a ninja inside the coconut that he is.

On land, Vaiana’s parents remain and the storytelling focuses a lot on the introduction of the character of Simea, the younger sister on which the designers have really given their all in making her an astonishing concentration of childish wonder with very few details on a chubby, round and as always smooth face to make the animation less laborious. The magical and fantastic part of Vaiana’s world is brought to life by the apparitions of the spirit of Grandma Tala who watches over her, of Tautai Vasa, an ancient ancestor who confirms that beyond the coral reef there are other peoples, and of Matangi, a mysterious figure, surrounded by flying foxes, who questions everything Vaiana thinks she knows about herself. She is granted the performance of the beautiful Perditi, one of the five new songs of Oceania 2.

Perhaps the musical part is less successful than that of the first chapter while instead the animation is a further visual triumph with its incredible fusion, often very sudden and therefore more difficult to manage visually, between the different four elements that characterize the collective imagination of that civilization (and not only), water-earth-fire-air. An animation, under the direction of the newcomers David G. Derrick Jr., Jason Hand and Dana Ledoux Miller (originally from Samoa), that knows how to make, at the same time and miraculously, sculptural and fluid the Ocean which, let’s not forget, is the true protagonist of Oceania. A wonderful sentient living being that breathes and responds to the solicitations of humans.