Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Film myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.“You’ve paid your hard-earned money for a ticket, and you’ve gone into a musical, and you’re into it. Sing!” declared Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson while doing press for Moana 2. Anyone who saw the first film will know that it was near impossible not to, thanks to Lin-Manuel Miranda’s knack for highly infectious show tunes. (Eight years later, “You’re Welcome” is still lodged firmly in this critic’s head.) But without Manuel-Miranda at the helm, this follow-up lacks buoyancy. Over a tight, well-plotted 100 minutes, Moana (Auliʻi Cravalho) and Maui (Johnson) attempt to recover a disappeared island. The story is a clear colonial critique: an evil god has divided Polynesia’s indigenous people in a bid to become more powerful. Moana’s job is to restore Motufetu and reunite the tribes. It’s worth remembering that the sparky protagonist is “still not a princess”, as she puts it, but instead a navigator who maps the seas. She seeks adventure and shapes the future of her people. Encouraging little girls to live stories rather than learn them, as Moana tells one of her deckhands, the character is a welcome corrective to passive Disney princesses past who waited to be rescued from boredom. Here the stakes are raised by the addition of her gurgling “little sis”, a poignant reason for our heroine to return home. As the ghost of Moana’s grandmother reminds her, last time she wasn’t old enough to understand what she had to lose.The film’s world-building is glorious, the ocean bathed in romantic pink light and its deep-sea creatures decorated in bioluminescent patterns. Making a joyous return are the Kakamora, a misunderstood army of coconut-shell pirates who pelt Moana and co with fuzzy arrows that turn their limbs to jelly. Also cheering is their pet, an arresting lime-green slime blob with a weeping bulbous nose.A pity then about the songs. A go-get-’em anthem sung by the smug Maui, backed by a chorus of plankton, should be entertaining. But Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear’s “Can I Get a Chee Hoo?” strains to inspire. At least there’s Matangi (Awhimai Fraser), a slinky goddess written off as a “crazy bat lady” and banished to the bottom of the sea. Her groovy, disco-inspired female empowerment number “Get Lost” has more than a whiff of “I Will Survive” — and is the closest the film gets to a banger. ★★★☆☆In UK cinemas from November 29 and in US cinemas now
