MOANA 2

Name: MOANA 2
Item: MOANA 2
Author: Review

"Reuniting a People"

Content: -1 Caution advised for older children, including teenagers, and sensitive adults.

Entertainment Quality:

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

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What You Need To Know:

MOANA 2 opens with Moana returning home with an artifact, a cracked pot with the image of an island under a constellation of stars with people surrounding it. During a ceremony celebrating Moana, she gets a vision where she’s visited by one of her community’s ancestral heroes, the first wayfarer. He says the island was a meeting place for all the people of the ocean. Nalo, the god of storms, got jealous of the people. He cursed the island and destroyed the ocean currents directing the people there. Moana must find the island. She hopes her friend, the demigod Maui, can remove the curse and help restore the connection among the Polynesian people.

MOANA 2 is an animated comical fantasy with funny, thrilling and touching moments. There are some scary looking creatures and situations, but they aren’t super intense. MOANA 2 has a strong morally uplifting, conservative premise of bringing disparate people together into one kingdom, a version of E Pluribus Unum, Out of Many One. However, this is mixed with some polytheistic content and scenes where the heroine interacts with her people’s ancestors.

Content:

(Pa, BBB, PP, FRFR, O, V, N, M):

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:

Light mixed worldview with a strong moral premise about restoring a kingdom and bringing disparate communities in that kingdom together, with a strong positive sense of E Pluribus Unum, or Out of Many One, mixed with some polytheism where a heroic demigod who was once a human being helps the heroine and her friends and people fight an evil god who’s placed a curse on the kingdom and has set up a great obstacle for the heroes, people enter a spiritual realm, and dead ancestors are a part of the kingdom or broader community, but it’s more like a cloud of witnesses who’ve died and the ancestors are not worshipped but respected (heroine talks to her grandmother who’s passed away twice, heroine has a vision of a heroic ancestor who she’s emulating, and the ancestors surround the heroine and her friends in a climactic scene);

Foul Language:

No foul language;

Violence:

Cartoon action violence and some slapstick comedy includes heroine falls off a small cliff while trying to save her pet pig when her goofy pet chicken suddenly jumps on them, demigod is chased by a bunch of flying foxes seem like bats and is then shown tied up and hanging from a rope, heroes have to sail away from a group of small fish dragons, sharks sometimes jump out of the sea, goofy chicken falls into the ocean several times, but the ocean is alive and puts him back on the boat, there are some shark encounters, heroes are enveloped by a large scary clam, but the clam doesn’t really attack them, and there’s an extended action sequence where the heroes battle a huge storm system with lightning and ocean cyclones protecting the location of an island they’re searching to find;

Sex:

No sex;

Nudity:

Upper male nudity, comical rear male nudity in one scene, and females wear Polynesia clothes that sometimes reveal midriffs;

Alcohol Use:

No alcohol use;

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:

No smoking or drugs, but the heroes encounter a tribe of strange pygmies with arrows that put people to sleep (they use secretions from a goofy-looking giant slug); and,

Miscellaneous Immorality:

A character is held prisoner.

More Detail:

In MOANA 2, a vision leads Moana on a long voyage to find a lost Polynesian island that holds the key to bringing all the people of the ocean together to ensure a bright future. MOANA 2 is an animated comical fantasy with funny, thrilling and touching moments, but its morally uplifting, conservative premise of bringing disparate people together into one kingdom is mixed with some polytheistic elements and segments where the heroine interacts with her people’s ancestors, including an admired cultural hero from the past and her grandmother.

The movie opens with Moana returning home with an artifact, a cracked pot with the image of an island under a constellation of stars with people surrounding it. Her parents and their island community welcome her home and honor her with a ceremony acknowledging her status as the island’s new wayfarer.

During the ceremony, however, Moana gets a vision where she’s visited by one of her community’s ancestral heroes, the first wayfarer. He tells her about an island that used to be a meeting place for all the people of the ocean. Nalo, the god of storms, got jealous of the people. He cursed the island and destroyed all the navigational currents that directed the people there.

Moana must find the island and get her friend, the demigod Maui, to remove the curse and restore the connection between the people of the sea. If they fail, Moana’s island community will die out.

This time, however, Moana takes along two friends from her village, Moni, who knows all the stories of her people, and Loto, a tomboy with engineering skills. She also takes Kele, a grumpy old farmer who can help them find food.

Moana hopes their voyage will attract the attention of her friend Maui, a powerful demigod. However, Maui is being held prisoner by a mysterious woman commanding a small army of flying foxes that fly like bats.

MOANA 2 is an animated comical fantasy with funny, thrilling and touching moments. For example, Moana’s demigod friend, Maui, greets her pet pig and chicken in one scene by saying, “Hello, bacon and eggs!” The movie is also filled with thrilling action and adventure, including a very exciting finale. There are some scary-looking creatures and scary situations, but they are not extremely intense.

MOANA 2 has a morally uplifting, conservative premise driving the story. Moana is trying to bring a disparate group of Polynesian people back together, so they can have a brighter future. This premise reminds MOVIEGUIDE® of the Founding Fathers’ vision for the United States, E Pluribus Unum, or “Out of Many One.”

That said, MOANA 2 has some polytheistic elements and segments. For example, Moana is trying to overcome a curse from an evil storm god. She’s also helped by a Hercules-type demigod who once was a human being. Moana also has interactions with her people’s ancestors, including her grandmother and a heroic sea explorer from the past. In one scene these two ancestors and a group of other ancestors surround Moana and her friends. Although Moana talks to these ancestors, they are more like a “cloud of witnesses,” as the writer of Book of Hebrews describes people of faith who came before Jesus Christ’s first advent. Moana doesn’t worship the ancestors. They inspire her.

So, all in all, MOVIEGUIDE® advises caution for older children.