I wasn't wild about the first movie to begin with, and I think a lot of what bugs me about this one is just all of that movie's issues being dialed up to the next level. The biggest one being this tone issue that's been plaguing Disney ever since they started viewing Shrek as competition, where their "storybook" movies (as opposed to movies like Bolt or Wreck-It Ralph that feel more Pixar-y) are trying too hard to prove that they're hip and modern and ironic and don't take themselves too seriously like those stuffy old movies your parents grew up with. This was...tolerable in Tangled with its traditional European fairy-tale setting we've already seen played straight a zillion times, but it really hurts attempts to present mythologies that most audience members are going to have zero familiarity with. I have no idea how much of what I'm looking at is actually inspired by Pacific Islander legend, how much is a sincere attempt to be creative, and how much is just wacky for wackiness' sake.
All of the new characters felt one-note at best, which again was an issue I kinda had with the original, but now there are more of them. The first movie was pretty much just Moana and Maui for two-thirds of the run time; I don't count Boat Snack as a character. I say "at best" because Bat Lady is more like zero-note. What even is she? Why even is she? In a movie where everything and everyone feels so insubstantial, this felt especially egregious. But I guess unlike the other failed TV pilots they awkwardly reworked into direct-to-video films to recoup the budget, this one is being turned into a series of sorts, just a series of movies now, so maybe we'll see more of her down the line and finally learn what her presence was setting up.
The songs were... fine, I guess. When Wish came out, I heard people calling its songs cheap Lin-Manuel Miranda knockoffs. Which retroactively feels disrespectful to the songwriters for this movie, who were actually ripping off Miranda and managing to only achieve Disney-direct-to-video-sequel mediocrity instead of making me want to shoot the TV and then myself. (Although that describes pretty much every aspect of Wish, so at least it was consistent.)
Also this is a really petty gripe, but the smart friend's New Zealand accent kept distracting me. I get that Disney has this mandate now to only cast voice actors belonging to the exact same ethnicities as the characters they play, and that the vast majority of English-speaking Pacific Natives in the world are New Zealand Maoris, but it's just weird to have exactly one person from this remote, isolated island have a completely different accent from the rest of them.
All of the new characters felt one-note at best, which again was an issue I kinda had with the original, but now there are more of them. The first movie was pretty much just Moana and Maui for two-thirds of the run time; I don't count Boat Snack as a character. I say "at best" because Bat Lady is more like zero-note. What even is she? Why even is she? In a movie where everything and everyone feels so insubstantial, this felt especially egregious. But I guess unlike the other failed TV pilots they awkwardly reworked into direct-to-video films to recoup the budget, this one is being turned into a series of sorts, just a series of movies now, so maybe we'll see more of her down the line and finally learn what her presence was setting up.
The songs were... fine, I guess. When Wish came out, I heard people calling its songs cheap Lin-Manuel Miranda knockoffs. Which retroactively feels disrespectful to the songwriters for this movie, who were actually ripping off Miranda and managing to only achieve Disney-direct-to-video-sequel mediocrity instead of making me want to shoot the TV and then myself. (Although that describes pretty much every aspect of Wish, so at least it was consistent.)
Also this is a really petty gripe, but the smart friend's New Zealand accent kept distracting me. I get that Disney has this mandate now to only cast voice actors belonging to the exact same ethnicities as the characters they play, and that the vast majority of English-speaking Pacific Natives in the world are New Zealand Maoris, but it's just weird to have exactly one person from this remote, isolated island have a completely different accent from the rest of them.