A Letter to Lin-Manuel Miranda, a Moana 2 Review

Dear Lin-Manuel,

How are you? I hope you’re doing well. I recently watched Moana 2, and I must say that I’m quite surprised that I don’t remember any of the songs. I thought maybe there must’ve been some kind of mistake. Surely, you wouldn’t have written the songs for a full-length feature film and not have a single one that is memorable enough to hum. I mean, when my family and I watched Moana, we were singing all the songs (we butchered the lyrics, of course; it was our first viewing, after all) in the car. We couldn’t get the songs out of our heads, and we just had to see it again.

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So, after watching Moana 2, I realized there was something terribly wrong. I had to check the credits just to be sure, and I was surprised to find that you didn’t write any of the songs! Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear, a professional songwriting duo called Barlow & Bear, wrote the songs this time around. I fired up my Spotify and gave the songs another listen because maybe I just hadn’t cleaned my ears, or maybe I was sick when I watched Moana 2. Nope. The songs didn’t stir anything inside me, nor did I have any desire to listen to them again.

What happened? Are you okay? I hope you’re okay. I’m sure you had a good reason for not writing the songs for Moana 2. Maybe you got too busy writing the songs for Mufasa, which I’ll be seeing soon. I wasn’t very excited about a Lion King prequel, but knowing you’ll be writing the songs has got me a little fired up. I mean, we didn’t really need a sequel for Moana, but here we are.

In case you’ve been too busy to see the film, it’s a nice little tale about Moana going on a quest to find the other island people. It’s cute, but she has these supporting characters who are completely uninteresting, even if they check the boxes for representation. I mean, we actually get a geriatric side character who goes on an adventure! Kiwi actress Awhimai Fraser voices this awesome bat demigoddess — I mean, how cool is that? A bat-themed female antagonist! She gets a solo song, "Get Lost," which I listened to again just now and promptly forgot. It’s like magic! I can’t remember any of the songs, no matter how hard I try. It really made me miss Jemaine Clement’s "Shiny."

Matangi voiced by Awhimai Fraser

Maybe Disney should’ve released Moana 2 in Disney+ like they’d originally planned. Maybe then it wouldn’t have been so bad that you didn’t write any of the songs. But seeing it on the big screen meant big expectations. After all, it comes hot on the heels of the spectacular Wicked (which I’ve seen twice in theaters now, by the way), and my family and I have been singing everything from "What is this Feeling?" to "Popular" to "Defying Gravity." A theatrical release means taking screening time away from Wicked, which might be an actual crime (I’ll have to look it up). If it was released on Disney+, we could always rewatch Moana again right after and feel the same magic we did the first time we saw it in theaters in 2016 and we wouldn’t feel so cheated.

All this to say that we miss you. Moana 2 missed you. Moana fans all over the world missed you. It made me realize that as awesome as the story of Moana is, and as amusing as The Rock was as Maui, it was really you that made Moana truly magical. So, thank you. Thank you for Moana, and no thanks for not writing the songs for Moana 2. In another universe (since Disney seems to be fond of the whole multiverse thing), you wrote the songs for Moana 2, and it would’ve been great. Maybe we’d have gotten our "Into the Unknown," just like Frozen 2. Instead, we got one of the most forgettable movies of the year. But hey, it’s a lot better than Wish.

Sincerely,

Zach

A Moana Fan Who’s Seen Moana More Times Than a 50-year old Man Should Have