Ashley Garris

Moana 2 felt like the dollar store version of Moana 1. The movie was obviously solidly setting up a 3rd movie that they really want to get to, but that doesn’t mean this connector movie should have been cheapened with little to no substance. The biggest mistake I feel they made was the direction Disney went with the music. Throughout the movie I kept turning to my husband saying, “wow, they spent NO time on these songs”! Little did I know, Disney had made a blatant choice regarding the music score. It was terrible. A quick google search to find out what in the world happened to the music revealed that Moana 2 features two female artists Barlow & Bear, comprising the first ever (youngest and) all female song writing team for Disney. One of the duo posed the question in a USA Today interview, "Why don't we have more girls telling girls' stories? Who knows a girl's brain better than a girl?” Well, to that I say: Girls, you let us down. There are no awards for simply being a girl- the work produced still has to be impressive. One song was decent, and as for the rest, if Disney had even just went the direction of recycling the same songs from the first movie, it would have been better, in my opinion, than the music from the creative minds of Barlow &Bear. I sincerely hope Disney goes a new direction when they crank out the 3rd installment of the Moana Franchise, and spend the next few years placing intense focus on redeeming the music. No doubt, the music will blow up on Pandora- little kids will listen to anything- but the adults want to be impressed as well. Moana is a tough act to follow theatrically and musically, but let’s try harder.