2016’s “Moana” is probably my favorite animated Disney movie of the modern era. I have plenty of nice things to say about “Frozen,” “Zootopia,” “Encanto,” and several others, but “Moana,” with its timelessly-relatable main character, sharp physical comedy, and multiple memorable songs, puts it just a coir above the competition. When an evidently-rushed sequel was announced earlier this year, I became nervous. What if the new film was so disappointing that it affected my opinion of the original? Now that I’ve seen the film, I’m happy to report that my enjoyment of the original is not tarnished by this underwhelming sequel.

The film takes place three years after the original, with Moana (Auli’i Cravalho) now her island’s premier wayfinder, or boat navigator. The community is thriving, and she’s gradually finding clues that will hopefully lead her to discover more islands with communities that can be joined. But she receives a vision that if she doesn’t find far-off island Motufetu very soon, everything she holds dear will be lost. She throws together a mission with a ragtag crew that includes overeager builder Loto (Rose Matafeo), grumpy farmer Kele (David Fane), oafish historian Moni (Hualālai Chung), pet pig Pua, and chicken Heihei, and sets off on an adventure with more self-doubt than she’s ever had in her life.

Along the way, she meets up with an old enemy: the tribe of sentient coconuts known as Kakamora. The two sides battle until they discover that they both need somebody to find Motufetu, at which point one of the Kakamora joins the quest as an enforcer. Not long after, the crew find themselves swallowed by a giant clam, which is home base for new villain Matangi (Awhimai Fraser), who has abducted Moana’s former ally, the demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson). It turns out that Matangi needs Moana to find Motufetu as well, though her motivations probably aren’t as pure as the Kakumora just wanting to find their way home. With Maui now officially on the crew, it’s a race to reach Motufetu before unhappy god Nalo (Tofiga Fepulea’i) can stop them with his storm-conjuring powers.

Slowly but surely, the downgrades from the first movie come to light. New songwriters Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear try valiantly to give Moana an anthem as powerful as “How Far I’ll Go,” but “Beyond” falls just a bit short. “Get Lost” from Matangi isn’t quite as memorable a villain song as “Shiny.” And as far as Maui goes, “Can I Get A Chee Hoo?” is a fall off a cliff from “You’re Welcome” that matches Johnson’s own falling star power. His tired, somehow-mugging-for-the-camera-even-in-animation schtick is probably the worst thing about this movie, other than an inexplicable overreliance on gags that involve creatures excreting from various orifices.

The movie still gets a recommendation from me. Cravalho is great as always, the new characters are compelling enough, the jokes hit at an acceptable ratio, and there’s an overall agreeable tone for an animated adventure. There’s nothing here that makes me want to turn against the “Moana” brand, which is good because we’re going to be getting a lot more of it in the future. Supposedly this movie was supposed to be the first few installments of a television miniseries, and harsher critics will say that it should have been stuck on television. I don’t agree with that assessment, I think theaters are lucky to have “Moana 2,” even if it’s a step down from the original. But Moana’s journey is clearly far from over, and however it continues, I hope it doesn’t lose any more magic than it already has.

Grade: B-

“Moana 2” is rated PG for action/peril. Its running time is 100 minutes.

Contact Bob Garver at rrg251@nyu.edu.

As this year’s film festival circuit winds down and awards season commences, we seem to already be receiving 2024’s equivalent of Paul Haggis’ Crash (2004) and Peter Farrelly’s Green Book (2018). It’s a movie that intends to be morally progressive but is too flawed and ignorant to actually make a difference.

When Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez made a splash at Cannes, Telluride and Toronto this past year, many critics and pundits predicted Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofía Gascón and even Selena Gomez might get Oscar nominations. But as the picture hits select theaters and streaming this month, movie fans have been roasting the film.

This is a great cast directed by the same filmmaker of acclaimed dramas like A Prophet (2009), Rust and Bone (2012) and Dheepan (2015). What went wrong?

In present day Mexico City, Rita Mora (Saldaña) is a struggling lawyer who has to take whichever clients she can get, even if it means going against her own beliefs. After she begrudgingly helps a murderer get off the hook, she receives a secret offer from a local cartel leader, Juan De Monte (Gascón), to help find him a surgeon so he can fulfill his desire to transition into a woman and leave behind his kingpin reputation.

After succeeding at his offer, Rita takes her large payment to expand her law career and Juan begins going by ‘Emilia Pérez.’ When the two bump into each other four years later while Rita is living in London, she discovers Emilia wants to reconnect with her kids from her estranged wife, Jessi (Gomez).

Édgar Ramírez appears as Jessi’s lover after Juan/Emilia leaves the family to start a new life. Emilia Pérez is loosely based off Boris Razon’s 2018 novel Écoute as well as an expansion of Audiard’s own 2021 opera also titled Emilia Pérez. While the new foreign film has all the potentialwith the talented actors and flashy visuals, the story and character arcs are just too convoluted to naturally come together.

A big problem is that — besides the dialogue being primarily Spanish, the cast being mostly Hispanic, and Gascón being trans — no one behind the scenes is actually Latino or a part of the LGBTQ community. This is a CIS and French-directed, written and produced feature and it shows.

Obviously artists are allowed to set their work outside of their own home or orientation, but the problem here is that it’s just really obvious the creators don’t have any actual experience or association with either representation here. On top of all this, Emilia Pérez is — like Todd Phillips’ Joker: Folie à Deux — a musical made by people who clearly aren’t trained in that area.

Watching the musical numbers actually makes us wish Emilia Pérez was either a straight melodrama or a full-on opera like Audiard initially intended. The songs are strangely short and end abruptly, which makes the sequences feel amateurish.

Although Gascón and Gomez are fine, the real acting standout holding the whole film together is Saldaña. After spending over a decade in extensive costumes and make-up for Marvel, Avatar and Star Trek, it’s great to see her dramatic range again, as well as her gifted dancing, since she was originally a ballerina before switching to cinema. It’s also a nice rarity to hear her speak fluent Spanish.

It’s too bad the material doesn’t always match the level of the performances. Ultimately, Emilia Pérez is an imperfect effort that means well, but ends up feeling like Chris Columbus’ Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) meets telenovelas.

Walt Disney Co.’s animated sequel “Moana 2” has navigated its way to No. 1 at the box office with a record-breaking domestic Thanksgiving weekend debut, a remarkable feat considering that this big-screen return to Motunui almost didn’t happen.

Led again by actors Auli’i Cravalho and Dwayne Johnson, “Moana 2” scored $221 million domestically for the five-day Thanksgiving weekend, with a worldwide gross of $386.3 million, according to Sunday studio estimates. That easily topped the previous domestic Thanksgiving record-holder, Disney’s 2019 blockbuster “Frozen 2.”

The stellar numbers placed “Moana 2” ahead of Universal Pictures’ heavily marketed musical “Wicked,” which raked in an impressive $117.5 million in its second weekend, bringing its domestic total to $262.4 million so far. Paramount Pictures’ “Gladiator II” came in third place with $44 million for a total of $111.2 million to date.

The sequel to “Moana,” the 2016 animated adventure story, was originally intended as a series for the Disney+ streaming service. But the company changed course, announcing the move in February during its fiscal first quarter earnings call.

“We were impressed with what we saw, and we knew it deserved a theatrical release,” Chief Executive Bob Iger said during the call.

The strategy change signaled Disney’s optimism in the theatrical market and its ability to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, as well as its role in bolstering subscriber growth and retention for Disney+ — a key metric for the company as it continues to build out the financial strength of the streaming service.

“They’ve got to make movies and release them theatrically because that’s their business,” said Joe Rosenberg, director of industry relations at Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts. “This idea that they were going to chase Netflix and win with the strategy they had, I think that proved to be a strategy for all companies that didn’t quite work.”

The original “Moana” was wildly successful, garnering more than $643 million worldwide at the box office. The film’s soundtrack was populated with several hits, including the anthem “How Far I’ll Go,” which has become a staple of family car rides and follows a generations-long tradition of famous Disney songs. (In addition to the animated sequel, a live-action “Moana” film is also in the works.)

Reviews are far more mixed for the sequel, but that‘s not stopping families from rushing out over the holiday. The reported budget for the film was $150 million.

The move to put “Moana 2” in theaters rather than send it straight to streaming is an about-face from the strategy Disney previously employed to build its service.

After Disney+ launched in 2019 at a bargain-basement price, the company put its efforts into producing dozens of shows specifically for the streamer, in an attempt to build subscriber interest and loyalty. During the COVID-19 pandemic under then-Chief Executive Bob Chapek, Disney sent a handful of Pixar movies straight to Disney+, including the acclaimed “Turning Red.”

But that proved expensive, costing Disney billions of dollars of box office revenue left on the table. After returning in 2022 as CEO of the company, Iger announced a multibillion-dollar cost-cutting plan that led to thousands of layoffs with the intention of refocusing Disney on the quality of content, rather than quantity.

Delivering “Moana 2” to theaters is a sign of Disney’s confidence in the project, Rosenberg said. Though the theatrical market is still recovering from the effects of the pandemic, Disney hit gold twice already this year with billion-dollar box office titles “Inside Out 2” and “Deadpool & Wolverine.”

“When you look at films like ‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer’ and others where people really went to the movies and enjoyed the experience, you start to realize, ‘Wait a minute — theatrical is a good business,’” Rosenberg said. “We can make a lot of money on the right films that we release first theatrically, and then streaming becomes that second window after theatrical.”

That means Disney can double-dip — not only will the company squeeze out dollars from the theatrical release but the buzz around “Moana 2” can also fuel interest in seeing it later on Disney+. Company executives have previously said that new theatrical releases also fuel interest in prior installments of a franchise, such as a boost in Disney+ sign-ups to view 2015’s “Inside Out” as well as prior “Deadpool” and “Planet of the Apes” films.

Higher-quality content on the streaming service can increase subscriber growth, reduce churn and justify price hikes, said Laurent Yoon, senior analyst at Bernstein.

Disney increased prices on its streaming service in October, shortly after “Inside Out 2” was available on the platform and about a month before “Deadpool & Wolverine” arrived there.

“At the end of the day, the business model is to maximize revenue on that content investment,” he said.

The triple threat of “Moana 2,” “Wicked” and “Gladiator II” has boosted theater owners after a lackluster fall. Movies grossed a total of $420 million in the U.S. and Canada over the five-day weekend, according to Comscore. So far this year, the box office has tallied $7.8 billion, down about 6% from a year ago.