Moana 2 (2024) review

Three years have gone by since the events of the original movie and Moana (voiced by Auliʻi Cravalho), the chief's daughter, must sail across the ocean with a few of her fellow villagers - as well as her trusty rooster Heihei (Alan Tudyk) and pig Pua on board - to locate the island Motufetu, which is cursed by a demon named Nalo ... but she needs the assistance of demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson) to accomplish this.  The theme, which gets repeated multiple times in the first twenty minutes, is about "reconnecting the people" which does apply to the time we're living in (as I'm typing this, immigrants are being rounded up by American authorities), except the songs (which were written without Lin-Manuel Miranda) and story are uninspired, and the "creative team" decided to just mine some of the recent Legend of Zelda games for "ideas" (the monstrous clam could have been a boss character).  I found myself rooting for the Coconut Pirates - one of their strongest warriors joins the main crew - and the animals more than the "human" figures, which kind of says it all....