
'Tis the season for sequel films here on the Couch, and coming off of our discussion of Moana not too long ago, we've got the perfect perspective on its totally-not-planned-to-be-a-TV-series-originally-but-was-then-haphazardly-converted-into-a-feature-film sequel, 2024's Moana 2. It's a tall ask to follow up a film like Moana and while the gang agrees that the story and narrative feel pretty fresh as far as sequels go, there are a few...other issues...with this film that do elicit feelings of "soulless cash grab" in certain moments. A great metric on judging a film's writing quality is how many mini-Writer's Desk segments we can cram into the episode to see just how much more this film could have been compared to what we got. Content warning: SPOILERS, strong language.