MJC_42

Moana deserved so much better than this. If this had been the first movie, no sequel would ever have been made. Nothing within justifies its existence. It's sole purpose was to refill Disney's coffers, and for that purpose, it was wildly successful. As unnecessary as this sequel was, its biggest crime is that it does not have a single song memorable beyond its ending note. I was watching this with my wife and kids, and the consensus was that we were pretty much forgetting the songs as they were playing. Now, even if this had some bangers like the first movie, the plot would still have felt lacking, but good music can go a long way toward making up for story shortcomings. They should have backed up the Brink's truck for Lin-Manuel Miranda if that's what it took to get some decent songs in here. The movie sets up a part 3, and I just have no interest. They would have been better off keeping this as a series as originally conceived instead of retooling it into a half-baked movie, though I'm sure Disney has no regrets after the boatload of money this made for them.

If you were thinking this would be a fun adventure show about Lara Croft raiding tombs or anything of that nature, I'm sorry to disappoint, but this is not that show. While there is some adventuring going on, it's not particularly fun. This show mostly deals with Lara Croft having a difficult time overcoming her grief for lost loved ones. The only reason why she's adventuring at all is because she catches someone raiding her tomb, or mansion, rather, and she wants to get back what the thief stole (how ironic). The stakes go way up due to the nature of the McGuffin, causing her to pursue the situation to its natural conclusion, and during the course of this she works on herself, her issues with grief and difficulty in being a good friend. It's dreadfully dull, and her character comes across as annoying. Also, she can apparently leap 50 feet in a single bound. The show is ridiculous, tedious, and not at all fun.

If so, you'll love this movie.

If you like the Scream franchise, you'll probably like this one just fine. It does everything you expect. However, and I can't recall how bad the other Scream movies are in this regard, so maybe this one is par for the course, or maybe it's worse, but one trope that I just absolutely loathe is that when the bad guy attacks and the good guy gets a hit in, sometimes even temporarily incapacitating the bad guy, and then the good guy stops attacking the bad guy and runs away, allowing the bad guy to get back up and go after them again. This movie does that CONSTANTLY. It was infuriating. Why are you letting the bad guy back up? You've just clocked them good and have them on the ropes. Just take them out. But no, you whack them in the face with a frying pan (which, in the real world might kill a person or at least hurt them really badly, but in the movies, these sorts of blows can be shrugged off), and instead of hitting them again and again, you just run. And then they get up and run after you.

This is a franchise where the characters are supposed to be smart and knowledgeable about horror movie clichés and tropes and rules, yet they never actually break out of them. They acknowledge stuff and then still do the really stupid stuff.

What's even more egregious is when you have multiple heroes, sometimes 4-6, and when confronted with a single bad guy armed solely with a knife, they fail to gang up on the bad guy, allowing them to attack people individually. Everyone else either runs or just stands there screaming. These characters are all a bunch of useless morons.

I get that you can't have the good guys be too smart the whole way through as that would make it impossible for any villains to do their thing, but I don't think it's too much to ask that the good guys not be morons and at least be reasonably smart. I want the villain(s) to have to earn it by outsmarting the good guys, at least for a while. It's just far too easy here, and it was annoying.