Producers: Anne Carey, Marielle Heller, Sue Naegle, Christina Oh, Amy Adams and Stacy O’Neil   Director: Marielle Heller   Screenplay: Marielle Heller   Cast: Amy Adams, Scoot McNairy, Arleigh Patrick Snowden, Emmett James Snowden, Jessica Harper, Zoë Chao, Mary Holland, Archana Rajan, Ella Thomas, Adrienne Rose White, Stacey L. Swift, Darius De La Cruz, Ros Gentle, Kerry O’Malley, Michaela Baham and Nate Heller   Distributor: Searchlight Pictures

Grade: C

Coming from Marielle Heller, whose “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” remains one of 2018’s better films, this adaptation of Rachel Yoder’s acclaimed 2018 novel is a disappointment.  “Nightbitch” might have been a caustic, challenging metaphorical depiction of the costs and pleasures of motherhood, but in Heller’s transformation it becomes more an oddball sitcom-like ode to the idea of having it all, girl—but only if you unleash your inner canine.  Despite some early feints in the direction of horror, especially of the body variety, “Nightbitch” turns into what feels like a toothless feminist liberation fantasy that, in the end, wants to have it all possible ways—to have its cakes while eating them too.

Amy Adams is the unnamed Mother, who gave up a promising career as an artist to stay home with the son she has with her Husband (Scoot McNairy) and is beginning to regret that choice. She dreams of how as a girl (Michaela Baham) in a rural religious community, she watched her mother (Kerry O’Malley) abandon her chance at a singing career and her grandmother (Ros Gentle) intently prepare concoctions (meals?) from weird ingredients. 

Son (Arleigh and Emmett Snowden) is now a hyperactive toddler, whose care Mother finds exhausting and often aggravating, just as she finds her housewifely chores monotonous.  She imagines replying to questions about how she’s doing, like that posed pro forma by an old colleague, honestly, though in reality she recites the usual bromides about how she loves being a full-time mom—while her actual feelings are expressed in lots of voice-over narration.  When Husband returns from one of his frequent job-related trips, she snaps at the guy that evening for not giving her enough of a break from wifely-maternal duties.  Only twenty minutes in, she half-jokingly refers to herself as a nightbitch for berating him.

That’s just a precursor to the real thing.  Mother’s body starts to undergo strange physical changes—sharper teeth, a heightened sense of smell, and hair growths in unexpected places.  She attracts a pack of dogs while playing with her son in the park, and expresses her loathing of the family’s pet cat.  She enthusiastically enters into games with her son in which they both pretend to be canines.  Her search for answers lead Norma (Jessica Harper), the local librarian, to introduce her to a book about mystical shape-shifting women, even as she connects with a trio of neighbors (Zoë Chao, Mary Holland and Archana Rajan) at the library’s Book Babies sessions presided over by a guitar-strumming guy (Nate Heller).  She shares her observations on the demands of motherhood, both physical and mental, with them, and finds bonding surprisingly satisfying. 

And when Mother has an evening out with old art business colleagues (Ella Thomas, Darius De La Cruz, Stacey L. Swift, Adrienne Rose White), she feels out-of-place at the restaurant, starts woofing at them after reacting queasily to her kale salad and actually transforms, as she had one previous night, into a handsome Husky, running down the street in unbridled freedom.

All of which will lead her to confront Husband about her regrets, and to a revision of their “contract” that allows her to resume her artwork with time to herself.

And yet she doesn’t reject her marriage, or forget the absolutely joyous times she’s spent with Son.  To the contrary, as a postscript set some time later insists, she continues to embrace her maternal role, along with—presumably—her revived career.

One can imagine a version of “Nightbitch” that takes far greater risks than Heller’s does.  What she offers is a film that declines to challenge overmuch—and certainly not to offend or repulse.  The result is a picture that saddles up to the line of making a strong statement but then demurely pulls back.  It’s nicely made—production designer Karen Murphy and costumer Arjun Bhasin fashion a convincing suburban environment, Stuart White’s visual effects and Vincent Van Dyke’s makeup do their jobs without getting gross, Brandon Trost’s cinematography is unfussy but attractive, and the score by the director’s brother Nate is fine, in terms of both the little diddies he sings to the kids and his background music.  Anne McCabe’s editing is a mite bumpy, leaving one with the impression that things are a little repetitious and obvious, but that’s the script’s doing.

What the movie does have going for it is Adams’ performance.  She brings ferocity where it’s required and yet maintains a sympathetic, softer side, and her extended interactions with the Snowden twins (who together make a delightfully rambunctious kid) exude an affection that extends to the audience; one wonders how much of the action was extemporaneous and improvised, and how much effort the necessarily scripted portions took to achieve.  McNairy is okay in a reactive role, but he does catch both Husband’s obtuseness and his genuine admiration for his wife toward the close. Among the others Harper is the most notable, but one must confess that the rationale behind the changes in her character is about as bewildering as Mother’s transformation.

Nonetheless Adams’ committed turn can’t quite compensate for an approach to the material that never quite decides exactly what the writer-director is trying to achieve.

Producers: Yvett Merino and Christina Chen   Directors: David G. Derrick Jr., Jason Hand and Dana Ledoux Miller  Screenplay: Jared Bush, Dana Ledoux Miller, Bek Smith and Bryson Chun  Cast: Auli’I Cravalho, Dwayne Johnson, Temuera Morrison, Nicole Scherzinger, Rose Matafeo, Hualālai Chung, David Fane, Rachel House, Alan Tudyk, Khaleesi Lambert-Tsuda, Awhimai Fraser, Tofiga Fepulea’I and Gerald Ramsey   Distributor: Walt Disney Studios

Grade: C

The animation is spectacular but the story and songs decidedly less so in this sequel to Disney’s blockbuster 2016 animated musical.  “Moana 2” continues the adventures of the intrepid island wayfinder (voiced by Auliʻi Cravalho) and her demigod pal Maui (Dwayne Johnson).

In the first film they’d cooperated—after initial antagonism, of course—in restoring the “heart” of her island, Motunui.  Now they rejoin forces to reunite the peoples of the various islands of Oceania, who’d been separated, we learn along with Moana early on, by a curse laid on Motufetu, the island that served as their unifying hub, by the god Nalo (Tofiga Fepulea’i).

With Motunui now restored to lushness and peaceful prosperity, Moana has been traveling into uncharted territory, seeking evidence about other sea people with her animal chums, the pig Pua and the chicken Hei (Alan Tudyk).  After she finds a cup with some foreign symbols on it, she learns from her spectral ancestors, including her beloved deceased grandmother Tala (Rachel House), of Nalo’s disruptive curse, and is inspired to try to end it.  Her parents Tui (Temuera Morrison) and Sina (Nicole Scherzinger) are apprehensive, and her younger sister Simea (Khaleesi Lambert-Tsuda) distraught at the thought of her leaving, but Moana is determined.

This time, however, she will not go alone.  She recruits three islanders to accompany her, Pua and Hei: Loto (Rose Matafeo), a hyperactive young shipwright; Kele (David Fane), a cantankerous old farmer who will grow plants as food on the journey; and Moni (Hualālai Chung), an artist bard who also happens to idolize Maui.

He, however, is absent, having been captured by Matangi (Awhimai Fraser), who has imprisoned him dangling from his powerful fishhook in her dark realm, filled with her army of bats.  Though inserts occasionally return to his plight, it will not be until Moana and her cohorts free him some time into their voyage that he actually becomes part of the group, and even then reluctantly.

Before that happens Moana and the accompanying trio—who, it must be admitted, are more amusing in theory than in reality—encounter dangerous waters, since Nalo, whom we don’t actually see until a mid-closing credits scene, is a master of storms and angry seas, and of enormous sea monsters, most with the kid-pleasing habit of spewing out slime at every opportunity.  There’s also a large contingent of Kakamora, those coconut-bodied pirates carried over from the first film like stomach-thumping minions.            

They turn out to be allies this time around in a battle against a clam so huge that it’s initially taken to be an island.

Once egotistical Maui joins the mission, the film becomes a fairly obvious, if visually entrancing, effort to raise Motufetu from the bottom of the sea in the face of all the tempestuous rage Nalo can summon to stop them.  Their success is assured, of course, but watching it unfold leaves one feeling that it all seems formulaic, even with the eye-popping imagery fashioned by production designer Ian Gooding, animation director Byron Howard, animation heads Kevin Webb and Amy Lawson Smeed, and visual effects supervisors Carlos Cabral and Kyle Odermatt   Nor does the direction by David G. Derrick Jr., Jason Hand and Dana Ledoux Miller or the editing by Jeremy Milton and Michael Louis Hill manage to boost the energy level sufficiently, largely because the script cobbled together by Jared Bush, Miller, Bek Smith and Bryson Chun comes across as a labored attempt to copy the template of the first film, its juggling of action and humor more calculated than natural and the episodes clumsily linked together with little attention to the passage of time, though Kele’s presence alone would suggest that the voyage is as prolonged as that of Jason and the Argonauts.

While the background score by Mark Mancina and Opetaia Foa’I does its job efficiently enough, moreover, the songs by Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear don’t match the infectious quality of those in the previous movie.  The ones early on are pleasant enough, if hardly memorable, but they get worse as the film proceeds, with the worst being Maui’s intended show-stopper, “Can I Get a Chee Hoo?,” designed to bolster Moana’s spirits when she’s feeling low.  Any lyric that includes the repeated refrain “Come on-a, Moana!” deserved to be scuttled.  The number also proves that Johnson simply cannot sing.

Otherwise, though, he’s on target again, delivering the swagger and bravado at the character’s core, even when the script’s banter is feeble.  Cravalho has no difficulty handling the vocal pyrotechnics, and, as eight years ago, her perkiness is consistently engaging even when the lines she’s delivering are not, as in Moana’s syrupy scenes with Simea.  Among the rest the standout is undoubtedly Fraser, who gives Matangi a droll malevolence, and even carries off her less-than-stellar solo number, “Get Lost.”  The indication in that end-credits scene that she might play a major role in the inevitable sequel is not unwelcome.

One shouldn’t be too hard on “Moana 2.”  Yes, it suffers from the common affliction of sequelitis, falling short of its predecessor.  But the drop-off isn’t calamitous, and fans of the first film will probably find it mildly enjoyable, especially since the visuals are so entrancing, and the lessons it dishes out uplifting enough.  But if the series is to continue, it will need smarter writing and better songs in future installments.