‘Moana’ Review: The Live-Action Disney Adventure Is Rarely Adventurous

Outside of a couple exceptions, I haven’t been a fan of Disney’s “live-action” (photorealistic would perhaps be a more apt term, but for simplicity’s sake, I’m stick with “live-action” even though I know there wasn’t a single organism in The Lion King movies) remakes of its animated features. Advances in technology allow the company to create three-dimensional recreations of hand-drawn features, but rarely do these new movies feel vital or inspired. Their latest live action remake, Moana, feels particularly desperate since the original came out less than ten years ago (November 2016), and unlike the rest of the animated features Disney remade, it was done with computer animation. This leads to the bizarre experience of being in a movie theater to watch what mostly feels like a shot-for-shot remake with slightly improved graphics but less artistry. It’s nostalgia when we haven’t even had time to miss the world of the original, and its design that leaves little room for fresh creativity. For a story about an adventurous young woman leaving the safety of her island, the live-action Moana is largely dead in the water.

For those who haven’t seen the original or don’t remember, Moana (played here by newcomer Catherine Laga'aia) lives on the island of Motunui, where her father, Chief Tui (John Tui), insists that the people never venture out past the reef. Moana is drawn to the ocean, and with guidance from her Gramma Tala (Rena Owen), believes that the solution to the island’s recent blight is to restore the heart (a green stone) of the goddess Te Fiti. To do this, she must sail the sea, track down the demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson), and get him to put the heart back. However, the egocentric and conceited Maui takes some convincing to do the right thing and help Moana save her people.

For its first 45 minutes, the big question looming over Moana is, “What is the point of this?” We have the same songs as the original, and those are still great tunes. The live-action version now even has Broadway director Thomas Kail (Hamilton) making his feature debut. And yet like other filmmakers who once showed promise until entering the Disney machine, his work feels flattened by the mandate of “make it like the other thing.” The opening number “Where You Are” plays pretty much the same as the original one except the images are less fluid and less colorful because of the flattening effect of making it look “real.” It doesn’t feel like a worthwhile tradeoff to lose the way animated characters can move just so you can have humans dance against LED volume stages. 

The new Moana is largely a taxidermy of the original until Johnson comes along with “You’re Welcome.” His performance in the number and throughout the film is a reminder of why he became a movie star in the first place. If you get him away from trying to hock his tequila or demand that he’s now in charge of DC superheroes, he still knows how to give a charming, charismatic performance. He’s so good here you forget he’s wearing the fakest-ass wig imaginable and that his Maui has to look like Dwayne Johnson rather than charmingly rotund version in the animated movie. Kail also feels like he’s cutting loose with a reimagining of “You’re Welcome” that keeps the song but gives it fresh visuals. The number ends and we’re left wondering why Kail didn’t do that with every song.

Rather than the freedom of traversing the ocean, the new Moana is stuck on rails, going through everything we already know but in a rendering that is both graphically enhanced yet visually drabber. As much as Johnson and Laga'aia try to liven up the movie with their performances, nothing can shake the familiarity or the knowledge that a superior version is sitting on Disney+ where any subscriber can watch it any time. There’s not even the revelation of what the animated movie would look like in three dimensions. All 2026 Moana tells us is what it would look like with human actors, graphical upticks in creatures like Tamatoa (Jemaine Clement) and Te Kā, and muddier visuals surrounding them.

Such minor changes leave me questioning who this movie is supposed to be for. The most successful remakes have been generational where kids who saw The Lion King or Lilo & Stitch now have kids of their own and can enjoy a new version alongside them. These families are not even going for the movie as much as they are to make memories. But if you were ten when you saw Moana in 2016, then you’re twenty now, and probably don’t have kids of your own. How much nostalgia can we have for something that hasn’t even been gone, especially when you consider Moana 2 came out two years ago and made over a billion dollars. Perhaps Disney feels like the sequel’s success is the sign to keep fresh Moana product in theaters, but I would counter that audiences want something ostensibly new even if it’s as simple as continuing the story. The mandate for the new Moana seemed to be “don’t rock the boat,” but that’s not the stuff adventures are made of.

Moana opens in theaters on July 10^th.