Oh, “Moana.” That “inspired, spellbinding, wonderfully realized tale and a dazzling, visually/morally beautiful treat for the eyes, ears, heart and soul, it’s a $150 million slice of comfort, love and emotional nourishment, and an important, essential reminder for audiences young and old that not only can goodness prevail through darkness, but when in the right hands with the right resources, it comes plentifully.”
Sound familiar? That’s actually from the review this site wrote about the original animated film when it was released less than 10 years ago. As it turns out, writing a review of Disney’s 2026 live-action remake of “Moana” abides by the same principles as making the new film. Simply copying and pasting what was true a decade ago does not fly today. It’s lazy and insulting to the audience.
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He no longer sits atop the Mouse House, but make no mistake about it: the dominant creative force behind this “Moana” is former Disney CEO Bob Iger. Director Thomas Kail of “Hamilton” fame, making his narrative feature debut, is merely the lever-puller of the corporate vision. This remake, greenlit just months into the executive’s dramatic return to the office he nominally vacated, is Igerism incarnate. But this shameless nostalgia-baiting cash-grab might finally be a bridge too far as it fulfills a famous 1997 “The Onion” headline: “U.S. Dept. Of Retro Warns: ‘We May Be Running Out Of Past.’”
The first “Moana” continues to do numbers as Disney+’s most-streamed movie of all time, satisfying young viewers even as it drives their parents crazy on the umpteenth watch. Now, here comes another film with the same name, whose main distinction is just that it looks worse. This film is destined for great viewership in households that accidentally click the wrong tile on the service and can’t reach the remote to change back to the original.
But hey, now Generation Z and Generation Alpha get to speed-run the millennial trajectory of having their formative works spit back to them in an unnecessary live-action remake. (Never too early to start learning about enshittification!) You can’t put a price tag on what a magical movie means to a young child – but if you could, it would be the estimated $200-250 million dollars it took to make this version of “Moana,” which amounts to a staged reading of the original script against a backdrop of middling AI slop. Kail guides this remake through the motions, never recapturing any of the heart and soul that made the film an emerging classic for kids.
This rote reincarnation steamrolls whatever joy existed in the 2016 animated film. This craven, cynical remake at least comes with a high floor of enjoyment given that the winning story and toe-tapping tunes for Lin-Manuel Miranda remain unchanged. But if the ceiling got any lower on “Moana,” it would cave in on the viewers. Any capacity for visual imagination or ingenuity disappears within the literalism required by live-action, in which suspension of disbelief proves a high bar to clear.
For a film whose settings include both the high seas and the lush islands of Polynesia, there are great opportunities to bring tactile detail to the world of “Moana.” But the true filming location seems to be the uncanny valley. At its best, the visuals from cinematographer Óscar Faura look like the type of flat nature footage that Best Buy would plaster over a wall of new TVs. And when major characters like scene-stealing coconut crab Tamatoa (once again voiced by Jemaine Clement) and dim-witted rooster Heihei are just done with CGI anyway – along with many of the central action set pieces – the value of doing any of this project with real people and places begins to feel quite tenuous.
But nowhere is the dubious nature of this remake more obvious than in Dwayne Johnson’s reprisal of the larger-than-life demigod Maui. In animated form, this spry shape-shifter got closer than any Disney character to recapturing the magic of Robin Williams’ Genie from “Aladdin.” But the star’s age shows when stepping in front of the camera. This is visible in his weathered, wrinkled visage below the mop-like wig he dons – as well as intangible in the speed of the performance. Even a sculpted temple like Johnson’s cannot escape the reality that the voice moves faster than the body, and he slows down “Moana” now rather than speeding it up.
That momentum shift begins to hit in the film’s back half after the final show-stopping number, Clement’s rendition of “Shiny.” (And almost shot-for-shot as it did in the animated film, to boot.) The only major change Kail makes to his carbon copy of “Moana” is grounding the singing in a talky tone. Unlike many Disney animated classics, which often brought in professional singers to record tracks for more famous vocal talent, the big numbers here sound a little more like sung-through monologues. That slightly less polished approach might, however, have worked in a film whose characters do not appear to be singing in front of Midjourney-generated imagery designed to do numbers on Facebook.
The closest thing this “Moana” offers to reality is Catherine Lagaʻaia, the actress making her screen debut in the titular role. She manages to embody both the wisdom of an emerging tribal leader and the impetuousness of a teenager with some attitude. Shame that her humanity sticks out like such a sore thumb in a film whose makers once cared about empowering young girls to be bold leaders – but now only want their parents’ money. [D+]
“Moana” releases in theaters on Friday, July 10.
