‘Moana’ (2026) Review: A Dull and Unimpressive Remake
Watching Thomas Kail’s Moana, I felt a sense of finitude, which is something I don’t really feel while watching movies. But there was something about this dreadful shot-for-shot retread of Ron Clements and John Musker’s 2016 animated masterpiece that felt oddly melancholic. What was it, you ask? I finally realized that the era when Disney lazily releases live-action rehashes of animated films to print money is mercifully over.
Audiences have become more astute and are no longer going to accept such listless drivel on the screen, especially considering how incredible its animated original is. The original Moana is a movie that younger moviegoers still watch even ten years after its release and feels as timely as it was when it initially came out in cinemas.
Unlike the compelling technical exercise at the heart of Dean DeBlois’ live-action transposition of How to Train Your Dragon, there isn’t a single scene or image that justifies Moana’s relevancy, beyond “money.” The plot is the same. The songs are the same. The narrative beats are the same. Two cast members from the original film return to portray their characters in “live-action.” If you’ve seen the animated Moana, you’ve seen this live-action version, but everything feels boring and weightless compared to the grandeur and sweeping emotions of the animated original.
The plot of Moana
Do I even need to sum up the plot in this review? It’s the exact same. Nothing changes. Instead of spending a few paragraphs trying to lay everything out, I’m just going to do a brief crash course: Moana (Catherine Laga’aia) wants to explore the sea. Her parents (John Tui and Frankie Adams) believe it will pose dangers, since the Island of Motonui provides them with everything they need. After her grandmother (Rena Owen) tells Moana about the legend of Te Fiti and shapeshifting demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson), she ventures out into the open sea to find him. Her goal to restore the heart of Te Fiti that he stole to heal the Ocean and save Motonui from a ravaging famine that has only grown worse in recent memory.
It might be disingenuous to dismiss this Moana as nothing more than a cheap cash grab at first and to meet this version on its terms. However, I can’t blame anyone for feeling this way. These remakes haven’t been good for a very long time and have rarely captured the awe-inspiring wonder of the original animated pictures.
It’s actually a testament to how great the story of Moana is that this remake is more watchable than others, but never in a way that feels particularly fresh or invigorating. Every “good” scene is a cheap copy of its animated counterpart, and everything that feels slightly emotive only works because, in that moment, you think about the animated film.
Did I get emotional upon hearing Catherine Laga’aia sing “How Far I’ll Go”? Absolutely. Did I feel swept up by the grandiose theatrics of a sequence like “We Know the Way,” which distills the history of Moana’s family as voyagers who once traveled the ocean before Maui stole the heart of Te Fiti? Of course. But I felt these emotions not because of this movie, but because I remembered the times when I endlessly listened to Lin-Manuel Miranda’s music on loop; and I remembered how the animated film defined a massive part of the last decade for me.
When I think of Moana, I think of these memories and of the time I spent crying in the cinema watching the original film. It’s weird to think of a movie that has seemingly only been released, but has actually been a decade since we were first introduced to the Island of Motonui and a generations-defying Disney princess.
This live-action Disney film never justifies its existence
Had Kail justified this remake by crafting something visually spectacular and expanding upon the mythology introduced in the original film, perhaps we would’ve been treated to something special. However, as it stands, Moana only works in parts. It’s never a fulfilling theatrical experience that will make us dream the way the 2016 film did, or even like Kail’s 2020 proshot of Lin-Manuel’s Hamilton, which brought us a necessary and urgent emotional release during a terrible time in human history.
Hamilton has proven that Kail fully understands the visual language of cinema and gives a sense of grandeur to a staged production; knowing when to edit a given musical number to highlight its performers, and, most importantly, how to light a given scene so it looks even more absorbing on the screen.
With Moana, he has the immense privilege of collaborating with cinematographer Óscar Faura to develop the remake’s visual language. Faura brings a wealth of knowledge on shooting in the water, which he’s done multiple times by either representing the sea as a monstrous force that consumes everything in its wake (The Impossible, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, all collaborations with J.A. Bayona) or illustrating its vast, often misunderstood beauty (Young Woman and the Sea, with Joachim Rønning).
You’d never know that such a storied photographer lensed Moana, as he makes the sea feel as minuscule as possible through flat, unengaging compositions that recall a fan film instead of a $250 million megabudget blockbuster. Most of the conversations are horribly stitched together, while none of the action sequences possesses an ounce of weight and dynamism on screen.
Only the climax looks and feels urgent. That’s because for the very first time in the movie, Faura is allowed to move his camera and create a sense of three-dimensionality as Maui shapeshifts into various creatures to defeat Te Kā, but that’s about it.
Even the scene where Moana and Maui attempt to regain the latter’s hook by distracting giant crab Tamatoa (Jemaine Clement) has no sense of aesthetics. It’s colorful, sure, far brighter and more vivid than most of the dreary live-action remakes (thanks, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland), but there’s little perspective or depth of field in the way the setpiece is staged. Everything looks fake and artificial. There’s no expressivity in anything that’s on screen, no matter how sincere the work from its lead actress may be.
Catherine Laga’aia and Dwayne Johnson’s performances
It’s a real shame for Catherine Laga’aia, who portrays Moana with the same emotional complexity as Auli’i Cravalho’s star-making performance. Her singing voice is also wonderful, and the renditions she captures of Lin-Manuel’s iconic songs reverberate with the same energy as the original. The song that both Moanas perform during the end credits (the remake’s sole addition) is a real stunner, because the two understand what made the character such a special part of the Disney canon in the first place.
One can’t say the same for The Rock, who looks completely bored from beginning to end, wearing a Tommy Wiseau wig and repeating the same lines without an ounce of energy. At least Clement, who also portrayed Tamatoa in the original, gives some vigor in this vocal rendition.
Dwayne Johnson is only doing this for the easy paycheck, and it shows. He has, in recent memory, become one of the most vapid and uninteresting screen presences, who seems far more concerned about his brand as an entertainer than about actually caring on screen. Whoever believed in his delusional “I’ll only do movies for me” drivel during The Smashing Machine’s Oscar campaign only has themselves to blame. He’s back doing the same old tired half-assed “performances” that have defined this current trajectory he’s been on for far too long.
The performances he’s given in Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales, Peter Berg’s The Rundown, and Michael Bay’s Pain and Gain have shown that he’s more than up for the task of giving something truly memorable on screen. However, it looks like his passion sailed away long ago. His performance in the live-action remake of Moana might be the nadir of his “commercial” endeavors. It’s time for him to do some soul-searching instead of doing the same tired nonsense over and over again.
Final thoughts on the live-action Moana film
Disney hopes you’re gullible enough to watch such a contemptuously stitched-together motion picture and give them more money than they already do. You’ve already been fooled for the past sixteen years. It’s time to sit this one out so that it stops their interest in remaking Tangled again and gives them cold feet about developing more remakes that serve no purpose other than to make $1 billion at the box office. The animated Moana movies are doing that right now. Just make Moana 3 instead, but please bring back Lin-Manuel Miranda to write the songs.
Also check out: Toy Story 5 Review: The Animated Movie of Our Times
