Moana is in theaters beginning July 10.
The live-action Moana is the 25th remake of a Disney animated film, arriving only two years after the groundbreaking original film got a sequel. Moana 2 earned far less favourable reviews, but its box office broke a billion dollars, almost double its predecessor’s haul. So here we are again, with Disney choosing to copy and paste in the hopes of securing similar financial gain. It probably will, but, as with the rest of Disney’s mixed bag of live-action remakes, Moana begs the question: Just because you can, does it mean you should?
Directed by Broadway’s Hamilton and In The Heights director Thomas Kail in his feature debut, this is a beat-by-beat retelling that rarely colors outside the lines. A thousand years after the demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson reprising the role) stole the heart of the goddess Te Fiti, Moana (Catherine Laga’aia) is chosen by the ocean to find him, and together, return the stone to restore her blighted island Motunui to full health. Same characters, same songs, same hero’s journey, which gets quite tedious if, like me, you’re a fan of the OG film. It’s hard to muster a laugh when you know the punchline for most of the jokes, especially the visual ones regarding Moana’s rooster sidekick, Hei Hei, who looks decidedly freaky in CGI.
Still, there’s a strong marriage of visual effects and live-action sets, with the vast cinematic scale established early on. Super-wide and sweeping aerial shots capture lush land and golden sand surrounded by a kaleidoscope of blues and greens rippling across the water. The way-finding action sequences, pitting the duo against the crashing waves of the ocean, the mean Minion-esque Kakamora sea pirates and the final boss fire monster Te Kā, are spectacularly realised. Even Maui’s musical number “You’re Welcome” evokes the playfulness of the animated film as the demigod’s tattoo avatars leap off his body and transform into a dance troupe of sand men. It’s a fun sequence that evokes the Mary Poppins chalk drawing scene where the soundstage and cartoon characters whimsically collide.
The cast all deliver great vocals, making numbers like “How Far I’ll Go” and “We Know The Way” reverberate with emotion. Paired with tribal choreography, conceived by Tiana Nonosina Liufau, who worked on the animated films, and Kayla Fa’amaligi, it’s a beautifully resonant display of tradition and culture not often seen in a live-action, mainstream movie. That the entire cast is of Polynesian and Pacific Islander descent is especially admirable and infuses the characters with natural authenticity while also spotlighting new and lesser-known talent.
Laga’aia exudes the earnest, sometimes awkward charm of Moana as she navigates her overprotective dad, gets the hang of her vessel on the open sea, and butts heads with Maui. At times, the direction might have called for her to go bigger with her melancholic feelings, but her scenes with Rena Owen, who plays Moana’s cheeky Gramma Tala, are sweetly soulful. John Tui’s Chief Tui, Moana’s dad, offers a warm regalness. He and Owens might be the closest to accomplishing the spirit of the original characters, but with Laga’aia and Frankie Adams’ Sina, Moana’s mother, it’s easy to believe this is a tight-knit family part of an even tighter-knit community that you want to spend more time with.
The weakest link, unfortunately, is Maui. Johnson’s voice performance was memorable in the animated outings, but in embodying the full role, there’s a real lack of exuberance, a nonchalance that tempers the flamboyant personality of the arrogant demi-god. It appears to be quite a self-conscious effort, and maybe that is in part due to the god-awful wig they put him in. The director has said that giving Johnson and Laga’aia unruly curls would have played havoc with the CGI and green screen. Still, I’m pretty sure they didn’t have curling tongs 2,000 years ago, and that’s exactly how these perfectly coiffed hairdos appeared: out of time and jarringly out of place amongst the rest of the cast.
After spending nearly two hours back in this mythical South Pacific world, and to answer that earlier question: No, Moana isn’t convincing enough to warrant its existence. But this is where we are in this risk-averse film industry, where we will probably be for a long time, and compared to other live-action Disney remakes, it could be a lot worse.
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