Moana Review: What Can I Say, Except, “You’re Soulless?”

It’s a year beginning with the number two, which means we must be subjected to a soulless live-action remake of one of Disney’s colorful classics. This time, we’re getting a remake in what feels like record time of the already classic 2016 animated Moana. This live-action iteration is, at best, a serviceable imitation and, at worst, inferior in every conceivable way. It seems like the only reciprocal respect I can show Disney at this point is to pre-write a generic review for all their remakes and swap out the title and actor names as needed. Like every other one of these projects, general audiences will enjoy it, and families will see it by the millions. Once again, we’ll be rewarding the creative soullessness of Disney’s modern empire with a billion-dollar hit.

Moana Review

With this specific version of Moana, we see at least the most faithful recreation of an original film. The musical numbers are the same, and the plot remains identical. Unlike other recent reboots that bastardize their source material, this one follows every one of the same story beats. If you’re one of the few people who haven’t seen the original, watching this would seem to be a fine film on its own. If you were already a huge fan of the original, you won’t hate it because it’s similar enough to give you the same baseline emotions as before. 

As a critic, I have to wonder what the point of reviewing these things is. My opinion on them remains the same every time. I’m put in a weird gray area in reviewing, where I’m evaluating the difference between two films rather than the films themselves. It’s impossible to ignore the context in which this movie exists. It’s the difference between having the original Mona Lisa and having a cheap printing of it. Sure, both versions have a nice story and fun songs, but in every measurable way, this live-action remake ranges from being staggeringly worse to a bit of a falter.

The most disastrous changes come from the medium itself. Animation is able to be bright, playful, and visually striking. For whatever reason, Disney hasn’t been able to make a live-action remake that has even a comparable amount of vibrancy in each shot, even though that is the number one complaint from every critic. When a film is animated, you’re able to forgive logical errors and embrace a camera style that is impossible to recreate on a dreary sound stage.

From a visual perspective, the cinematography ranges from being weaker than the original to being confused. There are a good handful of shots so confounding that it feels like cinematographer Óscar Faura either was unable to exercise his creativity under the dutifully watchful eye of the megacorporation or struggled with the material. It looks like it belongs in a theme park rather than a lush island oasis.

Every scene needed to be better than the animated film to even stand on its own. You miss so much of the energy of the original medium that, to get things to a comparable level, you have to crank up the quality and scale. Here, director Thomas Kail is unable to match this scope. The film wants to be so similar to the original that it forgets to find its own voice. A movie like this can only succeed if it tries something new, either through visual intrigue, updated performances, or story tweaks, yet the story is the same.

The performances from Catherine Laga’aia and Dwayne Johnson are both fine, but Laga’aia pales in comparison to the original animated performance from Auli’i Cravalho. Johnson uses his immense physicality to inject more energy into the role of Maui. In this regard, his physical performance might be the only part of the film that surpasses the original, but it’s still not enough to save the picture.

Yes, the musical numbers are nice, but Lin-Manuel Miranda already wrote these incredible songs! It’s not fair to take an already incredible musical, reuse the songs, and then act like the film is any better than it was before. We’ve already seen with the disappointing Moana 2 that this property struggles to work when Disney can’t think outside the box.

Is Moana worth watching?

The singular best part of the film, its rendition of “You’re Welcome,” works because, unlike any other scene, it’s visually interesting and combines creative 2D and 3D animation with the real world of Johnson’s Maui. After so many scenes of shot-for-shot recreations turned a whole lot flatter, you get this glimmer of hope that the movie is willing to be something more than its original. To my complete lack of surprise, this is nearly the only moment in Moana that is creative in this capacity.

It’s a massive shame that a studio that once thrived on its creativity is so scared to come out of its own shell. Moana is further proof that Disney will continue to make banal recreations of their films that will never be better than the originals, and are ironically stopping them from creating anything fresh.

Moana is in theaters on July 10.

Moana Review: What Can I Say, Except, “You’re Soulless?”