I suppose the best way to look at the abundance of these animation-to-live-action remakes is like cover songs. The association is easier to make when applied to the musical Moana, evoking all the familiar earworms that made the original so catchy and compelling. But for being remade a mere ten years after the revered animated picture, there’s a refusal to stray from the script or add in a new song. It’s the greatest hits that might provide familiar comfort, but the dedication to preserving this text as is makes one question what point there was in spending $250 million to tell the exact same story, the exact same way, again.

The story remains unchanged, forcing one to focus more on the production than on being engrossed in this familiar tale. Catherine Laga’aia steps well into the role of Moana, aiming to explore the ocean to save her tribe threatened by a curse from the gods. I was hoping to see more of her plucky and eccentric nature, but Catherine’s performance is played up a bit too straightforward, with more attention paid to how well she hits the many notes of her songs. She does okay within a medium so engrossed in staged musical numbers and visual effects that it leaves her little room to define her character as anything more.

Moana’s quest will soon lead to her teaming up with the demi-god Maui, reprised by Dwayne Johnson with a buff body, CG-animated tattoos, and long hair. Much like Catherine, Johnson also doesn’t stray from the role he once played, highlighting the restraints of his performance more tongue-in-cheek with comedic lines than bursting with loud charm. Consider the brief joke of Maui grabbing the odd-looking chicken Heihei and declaring him a boat snack. The animated film presents this as a quick gag, with a zippy move and a high-pitched voice from Johnson. The movie poses the same moment with a drier delivery that is decently funny, but still does little to dissuade comparisons to the superior source material.

The only spark of something new within this interpretation comes through in the visuals. Maui’s iconic song “You’re Welcome” features clever visual effects, including spinning illustrations, moving sand sculptures, and light manipulations. The coconut critters known as the Kakamora have a different look, given their furrier exteriors for better movement. Little bursts of these visual revisions gave me some hope for something exciting over the horizon. Sadly, those hopes were dashed with the arrival of coconut crab Tamatoa, never straying far from the character Jemaine Clement brought to life and voiced once more. The design is kept relatively faithful to retain his gags about being too big and demanding Moana pick one of his eyestalks to make eye contact with. His song about being shiny is still amusing, even if Clement doesn’t add in anything new here. His final line, “Did you like the song?”, is present, with the only new addition being “Any notes?”

Visually, the film looks beautiful, and cinematographer Óscar Faura certainly doesn’t skimp on the gorgeously green islands and spectacular sight of stars across the ocean. It’s disappointing that director Thomas Kail (known for the Hamilton musical) doesn’t have the same spark to make this movie more of his own. He treads safely by maintaining Jared Bush’s original screenplay, as though it were an immortal work of Shakespeare that dare not be sullied by rewording a single line. One dare not find a funnier way to modify Maui’s criticism of Moana having the typical hallmarks of a Disney princess. If it works, it works, and Kail settles for merely performing Disney’s greatest hits rather than adding any new material. That might be reassuring for audiences who have grown aggravated by Disney’s perpetual revisions of its animated library, but the refusal to try anything only makes the pointless nature of remakes all the more apparent.

The Moana remake wastes all its lush staging on a movie that adds nothing new and refuses to explore as much as its titular hero. The film shares too much DNA with the How to Train Your Dragon live-action remake: targeting an animated film less than 20 years old, refusing to change anything in the script, and tossing one of the original voice actors in front of the camera. And just like How to Train Your Dragon, I found myself bored by the recitations that treat a fairly recent Disney film as though it were a Shakespeare classic that can’t be tampered with. If the argument against past Disney remakes was “if ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” the argument for this movie is “if ain’t broke, don’t order a duplicate.”

Not available on any streaming platforms.

Source: