Disney’s dull, disastrous ‘Moana’ remake

These musical elements are recreated as is, so there’s little to complain about in that department. But rare are the moments when the staging complements the rhythms, the percussion, the crescendos, and what have you. Visually, this live-action facsimile goes very wrong, very quickly. It’s directed by Hamilton’s Thomas Kail, who—although he can stage a theatrical musical—has no prior experience blocking or editing a feature. This becomes immediately apparent as the camera whizzes past any and all instances of human movement, especially dance, resulting in a mechanical introduction to Moana and her allegedly vibrant island nation.

The greenery and oceanic blues are immediately dulled and flattened too. Save for one indoor scene between Moana and her sagely grandmother (Rena Owen), each physical location is awash in the uncanny disconnect of a brightly lit sound stage (even though real Hawaiian locations were used). The film is butt ugly to look at, and it’s made all the more repulsive by the retention of animated sea and land creature designs being granted tangible physical textures. We know what a real rooster looks like, so seeing Moana’s grotesque live action pet conjures thoughts of angler fish birthed from Satan’s deepest caverns. 

Laga'aia herself isn’t really a problem—she’s a talented young singer—but her performance is done no favors by the sheer nothing she’s forced to interact with, between a litany of CGI creatures, and a completely checked out co-star. Neither Moana nor Maui retain the impish sense of adventure that defined their cartoon counterparts, and from the moment Johnson arrives, the film relinquishes what little energy it had. The actor-producer delivers each quip and serious proclamation with the exact same glacial cadence, as though he wants to get things over with and retire to his trailer. Once a barrel-chested wrestler, he’s now slimmed down considerably (likely owing to those aforementioned health struggles), but is placed in a rubbery muscle suit that matches his former physique, so what you’re left with is a large man with a distractingly small head, mumbling his way through half-learned dialogue like Marlon Brando on Apocalypse Now. 

Behind the scenes of "Moana"

Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

It almost feels unfair to criticize Johnson, even though he’s one of Hollywood’s highest-paid leading men. A charisma vacuum this all-consuming doesn’t emerge organically from such a once-likable presence unless something has gone terribly awry. People have bad days; it happens! But the new Moana feels like the product of only bad days and nothing else. There’s a haunting sadness in Johnson’s eyes that’s hard to shake, even when he’s joking around, so the movie feels like a peek into something troubling that audiences shouldn’t be privy to—certainly not the youngins. 

I say this with love: Johnson ought to have put this off until he actually felt like showing up to set. However, that sort of suggestion doesn’t gel with a $250 million production that was already delayed by an actors’ strike; the wheels of Disney’s catalog stripmining simply must keep turning in service of its bottom line. Whatever the intentions of any individual artist working on the new Moana, the end result is—much like Disney’s “live action” Lion King movies—little more than a lifeless recreation of something once adored. The difference is: here you have a human face whose boredom radiates outward, becoming exhausting by the end.