NOW IN THEATERS! Yep, another Disney animated feature made into live action. This time it’s 2016’s Moana. Happy tenth anniversary. But will this cash cow siphon off the original’s profits, or boost the box office when Disney could really use a hit like last year’s Lilo & Stitch?
Moana (Catherine Laga’aia) has always felt the ocean calling her, even though her father, Chief Tui (John Tui), has drilled one rule—never go past the reef. As Motunui’s next leader, she is expected to be with her people, but something out there is calling her to explore…maybe it’s the water. Soon, a crisis appears as crops begin to die and fish disappear from the waters. Island matriarch Gramma Tala (Rena Owen) tells an old legend in which, centuries ago, the demigod Maui stole the heart of the goddess Te Fiti, setting this devastation in motion, and now there is no time left. Moana must find him and make him return it before the blight and famine swallow Motunui whole. Tala hands Moana the heart itself, serving as the cue to finally go beyond the reef.
The water guides her through a storm, but her boat gets wrecked by a typhoon and washes up on the doorstep of the very demigod she’s looking for. Maui (Dwayne Johnson) is not exactly thrilled to help save Motunui — he traps her in a cave in order to steal her boat, but the water refuses to let them be separated, and the two strike an alliance to return the heart of Te Fiti. Step one is to find Maui’s fishhook, which allows him to morph into any animal; step two is to give Maui the courage to confront his destiny toward greatness.
Dwayne Johnson as Maui in Disney’s live-action MOANA. Photo courtesy of Disney. © 2026 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
“Moana has always felt the ocean calling her, even though her father, Chief Tui, has drilled one rule—never go past the reef.”
The first question: why? Moana plays it beat for beat. Same setup, same middle, same ending as the 2016 animated feature. The problem is that this is a photorealistic animated film with live-action characters dropped in. Like Bedknobs and Broomsticks, but void of any creativity to push this technology forward.
The energy is the real problem here. It’s so low-energy and lackluster that it’s boring. Catherine Laga’aia and Dwayne Johnson’s performances are flat, whereas the original played it big and over the top. This flatness kills all the comedy, and the songs come off as uninspired and performative. The jokes are the same from the animated version, all landing with a thud here because nobody’s bringing the same juice to them. Then there’s the dialogue. In animation, lines are run a hundred times, and only the best take is selected. Live action doesn’t give you that luxury, and it shows. Animation injects life into this story. This version needed someone to demand a better take — and never got one.
Some of that falls on director Thomas Kail, whose background is Broadway, not film — and he brought that stage sensibility with him, which was a mistake. The songs suffer most. “How Far I’ll Go” is supposed to end on a show-stopping note, and instead of pushing in for the moment, Kail pulls back to a wide shot of Moana on a mountain. This iconic number has no power, no punch, no Broadway showmanship — just a missed opportunity from a guy who’s great at filming Broadway productions for posterity’s sake, but knows nothing about making a proper movie musical.
Take my advice: skip this one and rewatch the original on Disney+. Moana is a disaster — a beat-for-beat retread that trades the cartoon’s energy for a low-energy live-action shell and never justifies why it needed to exist. Here’s hoping Disney takes the hint: stop making live-action adaptations of Disney classics.
"…Moana is a disaster — a beat-for-beat retread..."
