Review – Moana ⭐️⭐️

There is nothing wrong with your film criticism column, do not attempt to adjust the picture – this is not a mirage.

 Moana really is back in cinemas. It’s another of Disney’s live-action remakes just ten years after the Polynesian princess (asterisk – she’s kind of in line to be a chief instead of a monarch) first set out from the sandy shores of Motunui in search of freedom, salvation and an extremely-tatted Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson. 

‘There is nowhere you can go that I won’t be with you.’

For a decade or so, the supposed MO of these remakes was to reinterpret old fare for a modern audience. I never put too much stock in that idea, not least because the Mouse always seemed to go for the bankable assets rather than the ones that really could stand a second take (Black Cauldron, anyone?) but the idea did kind of work for some entries. Giving ‘guns and geezers’ acolyte Guy Ritchie the job of directing Aladdin, for example, gave a pre-slap/pre-meltdown Will Smith the opportunity to whip up his own Genie. 

In any case, the decision to remake Moana just ten years on feels like the most bankrupt yet (ironic wording, I’m sure, given that these films always make enough money to deck out a kleptomaniac crab voiced by one half of Flight of the Concords in whatever Shiny gear he’d like). Say what you like about the cavalcade of remakes that has come our way in the last ten years, but they did, for the most part, attempt to offer a different take when it came to adapting their original counterparts. Burton invited us to travel alongside him to Underland; not Wonderland, delivering a spiritual sequel that was at the very least ambitious and interesting (if completely drenched in uncanny, 2010-brand CGI). Mulan went one step further and eschewed its musical sequences completely, chucking out the wisecracking dragon spirit Mushu along the way, and Cruella saw its titular ‘devil woman’ star in a Joker-style reimagining that lent her some sympathy.

There’s no such creativity on offer here. I can understand the worry of changing things too much: there’s an online horde of Disney fans who, for better or for worse, push back against the slightest change from the source material, and the studio stand to see better returns by keeping them (and more importantly, their wallets) on-side. As a result of that, though, this Moana is for all intents and purposes a near identical copy of its predecessor, each scene done over in live-action with (depending on your outlook) either a loving reverence for what came before or a lack of confidence in stepping out of line in any way, for fear of fan outcry. 

I hadn’t seen Moana for several years at this point, but it did (like Frozen before it) get a lot of play in our house as one of my younger sister’s favourite animated flicks. Such was the case, then, that watching this remake constantly brought back memories of the original. I was quite surprised, though, by how quickly I found myself wishing that I was back at home watching the original film on Disney+ at no additional cost.

This new take sports a fairly grey and washed out look from all the additional CGI (whatever the studio try to sell you, there’s still animation all over this by necessity). The Rock, who returns as the muscular demigod Maui and (suspiciously) producer in this, is also rocking (for my money) the worst wig of 2026 thus far. I’d seen his live-action Maui look in the trailers, the posters and plastered onto the side of the 16 towards Silverknowes and still couldn’t help but scoff aloud when he first appeared in all his curly-haired glory. 

Moana’s animal sidekicks – rooster Heihei and Pua the pig – are also rendered in realistic fashion. Heihei toes the line between cute and unsettling (I understand why his skin is so shiny, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it), and Pua, of all things, tops any sea monster or small, coconut shaped pirate to become the scariest part of the film. He’s luckily benched for the main adventure, but his eyes in the earlier sequences are genuinely haunting. They’re so small, so not only do we lose a lot of the expression that makes him so endearing in animation (an issue that 2019’s Lion King came up against tenfold) but he looks oddly human in an eerie fashion. It’s reminiscent of the ‘Ugly Sonic’ debacle where fans found the original design for Paramount’s Sonic movies so disgusting that the studio had to delay the picture by three months while they redesigned the character.

Amidst an ocean of artificiality (Sea-GI, if you’re strapped for time) and what is, at best, a phoned-in and lacklustre performance from the usually charismatic Johnson, Australian newcomer Catherine Laga’aia is easily the film’s best asset as Moana. Taking the reins from the original’s Auli’i Cravalho (now an executive producer on this project), she was plucked from a lineup of over 30,000 hopefuls who auditioned for the job. I wasn’t entirely on-board with her performance at first, but as the story progressed, she came into her own in a way that matched Moana’s arc perfectly. As I said previously, you’re sort of fighting a losing battle when you try to recapture animated expressions in a live-action format (unless your remake stars Buster Keaton as the princess and Chaplin as the demigod) but Laga’aia, in any case, manages to close that gap somewhat. 

There’s been some buzz about both Moanas – old and new – getting to share a brand-new Lin-Manuel Miranda song with each other in this movie. I was patiently waiting for that to manifest; there was some serious potential for a genuinely touching ‘passing of the torch’ between the two women, especially given the film’s themes of generational history and keeping in touch with your ancestors. It’s disappointing, then, that this new inclusion is relegated to the credits when other remakes provided a little more bang for your buck by chucking a new number into the film proper. As it stands, the most notable addition on offer here is an extra couple of lines in You’re Welcome. I’m glad they threw those in there, but their inclusion bolsters the film by about…seven seconds?

If you’ve ever wanted to see the exact same film again (now with a thrilling extra few seconds thrown in for good measure) then perhaps this is the movie for you. I’m sure there are certain sects of the Disney fandom that were looking for something like this – a film that doesn’t step out of line in, I must stress this, any conceivable way – but as someone who went into this new venture with a real sense of deja-vu, unconvinced that this needed to be remade at all, there’s really nothing in it worth seeing that fans can’t already catch at home. Cinema tickets are expensive, especially if you’re planning a summer holiday outing for the full family, and given that Minions and Monsters will be playing in the very next screening room to Moana, I’d point potential patrons that way before you could shout ‘Chee-hoo!’

BBFC: Rated PG for mild threat.

Moana is in cinemas now.