Joel on Film

“Do it again, but be more convincing,” says the shapeshifter demigod of the wind and sea, hero to men (and women, too, he’s quick to clarify), during a crucial moment right before the climax of Moana. It’s telling that the preceding sentence could be said of both the animated film of the same name and this live action remake, which arrives just less than ten years later. That’s part of the inherent problem with such remakes, to which a certain massive studio conglomerate keeps returning as a way of shoring up profit (in order to make more of them, of course).

To the credit of director Thomas Kail, essentially making his debut on a film set after a couple solid decades in theatre, this is one is maybe half a step above a few of the other, similar examples of such fair and a full step above one or two others (we also come away hoping the misguided sequel to the original is not in this remake pipeline). The appeal of the original was basically twofold: Its best songs, written or co-written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, were catchy and occasionally rousing. Its emotional backbone, too, was surprisingly mature, residing in the relationship between a girl and the ocean that surrounds her island.

In this movie’s best moments, Kail and the visual effects team bring that latter idea to life in some purely magical ways, because the water—as in the animated film—is an actual character here, with an intelligence and even a sassy sense of humor. It’s also serene and lovely when it needs to be, literally guiding our young heroine to her destination, except in the moments when the universe around her needs the girl to guide herself. If Moana (Catherine Laga’aia) is going to be chieftainess of the indigenous peoples of Te Fiti one day, she’ll need to find courage both within herself and from the legacy that goes before her.

That was always the simple and true moral of the original film, and because this one is almost a shot-for-shot remake, it’s true this time around, as well. There is nothing new under the sun in the screenplay by Jared Bush and Dana Ledoux Miller, and except for the change in the form of filmmaking, there’s definitely nothing new about anything else in this movie. Because the story itself is a worthwhile one, though, that almost makes this version worthwhile in its own way—almost, but not quite.

The problem lay in some of the other ways the filmmaking team brings the animated concepts to life, such as how the unified visual language of the earlier movie has been muddled by the shifting backdrops here, captured inconsistently by cinematographer Oscar Faura. It’s indistinct when on land, occasionally taking on the visual feel of a sitcom. Some scenes in darker interiors, as well as the at-sea climax between the demigod and a massive fire demon, are underlit to accommodate the overwhelming digital effects, meanwhile.

The earlier film’s best special effect was the character of Maui, the demigod in question, whose pompous charm and prideful humility made the character a fun foil to the young but steadfast Moana. In live action, all that personality has been replaced by Dwayne Johnson—returning to play in person the role he voiced twice before—in a bad wig and covered with tattoos that are all given the actual personality. Here, the character is broadly pompous and kind of smarmy, and even though that’s a deliberate choice on Johnson’s part, it simply doesn’t translate to a good performance.

The plot remains the same, as Moana seeks the heart of the island, which was lost an age ago by Maui, and finds the strength for the search in her grandmother Tala (a warm and lovely Rena Owen). The musical set pieces alternate between the awkwardly stagy (Maui’s ditty devoted to himself is just embarrassing here, with Johnson’s shuffling dance and awful rapping) and the affecting (the singsong tribute to the island really comes to life, as does a late reprise of Moana’s own theme). Curiously, the best example of the latter belongs to a dunderheaded crab (voiced by Jemaine Clement), because the sequence humbles Maui and contains a minor revelation for Moana.

It also arrives at the same place as the original film, which is to say that a visually busy climax flattens out to reveal, at the core of the conflict, a great sadness. That’s nice and all, but the aura of sameness is so pervasive throughout Moana that, in spite of the things it does right, the stumbles along the way remind us we just saw a better and truer version of this movie a decade ago.

Rating: **½ (out of ****)