Moana

★★★☆☆

115 min | PG | July 10, 2026 | Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

A faithful recreation with a couple of strong performances and none of the original’s charm. Catherine Laga’aia is darling, and Dwayne Johnson is exactly Dwayne Johnson.

Disney remakes its own 2016 animated hit as live action, only ten years after the original. The story is the same. A chief’s daughter sails out past the reef to restore the heart of Te Fiti and drags a washed-up demigod along with her. Thomas Kail directs, and he treats the source like a sacred text. Beats, songs and jokes all land where they landed before. That fidelity is the whole problem. The film recreates the animated version without finding a reason to exist next to it.

Catherine Laga’aia is the reason to watch. She plays Moana with real warmth and a stubborn streak that never curdles into the sass that Disney heroines get by default. She sells the songs with a clear, unforced voice, and she holds the screen when the effects take over. Dwayne Johnson returns as Maui and gives exactly the performance everyone expects. He is big, smug and likable, and he shifts into the same three gears he has used for twenty years. Rena Owen brings quiet weight to Gramma Tala, and John Tui and Frankie Adams ground the village scenes as Moana’s parents.

The craft is polished and lifeless in the way these remakes usually are. The ocean looks real, which robs it of the playful personality it had as a cartoon character. Maui’s tattoos and the creature work fight the realism instead of feeling part of it. Kail stages the musical numbers cleanly, but the camera stays at a safe distance. Animation let these songs bend physics. Live action pins them to the ground.

This is a competent, respectful and entirely redundant film. It never embarrasses the original, and it never comes close to it either. Kids who love the cartoon will enjoy seeing it again with real people in it. Everyone else can watch the cartoon.