Say what you will about them, but the Disney live-action remakes have at least given us a choice. Which would you rather see? A spirited, soaring, animated “Moana,” or a purposeless remake featuring Dwayne Johnson with Fabio hair?
The sea is wide, my friends. Yet Moana, the Polynesian wayfaring princess, has seemingly been stuck swimming laps since she first emerged on our screens 10 years ago. She’s one of Disney’s greatest heroes. The original movie, computer animated by hand-drawn masters Ron Clements and John Musker and buoyed by Lin-Manuel Miranda’s energetic songs, represents the height of Disney animation this century.
But since then, the waters have been rough. “Moana 2,” originally planned as a streaming series, did little to expand the tale. And the new live-action remake does even less. Few of the live-action remakes, regardless of box-office receipts, are covered in glory. But “Moana,” directed by “Hamilton” veteran Thomas Kail, feels especially off course, offering little more than a lamentable swap of cartoon imagination for live-action do-over. The lifeless result veers perilously close to “Saturday Night Live” parody or one of those joke parallel universes in the “Spider-Verse” movies.
The new “Moana” is an often shot-for-shot, note-for-note remake of the original, with small pockets of new material. This is understandable, to a certain degree. The songs are still great. Catherine Lagaʻaia, who plays Moana, sings beautifully. The ocean, in digital splendor, is even bluer.
But all inventiveness has gone out to sea. One of the great things about animation is that it can do anything with a snap of the fingers. You can sense imagination at play. The glories of the original “Moana” lied both in its rich Polynesian connections and its cartoony fun: the goofy shape-shifting of the demigod Maui (Johnson), the toe-tapping moves of the giant crab Tamatoa (Jemaine Clement), the way the ocean heaves Moana back aboard the ship.
Making these things physical realities isn’t just an update in format; it saps them of their animated soul. The result comes across more like play acting than genuine artistic creation. There is, I would wager, no one who ever saw the little coconut pirates in the first “Moana” and said to themselves: “I need a more realistic looking Kakamora.”
The greatest benefit of the live-action update comes in the recreation of Moana’s native Motunui. If the original “Moana” was crafted in homage of Polynesia culture, the presence of real people makes that more tangible. John Tui, a New Zealand actor of Tongan descent, is especially good as Moana’s chief father.
But more often than not, the leap from animation to live action comes at a loss. This is especially true of characters destined to be cartoons, like the rooster Heihei. And it’s painfully the case with Tamatoa, whose “So Shiny” tune was once an undeniable highlight but is now perhaps the most awkwardly staged scene of the movie.
None of this is any fault of Lagaʻaia, whose lively performance is the film’s primary source of forward momentum. Maui — boastful, slyly comic, inevitably heroic — is among Johnson’s most perfectly suited roles. So, it’s a surprise how much his performance here struggles to match the verve of the animated Maui. It could be that Johnson, who’s been drawn increasingly to dramatic roles recently, has aged out a character who was a fantasy to begin with, and a wig isn’t enough to cover the discrepancy.
With Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” soon to sail into theaters, it’s an unusually good time for ocean-faring myths about gods and homecomings. No one knows how far this franchise will go — a third animated film is in development. But Moana is in increasingly desperate need of some new waters to explore.
