Moana (2026): Film Review

I love the moments when the Polynesian culture is on display. The first act of the film is filled with decadent costumes, choreography, and caramel skin and serves as a reminder of the importance of representation. I actually found myself getting emotional during early scenes with Young Moana (played at age 4 by the adorable Emma Puahi-Shapazian and at age 8 by the equally adorable Amaya Masoli) and her family (John Tui, Frankie Adams, and Rena Owen as her father, mother, and grandmother, respectively) for this exact reason and started to brace for what might’ve been a surprising experience. Then, the rest of the film happened. 

This is Thomas Kail’s first feature (Disney really buried the lede with that one). He might have a Tony for directing Hamilton on stage (and Emmy nominations for directing episodes of Fosse/Verdon), but as far as the big screen goes, he’s lacking. It makes sense that the only scenes where any kind of a vision stand out are the already scattered musical numbers. “You’re Welcome,” sung and made popular by Dwayne Johnson, and “Shiny,” sung by Jemaine Clement as Tamatoa (again), had a liveliness missing from most of the film that I only wish had been more present. 

The majority of the story’s second act sees Moana and Maui on a sailboat in the ocean, but the beautiful blue palette of the animated original is rendered flat and lifeless here, complete with horrendous green screen. In many ways, this almost felt like a stage production of the animated story, but, unfortunately, it doesn’t give Original Broadway Cast. It barely even gives revival… It feels like Moana On Ice. 

I have defended Disney’s live-action remakes in the past, as they have mostly brought enough “new” to the table to justify their being made, but, most importantly, they were remakes of older films (I took similar umbrage with the recent Dreamworks live-action remake of How to Train Your Dragon, but the care shown from the original creative team at least makes that remake enjoyable). 

Retelling an aged story with a modern perspective can work, but that doesn’t work when the film being remade and perspective being adjusted are both younger than the middle-school-aged children I work with. Moana’s story is still actively touted by Disney as one of their most new-age, unfortunately making this remake’s existence also read as an aggressive, obvious, and gross capitalization on Polynesian culture. I’m at least glad that they elected to remake a story with human characters - and not rehash 2019’s fully animated Lion King remake - but the animated world of Moana is too fantastical for a live-action rendition to feel any kind of believable and too culturally rich for this film's forgetfulness of it to be acceptable. 

Catherine Laga’aia is okay in her debut film role as the title character. She is beautiful, but I was mostly struck by how closely she sounds to Auli’i Cravalho, the original voice of Moana, to the point where I thought Cravalho might have dubbed Laga’aia’s singing voice. 

As far as the music, the score and songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda still stand out because the strong aspects of both elements remain virtually unchanged. There is an extended rap in Maui’s song, “You’re Welcome,” a slightly longer bridge on “Shiny,” and brief new score pieces from Mark Mancina including a mix of indigenous languages, all of which are slight, but welcome additions.

How minute the changes are is evidence enough that this story didn’t need to be touched. There was clearly no effort here to do anything new with the story. Hell, the only new song in the film (which isn’t bad) is in the credits. We all know the phrase, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Well, Moana was never broken, so why the hell is Disney trying to fix it? Is your wig squeezing your brain too tight, Disney? 

Viewed on 7/7/26 at press screening

Published on 7/8/26