Producers: Dwayne Johnson, Beau Flynn, Dany Garcia, Hiram Garcia and Lin-Manuel Miranda   Director: Thomas Kail   Screenplay: Jared Bush and Dana Ledoux Miller   Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Catherine Laga’aia, Rena Owen, John Tui, Frankie Adams, Jemaine Clement, Amaya Masoli and Emma Puahi-Shapazian   Distributor: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Grade: C

“Unnecessary” is the word most often used to describe the string of so-called live-action remakes Disney has made of the studio’s animated movies, and it certainly applies to this reworking of 2016’s “Moana,” which was itself followed in 2024 by an animated sequel.  The new version, which could more accurately be called an animated movie into which human actors have been visually plopped, follows the earlier film slavishly but is inferior to it in virtually every respect.  Still, it’s better than the worst of these Disney remakes, though far from the best.

Attractive, chipper Catherine Laga’aia has inherited the title role of the heiress-apparent of Motunui (she’s played at four and eight by Emma Puahi-Shapazian and Amaya Masoli), a South Pacific island overseen by her father Tui (John Tui).  When the vegetation that supports the happy community fails and fish disappear from the harbor, her grandmother Tala (Rena Owen) encourages her to follow the call of the Ocean to ignore a long-standing rule upheld by Tui and his wife Sina (Frankie Adams) prohibiting anyone from sailing beyond the reef.  Her goal is to find Maui (Dwayne Johnson), the demigod who stole the heart of Te Fiti, the living island who brought life to Polynesia, and convince him to join her in returning it, thereby restoring balance and prosperity.

She succeeds in finding Maui, who has been stranded powerless without his magic fishhook for a thousand years, but he initially rejects her pleas.  Eventually, however, she persuades him to relent, and they battle their way through a gauntlet of foes, including the jabbering coconut pirates known as the Kakamora and the giant crab Tamatoa (Jermaine Clement) to retrieve Maui’s magic hook and confront Te Kā, the monstrous volcano monster that has brought dissention and blight to the islands by preventing access to Te Fiti.  But Moana realizes that the revival of the region depends on the transformation of Te Kā to her original form.         

This scenario, which Jared Bush, with an assist from Dana Ledoux Miller (“Moana 2”), has crafted from his 2016 screenplay, plays better than it reads, and it’s helped immeasurably by the catchy tunes by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Opetaia Foa’I and Mark Mancina carried over from the first film (Mancina also provided the underscore, as he did in 2016).  Thomas Kail, directing his first theatrical feature, has worked with cinematographer Oscar Faura and editor Melanie Ann Oliver reasonably well to blend the live-action footage with the animation and effects supervised by J.D. Schwalm and Bill Westenhofer, but some of the episodes, especially those involving Tamatoa and Te Kā, may, in their enveloping widescreen imagery, prove a mite too intense for the smallest of fry.

Kail elicits an engaging performance from newcomer Laga’aia, even if he encourages her perkiness a bit much and features an awful lot of close-ups of her smiling or irritated face.  He also allows Owen to italicize every one of her lines and actions to excess.  Meanwhile he gives Johnson free rein to go as big as possible in projecting Maui’s egotism and arrogance.  (The ex-wrestler is huge physically, too; has he ever looked so beefy in the past?)  The rest of the cast is okay, but Heihei, the rooster who accompanies Moana on the journey, comes across this time as more annoying than amusing.  And there’s too much dancing; though Tiana Nonosina Liufau’s choreography is suitably athletic, a little of it goes a long way.  A lush production design (John Myhre) and colorful costumes (Liz McGregor) top off the visual package.           

If this “Moana” were a completely new movie without a predecessor to compare it to, one might welcome it more warmly.  But as it is, the film, while certainly opulent, is second-best, and though its fidelity to its predecessor is better than had the makers decided on radical changes (“Snow White” certainly proved how disastrous that can be), the utter familiarity is tiring over a two-hour span.  As has been the case with virtually all of these Disney remakes, the original is the better choice.