Moana review – Disney’s live-action remake is a waste of everyone’s time and talent
Shouldn’t it feel like a scam to pay for the same film twice? The new live-action remake of Moana, to quote the famous Simpsons joke, is “Malibu Stacy with a new hat”. It’s the same doll only with a cheap, added accessory – “enshittification” the Hollywood way, as studios protect shareholder interests by avoiding risk and hitting copy-and-paste on their animated hits. Audiences, certainly, have been otherwise starved of original family films. But is the situation really so dire that we’ll now accept Dwayne Johnson repeating the exact same voice performance he gave a decade ago, only this time in live-action, and in the flat, softly tonged wig of someone in an Eighties mall photoshoot? He returns here to the role of demigod Maui, recruited by a chieftain’s daughter, Moana (originated by Auliʻi Cravalho, here played by Catherine Laga’aia), to bring back the stolen heart of the creation goddess Te Fiti and reverse the famine that plagues the people of her island, Motunui. This Moana still looks largely “animated”, by way of green screen and …
