Moana (2026) Review: A Faithful Copy Adrift

Is Moana worth watching?

Mostly no. Disney’s live-action Moana is lavish and warmly acted, but it copies the 2016 animated film so closely that it rarely feels like more than an expensive echo. Catherine Lagaʻaia is a genuine find in the title role, and the ocean photography has a real sense of weight and light. The problem is that director Thomas Kail treats the original as a blueprint to be traced rather than a story to be retold, so the remake offers little that the cartoon did not already do better.

What is Moana about?

Moana retells the story of a chief’s daughter on the Polynesian island of Motunui who feels the pull of the sea beyond the reef that her people no longer cross. When a creeping blight threatens the island, she answers the Ocean’s call and sets out on a voyage to find the demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson) and restore the stolen heart of the island goddess Te Fiti.

Catherine Lagaʻaia plays Moana, with Johnson returning to the role he voiced in animation, Rena Owen as her grandmother, Gramma Tala, and a supporting cast that includes Frankie Adams, John Tui and Jemaine Clement. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s songs from the original return. Kail, best known for directing Hamilton, is at the helm of this American production, which is in English and runs 115 minutes.

Catherine Lagaʻaia deserves a film of her own

The best thing here is the new Moana. Lagaʻaia has an easy, thoughtful screen presence, and she gives the character a grounded seriousness that works beautifully in the quieter island scenes. Her moments with Rena Owen’s Gramma Tala have something animation cannot quite supply: real faces, real light and the sense of a family history carried in small gestures.

The trouble is that the film keeps steering her toward the shape of a performance that already exists. Line readings, beats and even physical business echo the 2016 version so closely that Lagaʻaia rarely gets to surprise us. Dwayne Johnson faces the reverse problem. His charm is intact, but Maui’s larger-than-life comic energy, which suited a cartoon demigod, feels more like a star cheerfully revisiting an old hit when it is transferred to flesh and blood.

Beautiful water, borrowed storytelling

Oscar Faura’s photography is the remake’s strongest craft argument. In daylight, the lagoons, sails and open sea have a salt-air clarity, and the voyaging sequences carry a physical sense of scale that suits the story of a people who navigate by stars and swells. Costumes and production design are richly detailed and treat Pacific culture with evident care.

Yet the film rarely uses these tools to do anything new. Scenes arrive in the same order, framed in similar ways, set to the same songs. A remake can justify itself by bringing fresh perspective to familiar material, and there are moments, particularly in the musical numbers, when the film loosens up and starts to direct rather than transcribe. Those moments are brief. Much of the action in the later stretch is also murky, with effects work that looks heavy and dim where the original was bright and elastic.

The songs still carry it

Miranda’s songs remain as buoyant as ever, and the voyaging anthems in particular benefit from being performed by a real ensemble on real water. For families who have the soundtrack on repeat, hearing it in this new setting will have genuine appeal. But the music was always the strongest part of the original too, so it cannot rescue a film that otherwise adds so little.

Who should watch Moana?

Young children who have never seen the animated version, and families who want a gentle big-screen musical, will find it pleasant enough. Fans of Lagaʻaia’s performance, or of Pacific storytelling on screen, may want to see her debut. There is mild peril and a few scary creatures, nothing beyond what the original contained. Anyone who knows the 2016 film well should expect déjà vu.

Other titles worth your time instead or alongside:

• Mulan, Disney’s 2020 remake, which at least tried to reshape its source rather than trace it.
• The Odyssey, Christopher Nolan’s take on an ancient journey home by sea, from the same summer.
• Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, for ocean-going fantasy adventure with its own personality.

The verdict

This Moana is handsome, sincere and well cast, and Catherine Lagaʻaia is a real discovery. But a remake that repeats its model so faithfully cannot escape the comparison, and the 2016 animated film remains the livelier, funnier and more imaginative way to take this voyage.