However unnecessary it may be, director Thomas Kail’s live-action remake of Disney’s 2016 animated “Moana” is very entertaining, with gorgeous visuals, great songs from Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Dwayne Johnson and Jemaine Clement reprising their roles as demigod Maui and giant monster crab Tamatoa. Johnson and Miranda were also producers of the remake, ensuring it faithfully preserves every detail of the original to satisfy fans and attract new ones.
The opening narration is drawn from Polynesian origin myths about the creation of the world and a historical period called “The Long Pause” when, for unknown reasons, communities that had been explorers and colonizers stopped from 1000 BC to 1000 AD. In the Disney version of the story, the goddess Te Fiti created the islands, and the trickster and shapeshifter demigod Maui (Johnson) stole her glowing green heart to grant humans the power of creation and be seen as a hero. Without her heart, Te Fiti could not nourish her creations. And without his magical fishhook, Maui was stranded on an island.
As this story begins, Moana’s island is an idyllic setting of lush coconut trees, plentiful fish, balmy weather, and crystal-clear water that laps gently on the pristine shore. Moana’s father (John Tui) is the chief, and he is training his daughter to take over that responsibility someday, to literally add her own rock of intention to the sacred pile created by her ancestors. The community sings and dances together, and the coconuts and fish provide everything they need. They are happy with their contained world and comfortable with the rule that no one can go beyond the reef.
But even as a young child (Emma Puahi-Shapazian) and then an eight-year-old (Amaya Masoli), Moana was drawn to the ocean, and the ocean, engagingly anthropomorphized with some CGI, is drawn to her. A wave presents her with a glowing green disc whose value she will learn is the missing heart of Te Fiti.
In one of the all-time great “I wish” songs for all heroines in musicals, teenage Moana (winsome Catherine Laga’aia) sings about longing to see how far she can go. When the island begins to suffer blight, with the coconut trees withering and no fish in the reef, Moana’s grandmother (Rena Owen) takes her to a secret cave, revealing that their people were once voyagers who sailed beyond the reef to explore the world. Moana takes one of the ships to find Maui and have him return Te Fiti’s heart so the islands will begin to thrive again. Her googly-eyed pet rooster, Heihei, comes along.
She finds Maui, and Johnson has a blast playing the insouciant braggart who has a whole song about how we should all be thanking him for pretty much everything. He has no interest in her mission, but he does want to get his magic fishhook back from Tamatoa (Clement), a giant crab hoarder of anything sparkly or precious. As in the earlier film, Tamatoa’s scene is a highlight, visually, musically, and as a narrative transition to the evolving partnership of Maui and Moana and to the final journey to Te Fiti.
As he did in “A Monster Calls,” cinematographer Oscar Faura integrates live action and CGI seamlessly. He also uses the camera effectively to show us the vastness of the ocean and to sense how it makes Moana feel. The production design by John Myhre is wonderfully inviting, each space distinctive down to the smallest detail. As with some previous Disney animation-to-live-action remakes, the animation is still the highlight, from Maui’s tattoos and the ocean as a character to Heihei’s antics and Tamatoa’s dance number.
It remains refreshing to have a courageous and dedicated female lead whose story is not resolved by romance, and a villain who turns out to be more of a problem to be solved than an evil to be vanquished. It may not deliver anything new, but Maui and Moana are two of Disney’s most appealing characters; this version retells their story with sincerity, humor, and songs that remain among the all-time bangers.
