Film Review: Moana

Moana
Director: Thomas Kail
Seven Bucks Productions, Flynn Picture Co., 5000 Broadway Productions
In Theaters: 07.10.2026

It’s a weird time to be a film critic, as several major studios are backing off from holding screenings for press and putting greater emphasis on influencers. There’s a lot of questioning among myself and my colleagues as to what the future holds for us, and when I see a film like Moana, I find myself wondering if we are indeed irrelevant to modern moviegoing. 

In this live-action remake of the 2016 Disney animation classic, Moana (Catherine Laga’aia, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart), the adventurous daughter of a Polynesian island chief, sets sail across the ocean to save her people after their island begins suffering from a mysterious blight. Guided by the ocean itself, she finds the legendary demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson, Fast Five, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle) and convinces him to help restore the heart of the goddess Te Fiti, which he stole centuries earlier. Facing dangerous creatures, ancient myths and her own doubts, Moana discovers her true identity as a wayfinder and learns the importance of courage, heritage and protecting the natural world.

I’m not one of those critics who liken every Disney live-action retelling to a war crime: Cinderella (2015), The Jungle Book and Pete’s Dragon (both 2016) were all terrific movies. But what started out with the concept of reimagining has lost all semblance of imagination, and Moana manages to be even more redundant than Jon Favreau‘s 2019 shot-for-shot remake of The Lion King. There’s not a single moment in this pointless and by-the-numbers exercise that brings us a single thing that we didn’t get 10 years ago, back when Disney was still making great original animated movies. Can a movie with a good story, lovable leads, and terrific songs really be called awful? I can’t bring myself to do that, but I also can’t call it legitimately good when it’s completely devoid of creativity and purpose. The presence of a CGI chicken as a major character, made to look like Heihei from the original, perfectly personifies the puzzling pointlessness of this movie.

It’s so boring to even write about that I have to resort to gimmicky alliteration just to entertain myself. The new song, Along The Way by Lin-Manuel Miranda, is fantastic, but the thought that we’re literally sitting through a two-hour film just to get to the ending credits to get something original is beyond ridiculous.

Laga’aia is a delightful screen presence, and though her singing voice is not quite as strong as Auliʻi Cravalho was in the animated film, she does a stellar job in the role. Johnson is fine, but he’s lacking the sense of energy and joy that he brought the first time around, and who can blame him? A year after proving himself as a dramatic actor in The Smashing Machine, he’s playing the Disney Parks version of himself. The rest of the cast features a couple of holdovers reprising their roles and a lot of new faces, but make no mistake, everyone is simply repeating a performance that’s already been done.

There have been a number of films this year (even a couple in the past week) that are far worse than Moana, but none that have left me feeling as depressed about where the industry is at the present time. The only difference between Moana and AI-generated slop is that this movie created a lot of jobs. While that’s worthwhile in and of itself, it’s hardly an argument in favor of content made by people being inherently superior. —Patrick Gibbs

Read more film reviews by Patrick Gibbs:
Film Review: Lucky Strike
Film Review: The Death of Robin Hood

If you enjoy SLUG’s film reviews, consider joining our community of donors!