SPOILER-FREE PLOT SUMMARY
Once a thriving community of sea life, plants and vegetation, the Polynesian island of Motunui has started to fade. With no more fish and the plants slowly dying, Moana (played by Catherine Laga’aia, in her feature film debut) believes it’s up to her to find a solution for her people. After believing she’s been called by the ocean — but also scared because her father, Chief Tui (John Tui), has always told her “never go beyond the reef” — her grandmother Tala (Rena Owen) finds her on the beach. She begins to tell Moana how the Motunui people used to be voyagers and shows her a concealed cave where their old ships are. She tells her how a demigod named Maui (Dwayne Johnson) stole the goddess Te Fiti’s heart 1,000 years ago and the seas haven’t been safe since. Knowing her granddaughter has been called by the ocean to find and confront Maui in an effort to restore balance, she gives her the green stone believed to be Te Fiti’s heart and encourages her to follow her calling to save the island. Soon after, Moana finds herself in the ocean on a camakau with her chicken Heihei as a stowaway. But, even if she finds Maui, will he be willing to help give Te Fiti her heart back?
SPOILER-FREE REVIEW
First things first, Laga’aia is great as the lead. The way she plays right up to the line of innocence until she needs to switch over to confidence shows why she was perfectly cast as the highly-beloved titular character.
While hardly dilaing it up to the level of his performance in SMASHING MACHINE, Johnson is as-advertised as Maui. His playful-yet-arrogant banter with Moana is fun to behold and the audience can really appreciate his duality as well.
Now, the real problem with MOANA… Legendary filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola was once asked whether he wanted to know how films he liked were made. He said “No, I absolutely don’t want to know how they were made. I don’t want to think about it.” Well, director Thomas Kail constantly makes us think about it.
Lots of tight close ups, an abundance of angled sailing shots to hide the ocean that they weren’t on and even more CGI landscapes just to try and trick the audience that the whole movie takes place on an island or in the ocean. But it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. By shooting it the way he did, the audience feels a “cheapness” about it, like they shot the whole thing in The Volume — or in a large swimming pool — and never visited a single tropical location with actors.
Lastly, we didn’t need this. The reason LILO & STITCH, THE LION KING, THE LITTLE MERMAID and THE JUNGLE BOOK worked is because their live action remakes came 23, 25, 34 and 49 years after their beloved animated release, respectively. Most of the people who grew up on 2016’s MOANA are barely out of college, let alone have their own children to bring to the theater. Disney executives apparently couldn’t figure that out and green lit this project at least 13 years too early anyway. A startling lack of foresight for a company usually pretty forward thinking.
Laga’aia and Johnson are solid but the heavy CGI, the consistent illusion-breaking and the fact that the original animated classic is only a decade old all lead to MOANA being nothing more than a cash grab. Highly disappointing.
JKG SCORE: 4.5 out of 10
Untitled Film Project 