Moana

Check out my full review @ https://www.manuelsbento.com/moana-2026-stranded-on-a-soundstage-of-pure-nostalgia/

Rating: C

MOANA had every chance to expand on its animated predecessor, and it wastes almost all of it. Beat for beat identical to the 2016 original, this remake trades vibrant, sun-drenched color for green screen sterility, turning musical numbers that once felt joyously alive into stiff, mechanical spectacle. The lead performance brings real warmth to the title role, and the central chemistry has its moments, but neither is enough to disguise a film that never once asks why it...

On a gorgeous Polynesian island where they all...speak...very...slowly, the young "Moana" (Catherine Laga'aia) is conflicted by her father's (John Tui) warning never to venture beyond the reef that protects their home and her grandmother (Rena Owen) who is embedded more in the tribe's ancestral and mystical roots and who has little fear of the open ocean and what lies beyond. When their crops all start to die, she is reminded of the legend of the demi-god "Maui" (Dwayne Johnson) who took the heart-stone from the benign goddess from whom all life sprang, and so she determines to find him and hi...

She sings, he grins wide / Water swallows the whole screen / Talent wins the day

#filmreviewhaiku...