Director: Thomas Kail

Cast: Catherine Lagaʻaia, Dwayne Johnson, John Tui

Synopsis:

In Disney’s live-action reimagining, Moana journeys beyond the reef with Maui to restore prosperity to her people.

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“Moana” is a Disney live-action remake that escapes the Disney live-action remake blues — in fact, it soars above them. It’s the best of these movies I’ve seen. (I don’t count Kenneth Branagh’s “Cinderella,” because I didn’t think that was truly a remake of the 1950 Disney cartoon.) Admittedly, we aren’t talking about a very high bar. And it’s a rather odd bar, since this is an entire genre in which the definition of the genre is that it’s completely and totally unnecessary.

These movies add nothing (except to Disney’s revenues). In nearly every case, they subtract. They have all had qualities in common — they’re earthbound, they’re clunky, they’re watchable, they make you long for the original. You could say that they’re existentially mediocre. But in the case of “Moana,” for maybe the first time, if you told me that a child who’d never seen the animated version was going to see the remake, I’d say, “All good.”

© Roger Ebert