“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.” Because the new “Moana” truly delivers “Moana”: the beauty, the comic personality, the fairy-tale enchantment.
There are a few reasons for that. In the mostly sorry history of Disney live-action remakes, there’s a scale of how well they work (or don’t), and it may seem like it comes down to the luck of the draw. “Beauty and the Beast” lumbered. “Aladdin” had the charisma of Will Smith but lacked the genius of Robin Williams. “The Little Mermaid” couldn’t compete with the magic of under-the-sea animation. “Snow White,” while reviled by many, was to me one of the more successful remakes, with a lyrical zest rooted in Rachel Zegler’s radiance (and I enjoyed the Seven Dwarfs too, so hate me).
