The film comes just 10 years after the animated original grossed more than $600m (\u00a3447m) at the global box office and became a sensation among young audiences \u2013 so much that a sequel, released in 2024, pocketed more than $1b (\u00a3745.3m) in box office receipts. But Disney\u2019s attempt to bring the world of Moana into live-action has seemingly backfired.<\/p>\n
Catherine Laga\u2019aia stars in the more or less shot-for-shot re-do of the original film, playing a strong-willed Polynesian teenager who teams up with a legendary demigod named Maui to restore prosperity to her people. As in the original animated film, Maui is played by Johnson, who has come under particular fire for his work in the new movie.<\/p>\n
The Independent\u2019s film critic Clarisse Loughrey described Disney as having hit \u201ccopy-and-paste\u201d on their animated hits, and lambasted Johnson for \u201crepeating the exact same voice performance he gave a decade ago<\/a>, only this time in live-action, and in the flat, softly tonged wig of someone in an Eighties mall photoshoot\u201d.<\/p>\n Writing in The Times<\/a>, critic Kevin Maher described Johnson\u2019s performance \u2013 \u201cfright wig\u201d and all \u2013 as \u201coddly lacklustre and restrained\u201d, adding: \u201cwhere his cartoon alter ego was goofy, rotund and gormless, Johnson is stuck with the wearisome mannerisms \u2013 cheesy grins and arched eyebrows \u2013 that linger from his time as a self-promoting wrestler. When he shouts his grating catchphrase, \u2018It\u2019s Maui time!\u2019, the moment lands as one of this year\u2019s cinematic lowlights\u201d.<\/p>\n The Guardian<\/a>\u2019s Peter Bradshaw also described Johnson as \u201cfeeling as if he is on autopilot, like a piece of software\u201d.<\/p>\n Vulture<\/a>\u2019s Alison Willmore was a bit more forgiving of Johnson\u2019s work in the film, but also described the live-action dynamic between Moana and Maui as\u2026 a bit creepy all of a sudden.<\/p>\n \u201cRendering their dynamic in live action makes it unignorable that this is a story about a grown man spending a lot of alone time with a teenage girl,\u201d Willmore writes. \u201cMoana quivers with a certain discomfort about that, first unsuccessfully trying to angle them as older brother paired with bratty younger sibling, then as reluctant surrogate father teaching a girl whose dad is already supportive and present. Restaging the action with actors adds little to the story \u2013 and most of the time makes things look worse.\u201d<\/p>\n Moana comes on the heels of an aborted attempt to rebrand Johnson as a more serious actor. Last year he starred in Benny Safdie\u2019s boxing drama The Smashing Machine, which launched at the Venice Film Festival with immediate Oscar buzz for Johnson\u2019s work \u2013 something aided by Johnson claiming in interviews that he\u2019d always wanted to break out of franchise fare<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI had this burning desire and voice that was saying, \u2018What if there is more and what if I can?\u2019 A lot of times, it\u2019s harder for us \u2013 or at least for me \u2013 to know what you are capable of when you\u2019ve been pigeonholed into something,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The Smashing Machine, however, was a box office bomb and received little in the way of awards attention. Johnson will next star in Jumanji 4.<\/p>\n The live-action Moana carries a $250m (\u00a3186.3m) production budget, but is expected to earn a disappointing $60m at the US box office this weekend \u2013 other estimates suggest it could open to as low as $40m (\u00a329.8m). This would put Moana in a similar bracket to live-action Disney flops, including last year\u2019s Snow White and 2019\u2019s Dumbo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":683824,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-683823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=683823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/683824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=683823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=683823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=683823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Dwayne](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/MNA-TP2-0087943.jpeg\")
Dwayne Johnson in ‘Moana’ (Disney)<\/p>\n![\"Dwayne](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/2026-07-08T050040Z_1775009036_RC2E9MA6HMVE_RTRMADP_3_FILM-MOANA-PREMIERE.JPG\")
Dwayne Johnson at the ‘Moana’ premiere this week (Reuters)<\/p>\n