Dwayne Johnson is receiving some of the worst reviews of his career for Disney’s live-action remake of Moana – which is also facing an equally dire opening weekend at the US box office.
The film comes just 10 years after the animated original grossed more than $600m (£447m) at the global box office and became a sensation among young audiences – so much that a sequel, released in 2024, pocketed more than $1b (£745.3m) in box office receipts. But Disney’s attempt to bring the world of Moana into live-action has seemingly backfired.
Catherine Laga’aia 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.
The Independent’s film critic Clarisse Loughrey described Disney as having hit “copy-and-paste” on their animated hits, and lambasted Johnson for “repeating the exact same voice performance he gave a decade ago, only this time in live-action, and in the flat, softly tonged wig of someone in an Eighties mall photoshoot”.
Writing in The Times, critic Kevin Maher described Johnson’s performance – “fright wig” and all – as “oddly lacklustre and restrained”, adding: “where his cartoon alter ego was goofy, rotund and gormless, Johnson is stuck with the wearisome mannerisms – cheesy grins and arched eyebrows – that linger from his time as a self-promoting wrestler. When he shouts his grating catchphrase, ‘It’s Maui time!’, the moment lands as one of this year’s cinematic lowlights”.
The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw also described Johnson as “feeling as if he is on autopilot, like a piece of software”.
Vulture’s Alison Willmore was a bit more forgiving of Johnson’s work in the film, but also described the live-action dynamic between Moana and Maui as… a bit creepy all of a sudden.
“Rendering 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,” Willmore writes. “Moana 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 – and most of the time makes things look worse.”
Moana comes on the heels of an aborted attempt to rebrand Johnson as a more serious actor. Last year he starred in Benny Safdie’s boxing drama The Smashing Machine, which launched at the Venice Film Festival with immediate Oscar buzz for Johnson’s work – something aided by Johnson claiming in interviews that he’d always wanted to break out of franchise fare.
“I had this burning desire and voice that was saying, ‘What if there is more and what if I can?’ A lot of times, it’s harder for us – or at least for me – to know what you are capable of when you’ve been pigeonholed into something,” he said.
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.
The live-action Moana carries a $250m (£186.3m) production budget, but is expected to earn a disappointing $60m at the US box office this weekend – other estimates suggest it could open to as low as $40m (£29.8m). This would put Moana in a similar bracket to live-action Disney flops, including last year’s Snow White and 2019’s Dumbo.
