Review: 'Moana' delivers a live-action copy of the 2016 animated story that's too timid to go for anything deeper

Disney’s latest live-action remake of one of its animated movies, “Moana” has the same characters, the same music and the same sprightly pace of the 2016 original. What it lacks is a reason, other than to fill Disney’s coffers, to exist.

It’s only been 10 years since the animated “Moana” delivered us a new kind of Disney princess — a stubborn and resilient Pacific Islander teen who is called to the ocean and works to restore balance to nature and save her village. And less than two years since Disney brought that girl back in the animated “Moana 2,” as determined as ever to connect people across the sea.

So why go back to the original live-action “Moana” now? Because Disney has found that maintaining its intellectual property across platforms, from animation to live action to branding opportunities, makes the shareholders happy. And, as evidenced by last year’s ho-hum live-action remake of “Lilo & Stitch,” the audience will go along with the money grab if it means they can keep their kids entertained for 90 minutes.

Providing a synopsis of the new “Moana” is almost unnecessary, because it’s almost beat-for-beat the same as the original. Teen Moana (voiced by newcomer Catherine Laga’aia) is drawn to the ocean, even though her father, Chief Tui (John Tai), warns her that no one on their island has ever gone past the reef. But when the coconut trees are hit by blight and the village fishermen return with empty nets, Moana senses that the solution lies out in the far-off ocean.

With a nudge from her grandma (played by the great Maori star Rena Owen), Moana learns that her people weren’t always stuck on land, but were great voyagers on the ocean. So she heads out determined to save her village by finding a magical stone and reuniting it with the island goddess Tefiti. To do that, she must enlist the demigod who first stole the stone, Maui — who’s played by the same actor who voiced the character 10 years ago: Dwayne Johnson.

This casting may be the central flaw with this version of “Moana.” As a cartoon, Maui was a perfect comic creation, an eight-foot slab of pumped-up muscles who dwarfs the very human Moana — and Johnson’s voice, particularly singing “You’re Welcome,” a Lin-Manuel Miranda-written song that makes the most of his limited vocal range, remains a delight. But the very human Johnson doesn’t look that much like a demigod (even if he is 6-foot-5 next to Laga’aia’s 5-foot-2 frame).

Director Thomas Kail, best known for staging Miranda’s “Hamilton” (and directing the live-to-tape version on Disney+), colors safely within the prescribed Disney lines, never getting too far away from the imagery or characters the 2016 version burned into our collective brains. It’s an odd irony that in a movie about a young woman finding the courage to go beyond the reef, this “Moana” never gets out of the shallow end of the pool.

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‘Moana’

★★

Opens Friday, July 10, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for action/peril, some scary images, rude humor and brief thematic elements. Running time: 115 minutes.

Review: 'Minions & Monsters' run the little yellow creatures through old Hollywood, and a wealth of chaotically energetic humor

It’s been 16 years since Illumination Entertainment debuted with the villain-turned-good comedy “Despicable Me,” and it’s been at least two movies since any entry in the franchise have been worth anyone other than shareholders to take notice.

It’s a nice surprise to say that “Minions & Monsters,” the seventh movie featuring the goggle-eyed pill-shaped comical creatures, is the best movie in the series since the first “Despicable Me.” That’s admittedly a low bar, but the new movie wins for leaning into the joyous anarchy of the little Minions, and the hilarious and loving riffs on Hollywood history.

Minions, we’re told by a perky Hollywood museum tour guide (voiced by Allison Janney, our narrator), are responsible for much of movie history. Well, two Minions — James and Henry — who find the regular life of their tribe, finding an evil boss to serve, isn’t as fun as telling stories. When the Minions accidentally crash a movie set, they are found by a desperate director, Max (voiced by Christoph Waltz), who discovers the little guys make good movie extras.

What follows are a series of energetic gags that show the Minions inserted into classic silent movie scenes, alongside the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton. Will the children in Illumination’s target audience recognize the references? Probably not, but it’s thrilling to think this will introduce them to some of the classic silent images.

The twist in the script — by Brian Lynch and Pierre Coffin, the movie’s director (and the voice of all the Minions) — comes with the advent of sound, because the Minions’ gibberish voices don’t fit in the talkies. James dreams of making an epic monster movie, and uses a spell book picked up earlier in the movie, summons a tiny Cthulhu-like creature, Goomi (voiced by Trey Parker), to help make it happen. 

From the midpoint to the end, “Minions & Monsters” remains just as frenetic as the first half, but not quite as funny. The jokes about old Hollywood make the Minions the comic legends the other movies in the franchise failed to convince us they were.

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‘Minions & Monsters’

★★★

Opens Wednesday, July 1, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for violence/action, language and rude/macabre behavior. Running time: 90 minutes.

Review: 'Supergirl' serves up DC Comics' cynical side, and gives Milly Alcock a chance to shine as Superman's jaded cousin

If you like your superheroes surly, then director Craig Gillespie’s “Supergirl” is right up your alley — though you may wish, as I did, for more for the young woman of steel to do in the second movie of James Gunn’s DC cinematic era.

What you may know about Supergirl — either from her 1959 comic book debut, the 1984 film with Helen Slater, Melissa Benoist’s portrayal on TV (2015 to 2021) or Sasha Calle’s too-brief appearance in “The Flash” (2023) — is that she’s Kara Zor-El, Superman’s cousin and the second survivor of the destruction of the planet Krypton. Unlike Superman, aka Kal-El, aka Clark Kent, Kara did some living before arriving on Earth. 

In this movie, those experiences — seen in flashbacks, with David Krumholtz (“Oppenheimer”) and Emily Beecham (“Little Women”) as her parents — have made Kara (Milly Alcock) more jaded about the universe. Clark, Kara says at one point, “sees the good in everyone, and I see the truth.”

Kara spends a lot of time off-world, usually looking for planets with red suns like Krypton — because on those planets, she can get drunk and not have superpowers. She rides around in a junker spacecraft that looks like an RV on the inside, with her sole companion her dog, Krypto, who stole Gunn’s “Superman” out from under David Corenswet in his blue tights.

Rookie screenwriter Ana Nogueira’s story starts with a brutal scavenger race, the Brigands, who terrorize a family in the middle of nowhere. The Brigands leave behind a teen girl, Ruthye (Eve Ridley), who vows to kill the group’s leader, Krem (Matthias Schoenaerts), for revenge. 

Ruthye’s father managed to destroy the Brigands’ ship before he was killed, so the group finds a new one to steal: Kara’s. When she puts up a fight, Krem hits Krypto with a poison dart — and a healer tells Kara, through Ruthye, that she has three days to find Krem to get the antidote. 

Kara searches for the Brigands, and Ruthye tags along, though the two disagree strongly on what will happen when they find Krem. Ruthye intends to kill him, while Kara needs him alive to get the antidote to save Krypto.

What follows are a series of fight scenes, some of them in dive bars that make the Mos Eisley cantina look like a Best Western. In one bar, Kara and Ruthye encounter Lobo (Jason Momoa), a bored immortal who works as a bounty hunter. Lobo is a DC Comics fan favorite, I’m told, and Momoa brings the same comical menace to the role that he did to “Fast X” and “A Minecraft Movie.”

Gillespie’s action sequences are serviceable, if overly reliant on CGI and whiplash-inducing camera moves, in a narrative that borrows a little too much from Gunn’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” movies. 

The best part of “Supergirl” is Kara herself, and the way Alcock finds the sweet spot between the goody-goody hero and the sulky, despondent survivor. Hopefully Gunn & Co. will bring her back in a movie that makes full use of her bad attitude.

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‘Supergirl’

★★★

Opens Friday, June 26, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for sequences of strong violence, action, language, and smoking. Running time: 107 minutes.

Review: 'Couture' tells of four women in the fashion world, but the stories don't form a satisfying whole

French filmmaker Alice Winocour cannot be accused of not filling her drama “Couture” with plenty of smart ideas about the fashion world and the women on whom everything in it depends. Corralling all of those ideas into a consistently engaging film narrative isn’t so easy, though.

Winocour sets her film in Paris fashion week, with the stories of four different women:

• Maxine Walker (Angelina Jolie), an American indie filmmaker hired by a fashion house to direct the short film that will open the label’s big show. Her work is interrupted by a worrying call from her doctor, and news that she has breast cancer.

• Ada (Anyier Anei), a model just arrived in Paris, whose unique look has prompted the fashion house to hire her to lead off the runway show — and star as a vampire in Maxine’s short film. She’s trying to figure out this strange business, while supporting her family back in a camp for South Sudan refugees.

• Angèle (Ella Rumpf), the makeup artist hired for the label’s show and Maxine’s film — and who also has dreams of turning her backstage experiences into a screenplay. (It’s no coincidence that Winocour makes Rumpf’s Angèle the narrator.)

• And Christine (Garance Marillier), a seamstress trusted with putting together the label’s signature dress, the one Ada will wear down the runway. 

Winocour connects these four women’s stories in some intriguing and visually arresting ways. My favorite came when Christine pins thin red ribbons around a mannequin as a guide, and later a doctor (Vincent Lindon) draws similar red lines with a marker on Maxine’s chest ahead of her MRI. But for every arresting image like that, there’s something trite and predictable — like Angèle’s narration, or Maxine’s romantic fling with her cinematographer (Louis Garrel). 

The attention to detail is also striking. Winocour convinced Chanel to let her film in their atelier (with the double-C logo carefully removed), bringing a sharp authenticity to the movie, particularly in Marillier’s scenes in the workroom.

I would have loved to have seen any of the four stories — especially Ada’s, and also Christine’s — lifted from this movie and explored in a separate film. With this four-in-one approach, “Couture” gives us an interesting tasting menu rather than a satisfying meal.

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‘Couture’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, June 26, in theaters; Rated R for language, some sexuality, nudity and brief bloody violence. Running time: 103 minutes; in English and in French with subtitles. 

Review: 'Lucky Strike' tries to deliver World War II action on a budget, with a wooden Scott Eastwood in a solo survival march

The World War II drama “Lucky Strike” has neither the budget to create the epic sweep of a “Saving Private Ryan” or the acting talent to make its attempt at a one-against-all combat thriller worth the time.

The story is in the Ardennes Forest of Belgium in December 1944, just as the German army is launching its last-ditch effort to stop the approaching Allied forces — a massive and deadly six-week push that became known as The Battle of the Bulge. Director Rod Davis Lurie (“The Contender,” “The Last Castle”), co-writing with Mark Frydman, concentrates on a U.S. Army unit of engineers, six men tasked with planting explosives to block a road that the German Panzer divisions need to advance.

Leading the unit is Capt. John Castle (played by Scott Eastwood), an efficient and personable commander. We don’t see much of his charm, though, because his men are gunned down as they’re finishing the placement of their explosives. Castle succeeds in setting off the explosives, but then faces another dilemma: Getting back to base, wounded and alone.

He gets on the unit’s portable radio, but the men on the other end cannot help, because they’re pinned down by enemy fire, as well. The voice on the radio tells Castle to start walking to a rendezvous site 27 kilometers away — and to guard his radio battery, which he’s told will be his lifeline.

What follows in Lurie and Frydman’s telling are a series of encounters, with a Belgian farm family, various SS soldiers, what’s left of a Black U.S. Army unit that was ambushed early in the story, and an American (Taylor John Smith) who’s separated from his unit. 

Filmed in Bulgaria, the movie is short of recognizable cast members — besides Eastwood, the only major players are Colin Hanks as a colonel who gives Castle’s unit their orders, and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor (“King Richard”), who appears in the movie’s framing device and whose role in the story is only revealed at the end.

Lurie rests everything on the strong back and jutting chin of Eastwood — and while the actor has a face that resembles that of his famous father, Clint Eastwood, he doesn’t have the same charisma or gravitas. Between his wooden performance and the production’s limited resources in making wartime carnage look convincing, “Lucky Strike” becomes a damp squib of a movie, never delivering the nail-biting action it promises.

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‘Lucky Strike’

★★

Opens Friday, June 26, in theaters. Rated R for violence, some grisly images, and language. Running time: 103 minutes.

Review: 'Toy Story 5' brings the playthings back for another fun adventure, and delivers a gentle message about limiting screen time

It’s time to play with your favorite toys again, as Pixar bring out “Toy Story 5,” the latest chapter of the animation studio’s longest and most durable franchise — a witty and warm-hearted adventure that makes a strong case for the importance of physical play in an increasingly digital world.

Little Bonnie (voiced by Scarlett Spears) still likes to play with her toys — Jessie the cowgirl (voiced by Joan Cusack), Buzz Lightyear (voiced by Tim Allen) and the rest — but she’s starting to notice that other kids don’t want to play with her. They’re all spending their time looking at screens, so Bonnie asks her parents to let her have one, too.

Her parents, eager to help Bonnie fit in, get her a Lilypad, an electronic gadget that provides both games and social contact with the girls from her dance class. Bonnie’s toys, now led by Jessie, see Lilypad (voiced by Greta Lee) as a threat to their existence — and Lily, programmed to believe that what she’s offering is in the child’s best interests, isn’t going to give up her new dominance easily.

Jessie enlists some help, their old friend Woody (voiced by Tom Hanks) — who, if you remember from “Toy Story 4,” has teamed up with Bo Peep (voiced by Annie Potts) to help abandoned and discarded toys in the wild. 

Before Woody arrives, though, Jessie and her horse, Bullseye, get separated from the rest — and end up at the house where Jessie’s first owner lived. (We even see the tree with the tire swing where Jessie was abandoned, first seen in a flashback scene from “Toy Story 2” with that tear-inducing Sarah McLachlan song.) 

The family living in the house today includes a little girl, Blaze (voiced by Mykal-Michelle Harris), and Jessie sees that Blaze could be the real friend Bonnie really needs. Jessie finds that she must make new friends with Blaze’s discarded tech devices — including a toilet-training gizmo, Mr. Smarty Pants (voiced by Conan O’Brien) — to reach Bonnie through Lilypad.

Director and co-screenwriter Andrew Stanton — who directed “Finding Nemo” and “WALL-E,” and has wiring credits on all five “Toy Story” movies — creates a sprightly story that likely will appeal to viewers of all ages. Stanton and co-director/co-writer McKenna Harris also deliver a firm argument for the importance of limiting children’s screen time and encouraging physical play and its imagination-stretching benefits, which has been a welcome constant ever since Buzz arrived in Andy’s room more than 30 years ago.  

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‘Toy Story 5’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, June 19, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for some thematic elements and rude humor. Running time: 102 minutes.

Review: 'The Furious' is an inventive Hong Kong martial-arts movie with fast and bloody action from start to finish

Pick practically anything off the shelf at a Home Depot, and the folks behind “The Furious” will turn it into a weapon — creating the most endlessly inventive and freakishly violent martial-arts movie this side of “The Raid” movies.

In an unnamed southeast Asian country, Wang Wei (Xie Miao) works quietly to provide for himself and his daughter, Rainy (Yang Enyou), who communicates with her mute father using sign language. When a child trafficking ring plucks Rainy off the streets, Wang tries to fight back — and, with fast moves and righteous anger, he nearly succeeds. 

When the bad guys get away with Rainy, Wang goes to the police, who say they can’t help. A woman sergeant, Yadong (Manatsanun Phanlerdwongsakul), tries to take on the case, but her commander overrules her. Later, to no one’s surprise, we find out the commander is in the pocket of the wealthy cabal in charge of the child trafficking.

Wang spots one of Rainy’s kidnappers, which leads him to a high-security nightclub, where he starts bashing heads into tables, glass partitions and other heads. One of the people he encounters there, Navin (Joe Taslim), turns out to be on the same side — he’s a journalist who’s been investigating the missing children, along with his reporter wife, Matia (JeeJa Yanin), who we see get kidnapped before the opening credits. 

Wang and Navin team up, and become a two-man wrecking crew — using knives, hammers, ice blocks, lead pipes and whatever else is handy to take out the bad guys. Is the bloody violence too vicious? Maybe, until you’re reminded that those on the receiving end are trafficking young children, so they get what’s coming to them.

Director Kenji Tanigaki stages one physically impressive fight sequence after another, all the way up to a two-on-two final boss battle that gets complicated by a fifth fighter (Brian Le) returning to the action — and seemingly alternating his loyalties with each hit, encapsulating the entertainingly blood-soaked chaos of the entire film.

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‘The Furious’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, June 12, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for strong bloody violence and language. Running time: 113 minutes; in English, and in Chinese and Thai with subtitles.

Review: 'Stop! That! Train!' adds a campy spin to the 'Airplane!' disaster-spoof genre, with 'RuPaul's Drag Race' alums and a lot of cameos

The wild and wacky “Stop! That! Train!” is a broad, goofy parody of ‘70s disaster movies that puts a lot of faith in the comedy stylings of several alums of “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” including RuPaul Charles themself.

The action takes place aboard the Glamazonian Express, a high-priced high-speed train where every rail attendant worth their tray tables wants to work. Tess (played by Ginger Minj) and Deedee (played by Jujubee) work, instead, at a low-rent rival company, Stank Rail. But when that rail line shuts down unexpectedly, Tess and Deedee hustle their way into an open job at Glamazonan — despite objections from the first-class crew, led by the haughty Amber (Brock Hayhoe). 

At U.S. Rail headquarters, though, one of the dispatchers, Donna Dusk (Rachel Bloom), sees trouble ahead — a massive weather event, with the technical name Stormaganza. Unfortunately, her bosses, all men, don’t believe Donna’s warnings and mock her for thinking she’s smart. Donna persists, though, and contacts the Glamazonian Express’ conductor, Davenport (Chris Parnell), to warn of the storm the train is about to encounter.

Also on board the Express are a kid with a wayward scorpion, a famous actress (played by famous actress Sarah Michelle Gellar) who thinks people recognize her, a sex-starved passenger (Missi Pyle), and Davenport’s dumb-but-gorgeous assistant conductor, Cal (Brian Jordan Alvarez) — for whom Deedee pines.

News of the impending danger reaches the Oval Office, where President Judy Gagwell — that’s RuPaul — is worried the disaster will be a catastrophe for her approval ratings, knocking them down to “Lea Michelle, 2020.”

Director Adam Shankman (“Hairspray”) and writers Christina Friel and Connor Wright eagerly jump into all the LGBTQ-coded humor 90 minutes of screen time will allow. A low percentage of the jokes land, but there are so many of them that a few still hit the target. And when all else fails, the filmmakers resort to a string of cameos to generate some chuckles of recognition.

“Stop! That! Train!” follows as its model the Rosetta Stone of parody films, “Airplane!” The cast of drag stars made me think of the unsung hero of “Airplane!,” Stephen Stucker, who played Johnny, the one over-the-top comic performer in a room full of actors who were performing seriously. (Example: When Lloyd Bridges’ airport director Steve McCroskey shows Johnny a map and asks, “What do you make of this?”, Stucker’s Johnny replies, “Oh, I can make a hat, or a brooch, or pterodactyl wings!”)

“Stop! That! Train!” plays like it cast a room full of Stephen Stuckers. (The original, alas, died in 1986 at age 38, from AIDS.) And that approach to the comedy the problem — “Airplane!” worked so well because the stars behaved as if everything they said was deadly serious, and the cast here leans too far into the camp. The exception is Bloom as the harried train dispatcher, who in going deadpan gets the movie’s best laughs.

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‘Stop! That! Train!’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, June 12, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for sexual material, language, some drug material and brief nudity. Running time: 90 minutes.