When you have as many cultural monoliths as Disney does, what’s the harm in remaking a few of your most beloved animated films in live action? Well, there’s hardly any harm apparently if you keep getting a return of around eight-hundred-to-a-billion dollars per remake. Who cares if they’re almost always worse than the originals? If anything, that’ll bolster the love for those original versions. Well, now we’re back at it again with a new, live action remake, this time of Disney’s beloved undersea classic “The Little Mermaid,” directed by modern Disney musical mainstay Rob Marshall (“Chicago,” “Mary Poppins Returns”) and written by David Magee (“Life of Pi,” “Mary Poppins Returns”)
Adapted from the animated film, which itself was an adaptation of the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale, this new adaptation follows Ariel, played by Halle Bailey (“grown-ish,” “The Color Purple (2023)”), a mermaid princess who longs to experience the human world, but is forbidden by her father King Triton, played by Javier Bardem (“No Country For Old Men,” “Dune Part Two”). After saving human prince Eric, played by Jonah Hauer-King (“World on Fire,” “A Dog’s Way Home”), from drowning, she enlists in the help of the sea witch Ursula, played by Melissa McCarthy (“Bridesmaids,” “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”), to give her legs to experience the human world in exchange for her voice. If she can convince Eric to kiss her in three days' time without speaking, she can remain on land with her voice.
Bailey is the film’s secret weapon, a bolt of smiles and charm and wonder, keeping everything afloat anytime she’s onscreen. Hauer-King is also surprisingly good, breathing a good amount of life and depth into his version of Prince Eric, helped a lot by his fantastic chemistry with Bailey. McCarthy continues the trend; although she isn’t as good as Bailey or Hauer-King., she still manages to bring Ursula to life, even through thick layers of CGI overlays on her face. That’s unfortunately where the good things about the cast end, as the rest is either forgettable or just plain bad.
Daveed Diggs (“Blindspotting,” “Hamilton”) gives Sebastian a shaky, almost cartoonish Jamaican accent that ends up feeling like a bad impression of the original character rather than another version of him. Jacob Trembley (“Wonder,” “Good Boys”) voiced Flounder in such a disaffected way that you’ll easily forget he’s voiced by the talented young actor until you see his name in the credits. Bardem is egregiously lethargic as Triton, with numerous moments coming across as if he’s half asleep during them. Awkwafina (“Oceans 8,” “The Farewell”) may be the worst of the bunch though; although she can normally do a decent job, her role as Scuttle the bird indulges in her worst and most annoying vocal tendencies, creating a character that simply sounds and feels like nails on a chalkboard.
This mixed bag continues with the music of the film. While some of the new songs are remarkably good, such as Eric’s solo ballad “Wild Uncharted Waters” and Ariel’s internal monologue of a song “For the First Time”, the third original song for the film “The Scuttlebutt” is genuinely one of the worst original songs to grace a movie musical, or any musical, in a very long time. It’s not only annoying and grating itself, its woefully out of place given the rest of the film and where it’s placed.
Visually, the film is an exceptionally mixed bag. Whenever the camera goes under the sea, it can be a mashup of muddy colors and poor green-screen work, whereas the dry land sections benefit from fantastic production designs and costuming works. The undersea sections also clearly have a lot of effort put into them, but their visuals come across as overly detailed and overly designed. It leads to a feeling of intense detail without making an impact, like watching a highly rendered promotional reel on a television at Best Buy.
It really does feel like, for every one good thing that’s in “The Little Mermaid (2023)”, there’s an equally bad or annoying detail that harms the film itself. Bailey and Hauer-King are great, as are the dry land segments and most of the music. But you also have plenty of messy underwater visuals, a truly awful new song, and a large swath of actors who just don’t make any impact. It's not an unwatchable film by any means, and it more so serves as a testament to the star power of Halle Bailey that her performance, charm, voice, and overall presence makes the film break even and worth seeing on a base level. 3/5
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