Walt Disney Studios
It’s been almost 35 years since Disney, which had strayed from its animation roots and moved into more live-action films mainly because they were cheaper to produce and felt that kids didn’t want to watch cartoons anymore after lackluster returns for 1980s films The Fox and the Hound, The Black Cauldron, The Great Mouse Detective and Oliver & Company, took a huge gamble on an adaptation of the classic fairytale The Little Mermaid. The film was a smash and gave the studio confidence in its animation projects with Beauty and the Beast coming two years later, becoming the first animated film to earn an Oscar nomination in the Best Picture category. Over time, the studio has strayed away, again, from traditional animation in favor of CG and have turned to live-action again to reimagine the classic animated films. We’ve already had Cinderella, 101 Dalmatians, The Jungle Book,
Disney’s version of The Little Mermaid is a simple tale — a young mermaid, Ariel, is intrigued by the human world above the waves, collecting all manner of human items that fall to the ocean floor mainly due to shipwrecks as this is set in an unspecified time before modern transportation. But because of one such shipwreck, Ariel finds herself in a situation in which she can let a young man who’s fallen overboard drown or she can save his life. Disobeying her father’s order not to interfere in the human world (he has a major grudge against humans who he blames for the death of his wife), she saves the man and he catches a glimpse of her before a rescue party finds him on the beach. They both become obsessed with finding each other — even though he doesn’t know she’s a mermaid — and Ariel is given an offer by the sea witch Ursula (who also happens to be her aunt): she can have legs for three days but unless she shares a romantic kiss with the man, she returns to mermaid form and becomes Ursula’s prisoner. Oh, and in exchange for the gift of her legs, she must give up her voice … as Ursula knows it would be much too easy to snag the man if Ariel can sing to him. What Ariel doesn’t know is that Ursula also built into the spell a bit of memory loss so that Ariel doesn’t know she has to kiss the young man. It will take all of the efforts of her friends Sebastian the crab, Scuttle the seagull and Flounder … the fish … to get the two to kiss before the spell wears off. And Ursula has a few tricks up her sleeve to make sure that doesn’t happen.
The animated The Little Mermaid is a bright, colorful, brisk 83-minute film that appeals to all ages, filled with catchy tunes from Howard Ashman and Alan Menken (‘Part of Your World’, ‘Poor Unfortunate Souls’ and ‘Under the Sea’ among them). It’s a hard film to resist, and it cemented Ariel’s place among the classic ‘Disney Princesses’. Where Disney always seems to go wrong with the live-action remakes is that they have to bloat them out with more unnecessary story and additional songs, usually not from the original writers, that don’t quite mesh with the originals. That has happened with The Little Mermaid. I am a fan of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s original works like Hamilton and In the Heights (I haven’t seen his Disney animated films), but letting him put his hands on classic Disney properties has not gone well. He was terribly miscast in Mary Poppins Returns, and his musical contributions here are lackluster at best, egregious at worst like Scuttle’s rap number ‘The Scuttlebutt’. It’s cringey. And not to slam Awkwafina, who I do like, but Disney seems to be tapping her out with voice work here and in Raya and the Last Dragon as well as a prominent role in Shang-Chi. Awkwafina is basically the new Ellen Degeneres, providing voice work as basically herself. Will Scuttle get her own film now like Dory did?
Walt Disney Studios
On the plus side, the film succeeds with its casting of Halle Bailey as Ariel — and let’s not even feed into the internet trollery about critics praising her performance simply because they don’t want to be called racist because that just diminishes her work. Bailey is the glue that holds the film together. She delivers Ariel’s classic ‘Part of Your World’ right down to the iconic moment Ariel pulls herself up on a rock with the wave splashing up behind her. Her voice is stunning — and luckily she still gets to sing ‘in her mind’ after she loses her voice — and between this and the upcoming musical version of The Color Purple, this young lady is going to become a huge star. Zendaya better watch her back (not that the two should ever be rivals!). To make her role even more difficult than anyone else’s, she has to do at least half of it silently, conveying all of Ariel’s emotions just with her facial expressions and body language. That takes skill and Bailey makes it all seem easy as pie. Bailey made her screen debut back in 2006 at the age of 6 in Last Holiday, but her role as Ariel is sure to make her an ‘overnight sensation’. There are big things coming in this young lady’s life. Put any prejudices you have aside and just enjoy the performance.
Aside from Awkwafina’s voice work on Scuttle, Daveed Diggs is adequate as Sebatian and Jacob Tremblay is fine as Flounder, but none of them have the presence or joyfulness of the original voice actors. Which isn’t really their fault because the entire movie lacks that sense of joy and playfulness. Javier Bardem does bring some weight to the role of King Triton, showing some real fatherly concern for his wayward daughter, and I really enjoyed Melissa McCarthy’s take on Ursula, using her voice to approximate that of the great Pat Carroll, and delivering her signature tune ‘Poor Unfortunate Souls’ with panache (even if Miranda had to get involved in some rewriting/additional lyrics). And the trolls complaining about her makeup have obviously never seen the cartoon because it’s a pretty close match (everyone seems to think that because Ursula was based on the great Divine that her makeup should be reflective of that). Unfortunately, one of the major missteps is the casting of Jonah Hauer-King as Prince Eric. Sure, he’s pretty with some piercing blue eyes (that I often questioned if that was his real eye color) and dimples you can get lost in, but his performance is one of … disinterest. You never buy his desire, his passion to find the mysterious woman on the beach, and even when he is with Ariel he always seems to be bored. He’s not helped by Miranda’s bland ‘Wild Uncharted Waters’ solo number either. Ariel could do better. Speaking of Ariel, again, viewers in the know will be delighted to spot Ariel’s original voice actress Jodi Benson as a merchant in a marketplace.
As for the production of the film, director Rob Marshall — who knows a thing or two about musicals — and his team have done some amazing work on the underwater scenes. The effects of turning humans into mer-people and an octopus are seamless, and I can’t even begin to fathom how much work it was to make the hair on every character float and move in the ‘water’. Perhaps the water is a bit too clear at times, a little more particulate floating around would have sold the illusion even better, but all of the underwater scenes are amazing. By contrast the scene on land are a bit more … beige, and you have to wonder why Ariel would want to give up her life under the sea. The one saving grace is when she and Eric venture into a local village full of color and music. The entire tone of the film is actually pretty dark, lacking the playfulness of the animated film, and the shipwreck scene at the start of the film is pretty intense for younger children. I would definitely think twice before bringing any kids under the age of 10 to this movie. It’s long, it’s more dramatic and there are those harrowing scenes to get through. I know I’m not really the target audience for The Little Mermaid, but I still enjoyed a lot of it. I just wish everyone involved with the production didn’t feel the need to make it more ‘adult’ in its tone. Disney has always known how to fashion its animated films to appeal to all ages, but when they adapt them into live action, they almost always lose some of that Disney magic that makes the animated films so special. The Little Mermaid has a touch of that magic in the performances of Bailey and McCarthy, as well as in the undersea special effects, but there are too many ‘wet blankets’ to make it a truly magical experience. It’s not terrible, it’s not great, but it should have been more than just passable, and a lot shorter.
The Little Mermaid has a run time of 2 hours 15 minutes, and is rated PG for action/peril and some scary images.
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