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The problem with the live-action remakes of Disney movies is that a lot of the criticisms apply evenly to every single one of them. The fact that it’s not animated makes sequences with real animals look strange, especially when juxtaposed with real people, a lot of the time there is new music that does not fit the tone of the original music, and some more questionable plot choices become more apparent when they are visible with real (or pseudo-real) people. The Little Mermaid is the same as these other entries, however, it sets itself above movies like The Lion King with outstanding acting performances.
The Little Mermaid largely follows the plot of the original. Ariel (Halle Bailey) has dreams to go to the surface and live on land so Ursula (Melissa McCarthy) makes a deal with her so she can go on land for three days and stay there permanently if she can get Prince Eric (Jonah Hauer-King) to kiss her. The film also stars Daveed Diggs (Hamilton) as Sebastian, Awkwafina (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings) as Scuttle, Jacob Tremblay (Luca) as Flounder, and Javier Bardem (Dune) as King Triton.
What elevates this movie to be one of the better live-action adaptations is the acting performances across the board. Halle Bailey is great as Ariel and can sing exceptionally well to carry the role. Melissa McCarthy’s rendition of Poor Unfortunate Souls is on par with Pat Carroll’s original edition from the 1989 version and it is obvious that she is having a ton of fun playing the role (not as much fun as Jason Momoa had as Dante in Fast X but that’s a bar very few will ever get to reach). Even the side cast is great with Awkwafina pitch-perfect cast as an annoying bird and Jacob Tremblay playing Flounder very well. Daveed Diggs is exceptional as well, however, his ambiguously Caribbean accent is a little strange and he probably would have been better served just doing the accent he did as Marquis de Lafayette in Hamilton.
Where the movie drags is when the limitations of live action as compared to animation are highlighted. The musical number for Under the Sea is lackluster and akin to The Lion King’s I Just Can’t Wait To Be King where the visual spectacle has to be scaled back to accommodate what animals can and can’t do without a human watching and being disoriented. The new music is obvious because it does not quite fit in with what was in the original, especially when they’re juxtaposed and one is a pseudo-rap between Sebastian and Scuttle and one is an expository walking exposition-fest designed to lay out character motivations for Eric akin to Speechless in Aladdin. The time spent there would have been better served setting up Ursula and Triton’s relationship since the third act is based around that and the confrontation comes completely out of left field. In the animated movie, it works a little better but here it feels like the third act of Wonder Woman where it’s not well explained enough to warrant a giant CGI mess of a fight set in the dark with lightning.
There is enough good in the movie to warrant seeing it in theaters, however the larger the screen and the higher quality the screen, the more the seams show. The sound mix alone makes it worth seeing in a theater, it’s just more of a matinee picture than it is a nighttime opening weekend experience.
Final Rating: 7/10
