Film Review: "The Little Mermaid"
Though not as bad as some of the other live-action remakes of Disney classics, this newest updated film is still a bit of a dud.
If you’ve been reading this newsletter for any length of time, or if you know me in the real world, you’ll know that I’m not the biggest fan of the Disney live-action remakes. Not only are they cynical cash-grabs trying to exploit millennial nostalgia; they’re also, for the most part, just not that good. Needless to say, then, I had a certain reservation about going to see The Little Mermaid, the newest of such live-action ventures. While some of my worries were confirmed (the scenes underwater look pretty terrible), it was also an entertaining enough film. I wasn’t bored during it, which is more than I can say for my viewing experiences of Pinochio or Peter Pan & Wendy.
Like the original 1989 film, Rob Marshall’s version focuses on Ariel (played by a truly divine Halle Bailey), a mermaid who has grown disenchanted with life under her father Triton’s (Javier Bardem) dominion and life under the sea more generally. When she catches sight of a handsome human, Prince Eric (Jonah Hauer-King), her longing to go to the surface grows stronger, and she makes a deal with the villainous Ursula (Melissa McCarthy) who, unbeknownst to her, plans to bring about the end of Triton’s reign.
To be sure, there are some bright spots to the film. Bailey is an inspired bit of casting. It’s not just that she has a hell of a set of pipes (though that is indeed true) but also that she has so much of the wide-eyed innocence and joy that are key to the Disney princess aesthetic. From the moment she appears on-screen she is just a joy to behold and to listen to, and she made me believe in her as Ariel. In other words, the racists can stuff it. Halle Bailey is more than welcome in the ranks of the great Disney icons.
The rest of the cast is similarly strong. Javier Bardem is brooding and rather menacing as Triton, Daveed Diggs is fun and irreverent as Sebastian, and Jonah Hauer-King is suitably dashing as Prince Eric. Though I had my doubts at first, I was actually quite impressed with Melissa McCarthy’s turn as Ursula. It has to be said, though, that it lacks the queer bite and general malicious joy that one associates with Pat Carroll’s turn at the character, though this has just as much to do with the ugly cinematography and generally toothless screenplay.
I have to be honest, though. While not nearly as bad as I’d been dreading, The Little Mermaid as a Disney film still leaves much to be desired. As many critics have amply noted, the scenes underwater are so murky that it’s sometimes difficult to see just what is going on, and at others they’re just downright ugly. Given how beautiful the original film was, it’s hard not to see this is a major comedown and, considering the enormous amount of money the studio has sunk into this project, it truly boggles the mind that they wouldn’t want it to act least look nice, even if the narrative leaves something to be desired.
Unfortunately, the film is hampered by both lackluster direction and by a screenplay that seems determined to explain every little detail about character motivation. The film abounds with instances in which characters declaim about what they’re going to do not in song, as one might expect from a lively Disney musical, but in the clunkiest, cringiest dialogue imaginable. It’s as if the film can’t bear to let the audience sit with even the barest bit of ambiguity, lest they be accused of being filled with plot holes.
From start to finish, The Little Mermaid is a curiously clunky affair. Some of this, no doubt, comes from its bloated runtime, for whereas the original clocks in at a tidy 83 minutes, this behemoth runs to 135 minutes. Much of this expansion deals with Prince Eric because, in this new Disney cinematic age, every single character has to have their own backstory, and this has the unfortunate effect of detracting attention from Ariel, the putative focus of the film. There’s also a half-cooked subplot involving the long-running rivalry between the merfolk and the humans, but since much of this is delivered in exposition, it doesn’t really add much. It doesn’t even manage to add any substantial stakes to the
All of this I could forgive if the songs at least were up to snuff. Alas for all of us, they are not. There are some new additions here, but none of them leave a lasting impression, though at least “The Scuttlebutt” is fun to listen to (even if it has no place in the movie in which it’s wedged). Eric even gets his own song which, I have to say, is one too many “I Want” songs for one musical. And, while Bailey’s performance of “Part of Your World” is truly great, “Under the Sea” is a bit of a dud, not least because the brilliance of the lyrics doesn’t match the action taking place on the screen. There’s no plaice playing the bass; instead, we get some lackluster choreography from a bunch of sea turtles. It’s almost as if someone just read the plot summary for the original film but had no idea of just what it was that made it so magical and enchanting.
Throughout The Little Mermaid, I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that something just felt off about the whole affair. The story beats just don’t hit where they’re supposed to, probably because it’s trying to be both a shot-for-shot remake of the original and yet also its own thing. As a result, it ends up being an uncomfortable hybrid of both. At this point, it’s not clear just how much of a success the film is going to be, but what is certain is that it’s going to fall short of expectations. That being the case, perhaps Disney will at last realize that these live actions remakes just aren’t where it’s at anymore.
That day can’t come soon enough.