One of Disney’s new money-making endeavors is making live action remakes of their classic movies. One of the oddest parts about this is calling it a live action remake. So far, these movies are almost all total CGI fests. They may not be “animated” in the traditional sense, but if they are having to computer generate all of the images in the movie, and even when they have the chance to place something in a real world location, they still decide to put it on a green screen and add the background, it is safe to say that these are not actually live action, they are just an elevated form of animation, and The Little Mermaid does not deviate from this idea.
Little Mermaid is the story of Ariel, a mermaid, who lives in the ocean off the coast of a small island. She has always dreamed of being where the people are, but her father, King Triton, is against this. There is some alluded to past about Ariel’s mother, who it seems like was killed by humans, thus the ban on going to the surface. Ariel is not one for following rules though, she has a secret shrine to all of the human artifacts that she has found, and one day after being reprimanded, she decides to go take a look. At first it is beautiful, and there are fireworks going off, but then the ship she is watching wrecks, and she saves the dog, and then she saves Prince Eric, dragging him to shore. When Eric wakes up, she flees, and she goes back home love struck.
Eric was also love struck, but the only real memory he has of this encounter with Ariel was her voice, so he has people go about searching for the woman who saved him. Meanwhile, Ariel gets in more trouble with Triton, and he destroys her shrine of human artifacts. Ursula capitalizes on this anger, and she convinces Ariel to commit to a pact. The pact takes Ariels voice away, and it makes her a human, and she has three days to get true loves kiss, or she will become Ursula’s property.
This adaptation of The Little Mermaid was almost an hour longer than the original. The original was about 80 minutes, and the new one was two hours and fifteen minutes. Now this is not necessarily a bad thing, but it did feel like the new movie added a lot of unnecessary filler. It hit all of the same notes that the first movie did, but in some instances, it felt like they made parts of the movie drag on longer than they needed to, and it hurt the film. This was especially true in the lead up to Ariel making the pact with Ursula.
The movie was basically all underwater up to that point, and it did not look good. As mentioned in the opening, this movie was basically all CGI, and under the sea was not an exception to this. Part of the reason why this might have looked so bad, was because the new Avatar came out less than a year ago, and it totally revolutionized the way that water was filmed. Also, this is not even a fair comparison, because even if they did film underwater, then Ariel would not be able to actually sing.
Singing is a big part of the original movie, and this one as well, but the new one also had a few new songs, which probably added to a large amount of the added time compared to the first one. None of the new songs really stuck out to me, except for “The Scuttlebutt,” the one by Awkwafina. She sings a song about the proposal of Prince Eric, right before Ariel realizes that Eric is not going to propose to her. It was a total jam, but the song that was really stuck in my head was “Under the Sea.” A classic from the original that still hits in the new one. It was literally playing in my head for almost all of my run this morning, and I was not even too mad about the ear worm.
The song parts that really had me confused were the songs Ariel sings in her head after she lost her voice. She had literally just lost her voice, and like two minutes later, she was in the back of a wagon singing a song to herself in her head. It could be very confusing to young viewers. It was also not needed. There were at least two songs that she sang in her head, and both times, it just did not make sense. The one song from the original and in the new one that I did not enjoy was “Part of Your World.” When she is singing and then says what is it called again? Oh right… in the song multiple times, it just ruins the whole flow of the song. Halle Bailey’s voice is amazing though, and that helps the music so much, she gave a great performance.
The best part of the movie came from Ariel being on land. This is the part of the courtship. Although Eric is looking for the girl who sang to him, he does still slowly fall in love with the voiceless Ariel. They do a good job of portraying it, and the part where they go on the carriage ride, get in the boat, and go out on the water, and Sebastian sings “Kiss the Girl” is a very compelling watch.
As far as Melissa McCarthy’s performance as Ursula goes, she does seem to play it perfectly. She has the right energy, and she comes across as a great Disney villain. The person who did not do it for me in this movie was Javier Bardem as King Triton. I just did not get any of the emotional pull when he was on screen. He plays a key role in pushing Ariel away, but all he did was push my interest away from the movie.
The one theme of the movie seems to come from the idea of the fear of other. If Triton had not of been afraid of letting Ariel go to the surface, she might not have been as tempted to go there. Also she never would have had to go to Ursula for help, but due to her inability to trust her dad, she had to go the worst route.
Overall, I think the movie was better in the original format, but the music in the new version was better. I just wish that there were less new songs, and that they would have stuck closer to the old movie’s run time. There was no reason to add fifty extra minutes. Twenty or thirty would have been fine. The CGI also took a ton away from my enjoyment of the movie. There were vast amounts of time, where I was just baffled by how bad it looked. It reminded me of a desktop background of the ocean, which is not a ringing endorsement. It seems like it would be a good time at the movies for kids. I gave it 2.5 stars. It is not all bad by any means, but I cannot categorize it as good either.
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