Disney stays soggy with new 'Little Mermaid'
Disney
If you/your child/a Disney executive had no knowledge of the animated 1989 film “The Little Mermaid,” you would not watch the new, mostly live-action version and delight in the magic of the aspirational half-fish-out-of-water story or the lovable animal sidekicks or the thrilling battle of magical creature vs. giant octopus. (Surely a SyFy movie of that name already exists.) Rather, you’d consider the lousy animation and awkward performances and highly questionable narrative (woman abandons ambitions for man, learns he’s plenty interested in her even without a voice, gets her voice back but still has no personality) and ask what, to the tune of “Under the Sea,” the hell is this?
Of course by now we know Disney won’t stop until every possible cent is obtained through these typically embarrassing remakes, that with rare exception lose anything transporting and endearing about the original animated properties in favor of misguided, bloated efforts without the slightest care for the new work’s ability to exist on its own. (Read Matt’s reviews of “Pinocchio,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and “Cinderella.”) This relentless determination to revise childhood memories into empty no$talgia might have some oxygen if a story like “The Little Mermaid” could get a fresh perspective on what now seems like a conventional and antiquated princess fantasy of “Cinderella” tossed into the ocean, or “Pinocchio” with a love interest.
Alas, “Barbie” this is not.
Where even to begin? While once characters like Flounder, Scuttle and Sebastian were appealing and valuable parts of the whole, now it just looks deeply weird that Ariel (Halle Bailey) is talking to real-looking CGI creatures (voiced by Jacob Tremblay, Awkwafina and Daveed Diggs, respectively). Rarely a moment passes when you don’t feel the animators just doing their best to figure out how to depict all of these events in the water (a shipwreck above the surface works better for obvious reasons). Neither Javier Bardem (as Ariel’s father, King Triton) nor Melissa McCarthy (seemingly performing on stage and saddled with lots of exposition as Ursula) acquit themselves well, each one feeling shoehorned in rather than part of a unified ensemble. (And oh wow does Triton’s outfit look hilariously lame in the final scene. The movie’s almost worth seeing just for that comically massive error in judgment.)
As you’ve probably heard, Bailey’s good, but once Ariel loses her voice the actress doesn’t have much to do besides smile at Prince Eric (Jonah Hauer-King), who at close to 30 is too old to be so naive. At no point does director Rob Marshall (“Chicago,” “Into the Woods”) or the writing team diluting Hans Christian Andersen’s story find an intelligent way to tell “The Little Mermaid” in 2023. It takes Ariel three seconds to get to the forbidden human world above, and Triton’s overprotectiveness quickly grows redundant rather than meaningful. As for humor, Ursula actually uses the phrase “squidling rivalry.”
A lot has changed since the original stories and even the original Disney movies were made. There’s a discussion that needs to be had about presenting hokey, vapid messages to kids in which “true love” features two characters who know virtually nothing about each other. Despite ballooning the running time from 78 to 125 minutes (!), the filmmakers take far too long to get “The Little Mermaid” going and then keep everyone so one-dimensional you start to wonder if the bland but superior “Aquamarine” is streaming. (It is, on Disney+!)
How great it would be if the film somehow recognized Ariel’s obvious desperation and that she’s just attaching herself to the first young guy she sees — give us the modern version that can still keep elements intact but takes the Ariel/Eric dynamic somewhere other than Scuttle mimicking porn music to try to get them to kiss. These star-crossed lovers are barely held back by anything substantial even when it comes to Ursula, whose anger doesn’t land and whose goals are just a generic pursuit of power. (It’s ironic that her assumption that Ariel would stand no chance with Eric without a voice is the most feminist viewpoint on hand.)
Or how about just being playful with mermaids’ apparent ability to breathe both in water and out of it? Or Ariel’s perception of the world above being less twinkly and wide-eyed, just because everyone she sees has feet? Real true love — and contemporary recognition of issues having to do with different abilities and bodies — wouldn’t care if Ariel had a tail. But “The Little Mermaid” has no more on its mind than its titular character, who eats flowers and has a bunch of diverse sisters but no agenda beyond living on land and being Prince Eric’s wife.
For a needlessly remade story about someone trying to exist in a place they know nothing about, I’d rather watch the (hypothetical, for now) animated version of “Encino Man.”
D
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