The Little Mermaid is weird. Giving up your voice in exchange for three days with human legs, even to pursue the love of your life, is not a great deal. As it turns out, Prince Eric is initially turned off by Ariel because she doesn’t possess the one thing he remembers of the wonder who rescued him anyway – her voice! But like how people get hungry, men also get another type of hungry, and even a semi-deranged mute who doesn’t even know what a fork is still begins to look good to Eric after a while – I have a thing for redheads too, Eric, I get it. Safe to say, even though known as the first entry in the famed Disney Renaissance, The Little Mermaid is not a favourite of mine. It’s also peculiar how the movie holds such a strong importance on marriage for a modern tale, as if it were Oklahoma! from three decades early – which I suppose could’ve been part of the nostalgic appeal for audiences back in 1989. Anywho, The Little Mermaid now has a live-action remake, and has undoubtedly been updated for modern audiences. Because the human world is a mess, there was an outcry last year when we discovered that Ariel would now be portrayed by a black actress – my only pang is that I feel a little ripped off that we couldn’t have gotten a tidy redhead in the role. Imagine Game of Throne‘s Rose Leslie on a rock wearing nothing but a shell-bikini 🤤
Directed by Rob Marshall, The Little Mermaid sees that Ariel (Halle Bailey), the daughter of King Triton (Javier Bardem) of the seven seas, has a deep fascination with humans and our culture. She collects gadgets and gizmos aplenty, as they fall to the bottom of the ocean through shipwreck and the sort. King Triton demands that Ariel stay below the ocean’s surface, but when she breaks that rule, she encounters Eric (Jonah Hauer-King) moments before his ship is sent into turmoil by a storm, and Ariel rescues Eric by swimming him to shore. Ariel longs to walk amongst the people, and alongside Eric, so she strikes a deal with the manipulative sea-witch Ursula (Melissa McCarthy), who grants her a stay on land through a downpayment of her voice, to be restored if she can secure from Eric true love’s first kiss.
So, just like for Peter Pan & Wendy before, I was able to watch the original animated classic of The Little Mermaid before partaking in this new adaption. And it didn’t take long for me to experience a crisis about what these live-action remakes are supposed to be. Should they be original, or direct copies of the revered source material? Are they meant to stand on their own, or act as companions to the cartoons? Would people be happier if casting found no-name talents to embody these roles impeccably, or do they prefer fun stunt-casting? In all these cases, these movies can’t often do both at the same time – so if they’re excelling at one end of the scale, they’re failing at the other. I can see that they are literally stuck between a rock and high tide, where they won’t make everyone happy at once, and they can’t, as I’m sure is the case with The Little Mermaid again. And so, after this deep dive in contemplation, I eventually arrived back at the same place I have found myself before – these live-action remakes are a cash grab, primarily designed for new parents to take their young families to see, to share in the same experiences they once had themselves. They thrive off a faint memory of the past, best in relative ignorance, to regain bliss. They’re not for film critics, they’re for the masses. They’re not Da Vinci, but more often paint-by-number. I accept this, and I have been happier watching 2017’s Beauty and the Beast and 2019’s Aladdin without having rewatched the original classics directly beforehand.
Now I’ll get to the nitty-gritty, and on the whole, the majority of subtle changes I found in this movie probably reflected those that I would’ve made myself. Sebastian is no longer a music teacher, but a pure confidant to the king. The shrieking souls in Ursula’s lair have been replaced with skulls, and her electric eels, Flotsam and Jetsam, don’t have a line of dialogue. The entire chef subplot and song, which has never worked for me, is completely removed, much to my utter surprise and delight! With a longer runtime, I liked getting to know more about Eric’s homelands, and I like the characteristics of his Island – it’s a coastal kingdom that suffers from a lot of shipwrecks, for which the people blame the sea Gods. They suffer so many shipwrecks in fact, that Eric is actually an orphan adopted into royalty, which I thought was a quirky little twist. Eric and Ariel’s elongated exploration of the island actually allowed time for their romance to… exist. Ariel is not so dopey here, and although she breaks a precious rock without permission 😂, she shows enough tenacity to understand why their day might end in a kiss. Taking away Eric’s death-defying heroics at the end, by steering his ship into Ursula, is not a move I would’ve have made, however. Now Ariel does it instead, in what has to be seen as a stroke of luck, and what does that prove? It gives King Triton less reason to reconcile his bigotry towards the humans and allow Ariel to live among them, for one thing. I also don’t like the idea that Triton’s distain for the humans comes because they apparently killed Ariel’s mother some time ago; I thought it was unnecessary, when a general fear of the unknown, and an unfavourable irrational presumption of all humans, was already motivation enough. Eric is also still a wet sock; he’s traditionally one of the weakest Disney male love-interests anyway, right? Given that this movie has him sailing the ocean looking for trading partners for his isolated kingdom, I might’ve beefed up his spirits by making him more headstrong in his mission on the seas. Perhaps Grimsby (Art Malik) could then even be alerted to the fact that Vanessa (Ursula’s human alter-ego, played by Jessica Alexander) is no good, for when Eric is under her charms, he no longer cares about finding neighbouring lands.
Unfortunately, Javier Bardem as King Triton did not work for me either, and I say this after I thought he was great in Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile – so, he was good in the bad movie, and bad in the better one 😬 Frankly, if this feint presence of a King is all a Disney live-action adaptation can muster, then good luck when it comes to capturing the roaring might of Zeus in Hercules! ⚡ Conversely, Jacob Tremblay as Flounder was an inspired choice and my favourite casting, and it’s hard not to enjoy Melissa McCarthy hamming it up, having a great time as Ursula. Her ‘Poor Unfortunate Souls’ sequence was a treat, while the visuals for the musical number ‘Under the Sea’ also met my expectations (despite the lyrics being about the fish in a band when there’s no longer a band). I really enjoyed what the movie did with ‘Kiss the Girl’ too, incorporating the three sidekick characters, but I couldn’t shake off the iconic rendition of ‘Part of Your World’ in light of this new one, and the brand-new songs did nothing for me – especially Scuttle (Awkwafina) squawking her way through her scatter rap; what an epic fail.
As a Disney fan, I’ve had a familiarity with the story of The Little Mermaid for a long while now, but this is the most I’ve ever felt the stakes of the deal Ariel makes, and how her time on land should be seen as an epic adventure – that’s a huge tick for me. Although, as exhausting social politics whirl around more movies than not nowadays, I do have a few hot takes of my own – Daveed Diggs is fine as Sebastian, but why not cast a Jamaican? You can’t give a whiff of potential racism these days, yet usurping the cultures of another nation is still a chef’s smorgasbord. Ursula is also famously based off prominent drag queen Divine, so where will you find a better opportunity to actually hire a drag queen in a role? Or a transgender, for your consideration? But just like the American studio having an entirely Asian voice cast for Raya and the Last Dragon, and still being criticised for not having an entirely Southeast Asian voicecast, if you want to be known for championing woke politics, then you can never be woke enough 😶 Although, happily, for all the discomfort and social debate that came and went around having a black little mermaid, it only exists outside the movie, while the new movie solely focuses on telling the best story, and I tip my cap to thee. Having now seen it, nobody should baulk at this movie, in the same way amateur theatre companies that put on a performance of Rent aren’t criticised for not being the original with Idina Menzel. Funnily enough, I’ve just realised that my scores for The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and Mulan probably reflect my ratings for their animated counterparts as well, which indicates to me that Disney, with these live-action adaptations, have fit the bill.
3.5
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