The Little Mermaid in 2023<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nDisney\u2019s Wheel of Unnecessary Remakes turns and lands on The Little Mermaid. A meeting room of executives shrug and send a courier to Rob Marshall, of Chicago and Mary Poppins Returns fame. We imagine he dejectedly thumbs through the $100 bills in the envelope and puts on his Making Movie pants. So begins the journey to The Little Mermaid, the 2023 edition.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard to imagine that anyone is still enthused about these live action remakes. Barely anyone watched Peter Pan & Wendy, Pinocchio was a borderline disaster (not the Guillermo del Toro one, that was a delight), we don\u2019t talk about Mulan, The Lion King<\/strong> was about as redundant as a movie can get, and most people can\u2019t even recall Lady and the Tramp. It\u2019s a parade of naffness. Only Cruella has even a smidgeon of merit to it, and you\u2019d be hard-pushed to call that a remake.\u00a0<\/p>\nIt\u2019s not exactly auspicious for The Little Mermaid. Already courting controversy by daring to put Halle Bailey, a black actress, in the role of Ariel (dear gods people, grow up), it feels like it\u2019s being set up to fail. But does it fail on cinematic terms? Now, that\u2019s a complicated question that we\u2019ve been chewing over.<\/p>\n
In the broadest terms, this is The Little Mermaid, the 1990 animated classic reshot in live action. We know that might feel like an obvious statement, but it\u2019s worth making. This is the same plot with the same characters, yearning for the same things, with the same results. This is not taking a different perspective, as Peter Pan & Wendy does, nor does it attempt anything new like Cruella. It\u2019s pretty straight down the line: a trident\u2019s throw at the target.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What it is <\/em>doing, instead, is fluffing The Little Mermaid\u2019s pillow. Things are bulked out, new songs are added in, and some two-dimensional elements begin to look a little more three-dimensional. Eric is probably the biggest beneficiary. In the animated movie, he was all teeth and quiff, some surface totty for Ariel to lust after. Here, he\u2019s charming and likable, but now he\u2019s given the burden of being a good prince, an impending rule, a desire to do right by people, and a sense that he owes Ariel for saving his life. He\u2019s dragged about by being such a dang good person, and even gets a new song from Lin Manuel Miranda, called Wild Uncharted Waters. Actor Jonah Hauer-King leaps on the opportunity and makes him a likable goof.\u00a0<\/p>\nThere are other additions, most of which are pretty good, actually. Eric\u2019s kingdom (never named, oddly) gets a Caribbean-feel and we get to see the bustle of the marketplace. Scuttle the seagull (Awkwafina) gets a home-run of a comedy song in Scuttlebutt, and Ariel receives \u2018For the First Time\u2019, which fits so snugly that we had to check that it wasn\u2019t on the original soundtrack. Only the addition of Ariel\u2019s sisters, all given speaking parts, missed the target for us. They\u2019re mostly there to agree with Javier Bardem\u2019s Triton and sell some toys.<\/p>\n
Which should mean an overall improvement to the original film, right? Unfortunately, that\u2019s not quite how it works. Because while they are all independently fine, we still couldn\u2019t shake that huge \u2018but why?\u2019 that hovers over the film at all times.\u00a0<\/p>\n
One reason for The Little Mermaid\u2019s existence might have been modern technology, and what it could bring to the underwater realm of Atlantica. CGI should have had a field-day with this lush ecosystem. But The Little Mermaid falls into the same vents as The Lion King. Flounder should have been a cuddly sidekick, but is a blank-faced guppy because the creators decided that realism was the order of the day. An animal from the Sealife Centre can\u2019t hope to carry the personality of the original cartoon character. Sebastian the Crab is better, mainly because his eye-stalks can carry a modicum of character, but it\u2019s still a far cry from Samuel E Wright\u2019s original.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And there\u2019s something off about the movements of the mercharacters. We\u2019ve watched and rewatched certain sequences to try to figure it out: why is it creeping us out so much? We\u2019ve narrowed it down to faces. Clearly, the faces are the real actors and their performances, but they don\u2019t feel like they react to the sudden and fitful movements of their fish bodies. Their performances feel like they are projected onto porcelain dishes that are being worn by synchronised swimmers, and it all feels incredibly off.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But most of all, it\u2019s all just so earnest. Everyone wants things so deeply, and they\u2019re either maudlin when they don\u2019t get it (cue song) or elated when they do (cue song). The Little Mermaid dearly needed something to lubricate all the straight-faced emotion, and while Melissa McCarthy as Ursula and Scuttle both try to do exactly that, it\u2019s too big a task for them. They\u2019re mostly cosplaying bigger and better performances.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A sidebar to talk about Halle Bailey, who\u2019s been getting unfair criticism for her portrayal of Ariel. She\u2019s completely game for taking on Ariel who is, if we\u2019re being honest, something of a wet character even in the Disney original (she wants to live away from her family because she likes knick knacks and fancies a different species?). She\u2019s got the singing covered \u2013 there\u2019s no issues there \u2013 and her chemistry with Jonah Hauer-King is believable, even without the ability to talk. She\u2019s good, basically, and none of the faults of this remake have anything to do with her.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Those faults started in the C-Suite of Disney. The Little Mermaid (2023) is a remake that didn\u2019t need to happen, with the only battle-plan for its existence being a plumping of the soundtrack and script. Everyone, from Halle Bailey to Rob Marshall, give it their all, but the feeling of redundancy is unshakeable. And please, can we stop with the real-life animals taking over from cartoon counterparts? Nobody\u2019s going to chuckle at a fish with a CGI mouth.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n<\/div>\n
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