The Little Mermaid

This weekend, The Little Mermaid, the live-action remake of the Disney classic, was released in theaters. The Little Mermaid follows the teenaged mermaid Ariel as she desires to live a different life than what has been set out for her. When she meets the human Prince, Eric, she makes a deal with a sea witch to become a human and live her life the way she wants. The Little Mermaid was one of the cartoons I watched as a kid and it is also my wife's favorite movie so wanted to give it a try and see how it stacked to the other live-action remakes.

This was a perfectly fine live-action remake. It doesn't do anything extremally bad but doesn't do anything that made me go wow either. It did its job and entertained but also played things pretty safe. Regardless of how people may feel about the race-swapping of Ariel, Halle Bailey does a great job playing the character. She accurately captures the energy of Ariel and is actually a really good singer. She does a decent enough job of giving solid acting performances and emotion even though a lot of her time is spent interacting with CGI fish. Even if you don't agree with the casting choice, that shouldn't be taken out on Halle Bailey, she was hired for a job and did a good job with it. Nobody is going to turn down being a Disney princess. Aside from Halle Bailey's performance, the rest of the actors are all fine and fun to see. None of them feel terribly miscast and seem like they accurately portray their characters. I really liked how the movie handled the Eric character. Eric is much more fleshed out in this film and is actually done better than in the original film. In the animated film, he is just a love-sick prince only there to fall in love with Ariel. In this movie, he is his own person, has goals, and actually grows as a person. I like how they have him connect with Ariel in that neither of them wants the life that was planned for them. All of the on-land scenes are quite well done as the story sets aside extra time to flesh out the romance between Eric and Ariel as well as the backstory of Eric.

However, while this movie doesn't do anything terrible, it is definitely not without its flaws. Firstly, the film is just too long. The original film clocks in at under 90 minutes while this film somehow manages to stretch out the film to over 2 hours without adding anything new to the plot. I can understand adding to the run time a little bit to flesh out the romance and character but adding 50 extra minutes just feels like a bit much. The movie adds several new songs just to pad out the runtime which really shows as none of the songs are really all that stand out. Some of the scenes also just feel a bit too stretched out and feel like they are added to just to make a longer runtime without adding any substance. One of the other big issues is that the underwater scenes did not look very good. The CGI does not look very natural and the lighting is just a bit off. Finally, I felt that the movie didn't capture any of the charm of the original songs. Instead of feeling a new take on the songs, they felt like a cover that is good enough but nothing to write home about.

In the end, this movie does its job and delivers an entertaining remake. It doesn't do anything terrible but is still not without its flaws. While it plays it safe and doesn't do too much new with the story, I still feel like families are going to enjoy this film.

Grade: B Score: 7/10 Recommendation: Check it out with your family