by Joel Harley
Her head and shoulders composited onto a CGI mermaid body, Halle Bailey bravely puts the ‘live-action’ into this remake of the Disney animated classic. Starring as royal mermaid Ariel, our chipper princess dreams of a life on land, up with the whosits and whatsits galore. And who can blame her, when the ocean floor is as ghastly as this one?
Sure, her underwater kingdom is moderately brighter than the surface world, but frolicking mermaids and calypso-ing crustaceans sit ill at ease alongside expressionless photo-realistic fish and grimly executed dance sequences. ‘Under the Sea’ tries to convince Ariel – and the viewer – otherwise, but the sequence looks like one of those nightmarish pseudo-fetish kids’ videos cooked up by a YouTube algorithm. This, crossed with Rebel Wilson’s Jennyanydots song in Cats. When it’s not ugly, it’s unsettling, and it’s no wonder Javier Bardem (playing King Triton) seems embarrassed to be there.
With a soundtrack which consists of the iconic numbers ‘Part of Your World,’ ‘Poor Unfortunate Souls,’ and ‘Kiss the Girl,’ Alan Menken and Howard Ashman’s 1989 songs remain as fantastic as ever, and this cast certainly has the chops to do them justice. Unfortunately, as was the case with 2019’s The Lion King, Disney’s new version doesn’t have the staging or animation to pull it off. And that will always remain the case until a crab or a flatfish are able to plausibly belt out a full song-and-dance number without looking like a Cthulhu nightmare.
Which is a shame, as Bailey and Daveed Diggs are a highlight and a joy. A baffling twist to the story sees Ariel suffering from a bout of amnesia once she takes to the surface – bewitched so as to forget that she needs to seduce the Prince. However, this succeeds only in giving its lead even less agency than she had in 1989. Instead, Ariel follows Prince Eric (Jonah Hauer-King) around, a doe-eyed halfwit, as he mansplains the world to her. Comic relief comes in the form of Sebastian, Scuttle (Awkwafina) and Flounder (Jacob Tremblay). Although there’s nothing particularly funny or cute about photo-realistic fish, so much of that falls flat too.
Stretching 83 minutes out to 135, this remake adds in a few original numbers of its own (ignoring those created for the 2007 Broadway adaptation), to mixed effect. Hauer-King gives ‘Uncharted Waters’ a bit of welly, but his reluctant Prince comes across as rather, well, wet. Next, there’s Bailey’s ‘For the First Time,’ which is well-performed but oddly staged. The jaw-droppingly out-of-place ‘The Scuttlebutt,’ meanwhile, plays out like a parody version of a Lin-Manuel Miranda / Awkwafina collaboration, except it’s a thing that actually does exist and was put into this movie.
Redemption can be found in Melissa McCarthy’s Ursula, in spite of her not being in it nearly enough. And, as the film changes gear going into its final act, there is some fun to be had in the showdown between Ariel and the monstrous sea witch. Between Bailey and the film’s game supporting cast, The Little Mermaid manages to put a happy face on an otherwise cynical remake.
A transparently corporate exercise in studio-mandated money-spinning, this bloated remake fails to better its beloved source material in any way – down where it’s wetter or otherwise.
The Little Mermaid is out in cinemas across the UK now.
