Poor Unfortunate Audiences

My thoughts on The Little Mermaid

Of all the films in Disney’s stable of animated classics that have found themselves being remade into live-action extravaganzas/bottom-line bolsterers, none has engendered more pre-release controversy as The Little Mermaid, the enormously expensive revamp of the 1989 hit that essentially single-handedly revitalized feature-length animation as a way of telling stories after a couple of decades in which it had all but disappeared due to spiraling costs and perceived lack of audience interest. Unlike most of the other films that have gone this path, where the discussion rarely went beyond the question of whether they were particularly necessary, certain people took to the Internet to protest its very existence due to rumors that certain story elements were going to be massaged or altered in order to give its titular heroine a little more agency in what was, after all, her story (which was a criticism of the original even when it first came out) and because of the casting of African-American singer/actress Halle Bailey in the central role, moves that some dopes decried as the studio caving in to the forces of so-called “wokeness.”

Because of these mostly idiotic and frankly racist complaints, I went into this new version hoping that Disney and director Rob Marshall would somehow pull it off and create a film just as fresh, magical and delightful as its predecessor was when it first arrived. Unfortunately, the result is pretty much the same as all of the studio’s other live-action remakes of late (save for the two efforts from David Lowery, his moving takes on Pete’s Dragon and the recent Peter Pan & Wendy)—a leaden, drab and largely pointless bore that feels more like an extended bit of cosplay than an actual story and whose sole instance of genuine charm is practically buried under so much CGI enhancement that its claim to being live-action is tenuous at best.

The plot, loosely inspired by the Hans Christian Andersen story, is pretty much the same as before. Our heroine is Ariel (Bailey), the youngest and spunkiest of the five mermaid daughters of King Triton (Javier Bardem), who holds a powerful grudge against the humans living on the other side of the surface because he blames them for the death of his beloved wife. Despite this, Ariel is fascinated with the world beyond hers—collecting the trinkets and doo-dads that occasionally find their way into the drink. One night, Ariel breaks through to the surface and spies a ship where the crew is celebrating the birthday of the handsome and charming Prince Eric (Jonah Hauer-King). When a storm causes a shipwreck that hurls Eric into the drink and certain death, Ariel risks everything to bring the unconscious prince to the shore and safety, reviving him with the lilting sounds of her magical singing voice before disappearing back to the sea.

Upon returning home, the besotted Eric becomes obsessed with tracking down the mysterious savior whom he only knows by the sound of her voice, much to the consternation of his adoptive mother, Queen Selina (Noma Dumezweni). Meanwhile, Ariel’s pining for Eric reaches King Triton and when he learns that she actually risked everything in order to help one of the hated humans, he predictably blows a gasket. It is here that the fearsome and powerful sea witch Ursula (Melissa McCarthy), conceived here as Triton’s estranged and deeply jealous sister, sees an opening to finally achieve her dreams of usurping power from her brother. She convinces Ariel to make a deal that will give her human legs and three days to find her beloved and get him to give her the kiss of true love. Unfortunately for her, the price for the transformation is her voice, the only thing that Eric recognizes of her. However, when it appears that Ariel may still be able to charm him anyway, even without her voice, Ursula goes to additional lengths in order to get all that she wants.

Despite all the talk of changes to the material, the basic story of The Little Mermaid remains unchanged in its move from animation to live-action but even though this version eliminates a couple of the original’s songs (most notably the goofy and largely-expendable “Les Poissons”), this new one clocks in at almost an hour longer than the first version. However, none of the stuff trucked in to extend the story proves to be at all necessary. The material involving Eric’s conflict with his mother, meant to serve as a parallel to Ariel’s issues with her dad and to accentuate the conflict between the land and sea kingdoms, is pretty much a drag that will cause viewers young and old to squirm in their seats out of boredom. There are a couple of new songs added to the mix that are equally uninspiring—Eric gets a dull and seemingly endless solo tune in “Wild Uncharted Waters” while “The Scuttlebutt,” a comic number for Ariel’s pals Sebastian the Crab (Daveed Diggs) and pelican Scuttle (Awkwafina), is a dreadful work that is a show-stopper in the worst sense of the word, featuring the increasingly tedious rapid-fire lyrics of Lin-Manuel Miranda. (That said, I confess that I would have given a lot to hear the original Scuttle, Buddy Hackett, try to pull that tune off.)

Beyond these additions, everything about this version of The Little Mermaid just feels poky and lugubrious, especially in comparison to its predecessor. In the hands of director Rob Marshall—one of the lumpiest filmmakers currently scoring big gigs these days—everything seems to go on twice as long as it did before—the formerly fleet tours of Ariel’s underwater world now seem to go on for about as long as the final reels of Thunderball, albeit without the crack choreography. That might have been acceptable if the depiction of that world was as bright and joyous as what we saw in the original but that is not the case here—Marshall has chosen to present it in a weirdly dark and murky style that practically challenges viewers to look at it at certain points. To make things even weirder, Marshall, presumably in an attempt to make the human elements seem more at home with the CGI surroundings and co-stars, has given those characters a bizarre look that makes them at time seem almost as stiff and plasticized as the toy figures that are presumably clogging store shelves as I write this. On land, things look a little better but the events there are still too poky and dragged out to be effective. Even when things do begin to click a bit, such as the nice staging of the big “Kiss the Girl” number, the results are still not strong enough to quite manage to justify this film’s existence.

As it turns out, the most controversial element to this iteration of The Little Mermaid—the casting of Bailey—turns out to be its sole considerable asset. While most of the other performances are negligible at best—Hauer-King is so blandly unmemorable that he begins to elude the mind even while he is up there on the screen, McCarthy essentially offers up an impersonation of Pat Carroll’s indelible Divine-inspired turn as Ursula in the original and Bardem goes through the entire film with an expression that tells viewers that they may have paid him enough look fairly ridiculous but not quite enough to deliver a performance that suggests that he has any pressing interest in the proceedings (I would love to see some video of him at his first costume fitting once he realized what he would look like throughout here)—she is charming, charismatic and can certainly handle the musical aspects of the role as well. Most impressively of all, you never feel any degree of self-consciousness on her part despite the potential silliness of the material—she gives the part everything she has and in the end, her work is the only aspect of the film that even begins to compare in terms of quality with the original.

And yet, even Bailey’s considerable efforts are ultimately not enough to make The Little Mermaid anything more than it is—a clunky, mostly joyless and entirely unnecessary project that will almost certainly become a big hit at the box office but which will, in the end, probably only please those working in Disney’s accounting division. Here is a project with material that has already been proven to be a winner, a number of songs that still work wonderfully (even though a few lyrics have been altered here and there) and a lead actress who seems to have actually been born to play Ariel. All it theoretically needed to work, both as a remake and as its own thing, was a director with enough style and vision to pull those elements together in an imaginative manner and that is precisely where this version falls short. Little kids might like it, I suppose (though I suspect some may be put off by the darkness of the underwater scenes) but my guess is that if they were asked which version they preferred, they would be wise and perceptive enough to go with the original and simply pretend that this one never existed.