The Little Mermaid (2023)
Directed by Rob Marshall
Written by David Magee, John Musker, and Ron Clements, based on the fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, but you know… not really. It’s weird. Like she dies and turns into sea foam?
Starring Halle Bailey, Jonah Hauer-King, Melissa McCarthy, Daveed Diggs, Jacob Tremblay, Awkwafina
Rated PG
Runtime: 2 hours 15 minutes
In theaters still

by Audrey Callerstrom, sometimes editor, sometimes contributor, mom about town

Most of the reviews I’ve seen of the new live-action The Little Mermaid seem to follow a template. They acknowledge that the lead is its greatest merit, point out a few key differences from the animated version from 1989, and prattle on about a few other things. Most often, the same things. The consensus is, ”It’s not good, but here is something nice I can say about it, because it’s nice to point out when something is good inside something bad.” And I do agree with that in this instance, but I’m not going to follow said template. What follows is mostly a series of jokes, stories, and stray observations.

The 1989 animated The Little Mermaid is a *perfect* film. Few films achieve this status. It’s colorful, it’s fun, the songs are absolute BOPS, and it’s packed into a tight 83 minutes. It’s about how parents who set harsh, strict boundaries need to listen to their children and let them explore their world. Did you know that the film was screened for kids and they didn’t like the song, “Part of Your World?” But the filmmakers were like, screw it, we’re keeping it in anyway, it’s a great song. And that’s special. I was a huge fan of The Little Mermaid as a kid. Between Ariel and Pippi Longstocking, I thought that red hair was the absolute coolest. My daughter loves the film, too, and after much bargaining, and my initial resistance, and me whispering “Spider-Man?” into her ear because I wanted to see that instead, we ended up seeing The Little Mermaid on a Saturday afternoon in the only theater in the complex which had non-working air conditioning.

I reminded myself that it will make her happy. And it did! But, she was pretty bored. It does look blah. The original had vibrant colors, and there was always something appealing in each frame. Here, it’s like OK, Flounder looks like a real fish, but he looks like a real ugly fish. He looks like a freshwater fish you catch as a kid, not something that should be tropical and vibrant. And OK, Sebastian looks like a real crab, but have you seen a real crab? They’re ugly as hell, sorry not sorry. This is why I love the CGI in films like RRR. It’s not trying to look like real life when a man fights a tiger or a whole carnival of animals start attacking people. It’s trying to look better than real life (also, watch RRR). The aesthetics of the film are poor, dark, drab, and gray. Let me show you how the original Ursula looks as compared to the new Ursula, as played by Melissa McCarthy.

McCarthy does have fun with the role, but it still pails in comparison to how the animators channeled Divine in their design, and the vocals of the late Pat Carroll. This movie is so limp. It doesn’t stand on its own; it acts like you’ve seen the original and can fill in the gaps. It’s a series of bad choices. Scenes that go on for too long. Superfluous musical numbers (look, if I wanted to care about Prince Eric’s plight, MAKE HIM PLAY GUITAR!) My daughter did give it a “thumbs up,” but I saw how during several scenes she was playing with the buttons of the recliner chair she was sitting in. Up/down. Up/down. I noticed that she never did this during The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which was bright and colorful and clocked in at just about 90 minutes. Like, why do we need/want to see the crew of Prince Eric’s ship chatter back and forth for several minutes? Why do we need to know what cargo they are carrying? Why does Grimsby need more lines? Why do we need more context for Prince Eric (honey, this is Ariel’s show, move along). Why isn’t Flounder a prettier fish? Why are his eyes so dead? He looks like Big Mouth Billy Bass. The difference is, of course, Big Mouth Billy Bass could sing.

I know this film is for children, and I can see it through that lens, but I know that even children were bored. The Little Mermaid’s one saving grace is Halle Bailey as Ariel. I know a few Internet dummies had their say on Twitter or Yahoo! Chatz (or whatever platform is desperate for users that it will just let hate speech flow freely, i.e. all of them) about how Ariel was now played by a person of color. And she is, and she’s played well! Bailey is the only actor having any fun with her role. She’s wide-eyed and innocent, you look at her and you’re like “yep, that’s Ariel.” She’s fun to watch, and her singing is dynamite. She joins tracks like “Under the Sea” (formerly a Sebastian-only song) and adds life to it.

I made a joke that I would leave the theater when Scuttle (Awkwafina) does a rap. If you are not familiar, Scuttle does not rap in the original. Here, Scuttle has a song about how she has all the gossip, and Sebastian joins in. I plugged my ears. It truly is bad. I knew it would be bad, and perhaps I should have left the theater, but I was too comfortable. Scuttle’s rap was written by Lin Manuel Miranda, who also produced the film. I think that 99% of Miranda’s songs to-date are atonal and boring and obnoxious, and that’s certainly the case here. The song, “The Scuttlebutt,” is without melody or purpose and the only thing I can say about it is that it rhymes. I mean, it rhymes “swamp” with “whomp” but still. I plugged my ears and hummed quietly lest any of the beats seep into my ears like the worms in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

In elementary school, the cast of a play called a few people into the theater and said we can’t say bad things about their play because they worked hard on it. And that’s the thing here – Halle Bailley aside, no one here is working very hard, at anything. It’s a sleepy exercise in obligation.