Director: Rob Marshall
Cast: Halle Bailey, Jonah Hauer-King, Daveed Diggs, Awkwafina
Have I seen it Before: So, here’s the thing. I saw this in the theater. Twice. Why? Perfectly reasonable question, and we’ll get to that in a minute.
Did I Like It: It may not matter if I like it or not. By and large, I do. Bailey has the perfect combination of charisma and curiosity to effectively sell herself as the youngest princess of the ocean. If you have a problem with her, I’ll have to leave you to quietly contemplate your reasons. I might be urged to say that the amount of computer animation needed to make the ocean come alive and resemble a 35-year-old cartoon doesn’t really make this all that different from the original. The “live-action remake” moniker for some of these Disney films can only go so far, right?
Given that I’ve seen it twice, I have found myself lazily singing or humming several of the film’s songs. I can tell you right now that every one of those songs were also found in the original. Even as I write this, I find the rhythm of my typing occasionally syncs up with “Under the Sea.” If you put a gun to my head, I wouldn’t be able to remember any of the new songs. They aren’t offensive; they merely blend. That is, aside for “Scuttlebutt.” A rap duet with Sebastian (Diggs) and Scuttle (Awkwafina) which seems specifically designed to annoy. Such a total tonal misstep, I’ve been reasonably sure that the guy who directed Cats (2019) had somehow once again been let loose on a big-budget film. I was visibly shocked to learn Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote the new songs and am now forced to believe his intent was to annoy with “Scuttlebutt.”
Lora, the avowed Little Mermaid fan in our house indicated she preferred this film to the original, owing in no small part to the fact that Ariel’s agency—noticeably missing from the animated version—is given narrative weight, with King Triton (Javier Bardem, looking a bit like he might have shot all of his scenes before being properly caffeinated for the day) eventually saying, “You shouldn’t have had to lose your voice to be heard.” It’s a nice thought, and hard to dismiss.
But, yes: How did I come to see this twice? My niece, “still four,” as she would describe herself, wanted to go see it, and as Uncle Weird Little Movie Guy™, I was more than willing to sit through it again to be part of a relative’s first trip to the theater. Now, we can all wrap ourselves in our cynicism about Disney’s crass money grab in repackaging things we’ve already seen. We can look dourly upon the occasionally dodgy CGI (Sebastian’s eyes are fascinating, but often unsettling), and decide that the whole thing looks like the lighting department were out getting Bardem’s coffee. We live in cynical times, especially when it comes to our art. I get that, but when Niece saw the tableau of Ariel’s cave of treasures, she exclaimed “Wow!” with a complete lack of artifice. You can’t argue with that kind of a review.
By the same token, when she came in with the one-two punch in the films last half an hour—after our haul of snacks had run dry—with first a question (“When will this movie be over?”) and then finally a proclamation (“I have been sitting in this chair for so long!”), you can’t argue with that review, either. There was no reason to expand this one from the trim 83 minutes of the original two 135 minutes here. Your audience has spoken, Disney. The audience is here for these live action remakes, but expanding them beyond any normal snack arrangement, or the reasonable attention span of a 4-year-old, you’ve got problems.
Maybe if you had cut out “Scuttlebutt…”