Disney hooks a live one
A Good Person (R16) ★★★
On the way to try on her wedding dress, a woman is involved in a fatal crash that requires a Morgan Freeman voiceover. — Jeremy Quinn
Fast X (M) ★+
The latest Fast & Furious entry invites you to turn your brain off and fall into a coma. — Jeremy Quinn
Close (M) ★★★★
Two 13yearold boys, close friends, drift apart at school under the pressure of homophobic taunts.
— Jeremy Quinn
THE LITTLE MERMAID
Director: Rob Marshall
Cast: Halle Bailey, Jonah HauerKing, Daveed Diggs, Awkwafina, Jacob Tremblay, Noma Dumezweni, Art Malik, Javier Bardem, Melissa McCarthy Rating: (PG) ★★★+
Disney have been systematically churning out liveaction remakes of their animated classics for a number of years, ranging from the quite good (Cinderella )andthenot bad (Alice in Wonderland, The Jungle Book) to the eyegougingly terrible (The Lion King ),yet generally all raking in serious cash.
To be honest, after a great deal of prerelease negativity from some quarters, I wasn’t expecting anything special from The Little Mermaid, so I’m surprised to say that, in the year’s most unprecedented turn of events, I found myself liking it very much.
It might even be the best liveaction adaptation so far, although I wonder if the fact that (hangs head in shame) I’ve never seen the original might have something to do with it. I was simply able to appreciate it for what it is — an entertaining mermusical with interesting visuals, catchy tunes, a few good jokes, an oldfashioned spirit and a starmaking turn from Halle Bailey.
Putting aside any discussion of politics in Disney product, which is a whole other thesis in itself, there’s nevertheless, for good or ill, a hypnotic pull that the films almost invariably have, which mainly comes down to their fundamental understanding of archetypal storytelling.
The Little Mermaid is the perfect specimen of a classically structured fairy tale, and whether you find the Broadwaystyle musical numbers, wacky anthropomorphic sidecharacters and kidfriendly embellishments charming or irritating (I mostly tend towards the former) will be the key to your enjoyment.