Live-action adaptation of ’89 Disney film actually worth it
I like the new version of “The Little Mermaid.” I like it partly because
I’ve seen the Disney’s
1989 animated “The Little Mermaid” exactly once. Didn’t “grow up with it.” Didn’t go into it with ideas about what they shouldn’t change or should.
You never can tell which of these animation-to-liveaction exercises in intellectual property will do the trick. Me, I tend to get that movie-karaoke feeling watching the biggest hits in this Disney IP realm, notably the key members of the billion-dollar club: “Beauty and the Beast,” “The Lion King” and “Aladdin.” Tiptop technological craft, excellent casting and … why? What’s the gain? The money. That’s the why. The artistic why is beside the point.
Already, many consider “The Little Mermaid,” the latest animation-tolive-action adaptation, one of the worst and least necessary of its ilk — an ilk that has made billions for Disney, while making an unimportant percentage of outliers less than gratified as they watch the live-action “Lion King” or “Aladdin” or, to be sure, “Dumbo,” and then exit through the lobby in a stupor, wondering when these things will run their course. Debating which of these movies are fun, or fun-ish, and which are not, has become the equivalent of arguing over one Olive Garden versus another.
For me, this undersea Olive Garden constitutes a satisfying exception. Director Rob Marshall’s take on “The Little Mermaid” stays faithful to the 1989 basics and many of the scene-by-scene design schemes of the animated version. Yet the changes help. The fleshedout central romance, the performances of Halle Bailey (Ariel, with songs belted like nobody’s business) and Jonah HauerKing (as her love Prince Eric) — it works. That shouldn’t be a rarity. But with these pre-branded IP derivatives, an enlivening spirit too often eludes the creators, whatever the box office has to say about it.
In David Magee’s screenplay, the mermaid/ human couple at story’s center becomes something of actual rooting interest, due to the felicitious casting but also because the roughly 45 minutes of new material raises the stakes without getting pushy about it. Marshall, filming on the Italian island of Sardinia when not confined to studios in
London, may be stuck with too much Ursula (Melissa McCarthy) for my taste, but above the water, the open-air atmosphere pumps some oxygen into the location work.
As Scuttle the gull, Awkwafina had large comic shoes to fill, since Buddy Hackett voiced the 1989 version. She fills them in her own brash style, though her rap-patter number “The Scuttlebutt” already has gotten cultural pushback. Composer Alan Menken has written four new songs to add to the ones he co-wrote for the animated film, here working with Disney’s go-to musical north star, Lin-Manuel Miranda.
My low expectations have somehow led to a three-star review. It’s as improbable as Marshall, who turned in the lamest of all the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies, guiding “The Little Mermaid” 12 years later to award-worthy consideration — the award being for “Least Bad, Actually Pretty Good Disney Recycling Job” since “The Jungle Book.”
MPA rating: PG (for action/ peril and some scary images)
Running time: 2:15
How to watch: In theaters