Arielle, die Meerjungfrau

To be honest, the live action remakes have been hit or miss. For every hit like Beauty and the Beast there have been misses like Dumbo. The Little Mermaid remake unfortunately falls in the later category. It fails to recapture the magic of the original. The newly added material is jarring, especially the sing by Aquafina. The CGI is weird...the realistic CGI animals are creepy...the child I was with didn't like them, "the crab is scary". Everything is dark and muted. I don't agree with those complaining about the casting. All of the actors were fine. Some were better than others, especially when comparing it to the original, but nothing was distractingly bad. I just feel it could have been done better.

One actress is not enough to save a movie even if she plays the main character. This happens all the time and this remake is proof of it. The weakest thing in this version, of course, is the CGI characters. I thought the worst thing ever seen in these remakes was the dog from 2019's Lady and the Tramp, but this Flounder is outrageous. It's the Jar Jar Binks of Disney's remakes. And this Sebastian looks odd and graceless. Three years and Disney couldn't do any better? Are you serious? In overall, the underwater scenes are not what I expected to see and, as some critic says, "recreated with Windows 10 screensaver graphics".

Now let me explain what is the problem with Ursula. In an animated feature you can exaggerate the expressions any way you like but you can't do that in live action. This is not Melissa McCarthy's fault, of course, but I don't lend ears to those who praise her performance with biased reasonings. And the changes in the final scene were simply the last straw but I won't spoil anything here. Seriously, I couldn't believe it when I watched it.

In summary, the movie doesn't work because Halle Bailey is surrounded by things that don't work. And that's not Halle's fault, it's all Disney's fault.

I mean it's an okay film. But is that what Disney wants to achieve now? Just to make okay movies? What happened to making great and lasting ones? Is that just a thing of the past?

My biggest qualm with this movie is that the acting performances from the cast was lackluster. These Disney classics are sacred in a sense that they made us emotionally invested in them. It's disappointing to think that animated characters were able to "act" and exhibit more emotional pull more than live actors. The original made us feel for these characters.

This version had no heart in it, it's just the shell of the 1989 classic with an attempt to impress contemporary audiences but it still fell flat on its face.

The scenes in this movie felt rushed and it was just hard to watch all together without thinking they just had a checklist of events they wanted to make sure was there. The dialogue was sub-par. The new rap song was simply unbearable. I had my hands over my ears while it was happening.

The only thing I could compliment about this movie are the visual effects. I liked the feel of the setting. But other than that. It felt more two dimensional than the cartoon.

The cgi in some scenes looks pretty weird, as avatar has elevated the way you record and do cgi underwater. The way they made the animals are so strange it seems that they have no life or emotions, as if it were all superfluous, the way the villain is not afraid, I tried to like it more it's just another live action to get rid of sales and reversals of products, without anything very original and without any kind of Disney charm and magic that we were I'm used to seeing it, anyway the Ericks don't have much charisma and it's just Erick with nothing, at the end of it all it's just another live action to be forgotten in a few months.

Missed the mark in so many ways: It's a children's movie, why are the colors so dark and muted (I did like Ursula's glowing tentacles)? Not saying it had to be bright, bubble gum pop colors but I could barely see what was going on half the time. Just doesn't seem the imagery was made with children in mind.

Why no background vocals? The musical numbers in the original Little Mermaid were FANTASTIC. This time they tuned them way down and took away all the excitement. Hallie sings well, but I still think background vocals would have made all of the songs sound soooo much better.

Loved Melissa McCarthy as Ursula.

Since they went out of their way to explain why Eric had parents of two races where was the explanation for why King Tristan had daughters of all races?

It was a decent attempt, but an absolute fail at being anywhere close to as good as the original. Meh.