La Petite Sirène

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.

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.

The movie is long and tedious. I was ready to be whisked away to a magical underwater world with filmmaker Rob Marshall's highly anticipated live-action retelling of this classic Disney movie. My grandkids were excited to see the remake of their favorite "Little Mermaid" movie but became bored after 20-minutes after the movie started. The movie was unusually dark and foreboding and unsuited for a younger audience in my humble opinion.

Not sure I like the trend to make poorly written remakes of classic, beloved movies. I will have to rethink going to future Disney and Pixar movies since the characters were unappealing and plot dragging on.

It's just The Little Mermaid but stripped from everything that made the original animated movie a hit. Unbelievably loaded with cgi which helps prove that some things should be left animated, for example: Sebastian and Flounder looked horrendous and have perhaps the most unoriginal boring character designs I've ever seen, many scenes had such a dark tone that you couldn't even admire the decent looking cgi and it attempted to be as colourful and magical as the original yet failed since (believe it or not) it is live action.

The story was the same with a couple of changes which improved some aspects and also made some parts much worse. Eric had a much more in depth character and even had his own song which was ok which drastically improved his character. However, there were many changes which didn't do anything justice. Ariel had a new song after just losing her voice where she's describing how she feels. Why's this an issue? No reason except from the fact it completely destroys the fact she LOST HER VOICE! I get it's all in her head but why does she need to tell us what she thinks? We could have been left to understand what she is thinking by her actions or facial expressions. But no instead they give her a song after removing her ability to sing? You could have made her play instruments instead if you wanted another musical score since that would have reinforced her musical creativity and her way of exploring the land but I guess that's too creative for modern Disney?

There was a part I thought was pretty great about this movie and that was Ursula. For almost all of her scenes she basically stole the audiences eyes and ears. The actress' performance was great and she was just entertaining to watch from both her lines and physical expressions. Definitely a downgrade from the original but still great nonetheless.

Next is the comedy. I kid you not I had like 2 laughs from this movie and they were both light chuckles. You could tell the writers really wanted to play it safe when it came to the jokes like I guess I found a few more scenes funny but not enough to make me to actually burst out in laughter. This overall just made most of the movie boring and since I've already seen the exact same movie from 30 odd years ago, it felt like I had no other reasons to keep watching.

Also Scuttlebut is probably one of the worst things I've ever heard I honestly have no clue what the writers were thinking when giving Awkwafina a whole song. I'm sure she had fun with it and it's nothing against the actress at all I think she's great but her voice very clearly shouldn't be used for singing especially as the lead singer.

Speaking of the songs, most of them were pretty good (outside of the obvious 2 I have mentioned). Halle Bailey had an amazing singing voice and made every song she sang actually nice to listen to. Kiss The Girl had always been my personal favourite and this movie did it somewhat justice. I still enjoyed it but the visuals weren't as engaging as the original. The singing was still solid and I'm glad Sebastian, Flounder and Scuttle were all singing together. Eric's song was ok nothing much going on visually and the autone sounded much more obvious than other songs for me. Under The Sea wasn't that impressive in my opinion. I was never the biggest fan of that song but I could at least appreciate the style. This version was practically the same but with complete use of cgi which just got uninteresting fast (outside of the dark glowing part). But since it's practically the same song except using a bunch of cgi it's ultimately worse.

So to sum it up, this movie is probably the most average a movie can get. A boring live action remake of an animated movie that was clearly animated for a reason with a couple decent changes, a few bad changes and a few VERY bad changes. If you have seen the original, don't expect much. 5/10 arguably a 4/10 just because it's literally a movie I have already seen so many times before just with less creativity.

I don't take anything away from the actors, I take everything away from the director and script. Bland and boring is the best way to describe it.

The director I blame because seriously half of this movie should have been cut.

The screenwriters I blame because wow how do you make a live action remake this boring and bland. It's Disney for crying out loud.

Again I don't blame the actors at all, they did the best with a super subpar script.

I don't wish to give spoilers, because to anyone who wants to see this movie and make their own opinion please do. The main point is simply I'm glad I waited until this was out of the theater. This was a bloated mess that needed oversight from someone who cared about the Disney brand.

In fairness to the actors they all deserve credit and I would give a shout out to the casting agent who put the right people in the right place. It's too bad that the writers and director were not the right choice for this film.

4 stars for decent acting in a subpar Disney remake. This film needs to go in the vault.