The Little Mermaid Live!

It's an episode of The Wonderful World of Disney. It's been 30 years since the release of the original movie. It's the animated movie cut with live performances of some of the scenes. Relative unknown Auli'i Cravalho is playing Ariel. At first, I thought she might be too old but she's actually a teen. One has to be aware of how she looks. On the other hand, Graham Phillips looks the part of the prince. Then there is Shaggy. It's been a decade since I've thought about Shaggy and here he is. He needs a more elaborate outfit to play Sebastian. He looks like Eddie Murphy's red outfit. He does not look like a crab. For inspiration, look towards Queen Latifah. She goes all out and her outfits are amazing. As for the performances, they are fair. It may be asking too much especially for the younger performers. I would suggest having only little girls in the audience. It's a little strange to see a middle aged dude whopping it up in a Little Mermaid show. Overall, it's fine.

I am a fan of the live performances of stage and screen classics that have come to TV in the last few years. But this show offered something different---an animated film/live performance hybrid. It's a clever solution to the underwater action challenge that "The Little Mermaid" presents. But I think the concept is flawed.

We might enjoy intercutting the animated sequences to the live onstage performances if the performers were superstars (think Celine Dion or Barbra Streisand) of if the performers were the actual voices behind the animated characters (think Kristen Bell and Idina Menzel performing their songs from "Frozen"). But this presentation was like switching between two channels.

The production values were good. And the simulation of swimming using wires was the best part of the show. But they were not enough to save this live performance from mediocrity. I also found the applause and cheering of the live audience to be distracting.

Without a doubt, the worst job of sound engineering I've heard in years. Half the time you couldn't make out the lead vocals over the crowd noise. And since the songs were the only real "live" performance, why bother?

The sound in the live action portions is poorly done. When the performance begins, the singers' volume suddenly drops with a few seconds here and there of normal volume. The performers sound like they are singing in another room while the orchestra is playing in the foreground.

For as much money and effects were put into this production, the audio technology used made many numbers a garbled mess.