The Little Mermaid: The Sea Just Got Deeper

The Little Mermaid is Disney’s latest live adaption film, taking inspiration from their original 1989 animated movie. As with many of their animated-to-live-action adaptations, Walt Disney Studios honors much of the original film while incorporating new scenes and elements in an attempt to provide a (somewhat) unique and deeper, richer story than its animated counterpart.

There are many aspects and moments in the film that made a big splash (obligatory pun!). Probably the biggest of these is the score by Alan Menken. He was able to recreate his popular score from the animated movie and made it somehow even more magical, giving children that awe-inspiring feeling and making adults feel like a kid again. The cinematography (by Dion Beebe) and VFX of the underwater scenes were simply majestic, with bright colors and realistic sea creatures and movements that had the audience singing and dancing along in their seats. The performances by the cast were spectacular.

Halle Bailey as Ariel was a fantastic choice as she embodied the character with all of her heart; while Melissa McCarthy stole the show as Ursula, bringing the sea witch’s evilness and comedic relief to life. And lastly, the songs were just as fun as the original animated film, which also includes four new songs to the film (including an amazing song performance by Awkwafina as Scuttle), but does omit the classic Les Poissons, the song that the French chef sang while trying to cook Sebastian.

The film does underperform in a few areas. First of all, as many great scenes that the movie has with its CGI, it also has a few less-than-stellar moments and effects, the most noticeable is how characters’ hair appears underwater. To be fair, this is a very difficult effect to pull off, so this review gets a pass on that in recognizing that the technology just isn’t quite there yet. But the scene where Ursula becomes the giant sea witch towards the end of the movie was distracting. Her face wasn’t visible for most of the scene (possibly as a way to not have to provide so many details on her face when using CGI in a situation like this) and it appeared that she had scratch marks on the side of her face that were unexplained how she got them until it is realized towards the end of the scene that they were supposed to be gills.

Ursula’s monologue scenes at the beginning of the film felt very inauthentic the writing could have improved it to make it more natural sounding in how someone may talk to themselves about their plan and the situation instead of a narration-style monologue. There were scene transitions where the story rushed from one scene to another, making the moment sink fast rather than letting it build up. And as we’ve seen lately with Hollywood opting into name recognition instead of voice-over talent, we heard Awkwafina speaking for Scuttle, instead of hearing the voice of Scuttle as its own character.

The film did add details to the story that was not part of the original animated film. We find out that Prince Eric is adopted, which explains a little bit about his character and why he feels somewhat different than his mother feels about his role in their monarchy. Ursula and Triton are siblings, which made it an interesting relationship development that gave a little bit of depth but essentially left the story unaffected. And we also find out vaguely what happened to Ariel’s mother which also didn’t contribute much to the story if it was left out. The writers added details without depth as a way to play it safe with a wider audience. However, it did develop Ariel and Eric’s relationship more than what the animated movie provided, allowing them to connect more with each other on a personal level, instead of the love-at-first-sight trope that the Disney princess movies always provided in their stories.