The little meh-maid What is gained in redoing a Disney classic? By: Shelley Cook, AV Kitching, Eva Wasney, Jen Zoratti Posted: 3:00 AM CDT Tuesday, May. 30, 2023

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This article was published 30/05/2023 (833 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Last week, four millennial women who grew up with the original, animated version of Disney’s The Little Mermaid on repeat checked out the live-action release, starring Halle Bailey as Ariel, Javier Bardem as King Triton and Melissa McCarthy as sea witch Ursula. Could it live up to the nostalgia or did Disney bungle this one, too?

Like the 1989 film, Chicago director Rob Marshall’s 2023 version is based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale about a young mermaid who exchanges her siren’s song for legs via a pact with a sea witch in order to experience life on land with the dashing prince Eric (Jonah Hauer-King). The casting of Bailey, who is Black, created a lot of controversy in the months leading up to the film. Many people had their doubts about singing and dancing photorealistic animals.

The Free Press’s Shelley Cook, AV Kitching, Eva Wasney and Jen Zoratti take a deep dive into some uncharted — and often unsettling — waters.

Eva Wasney: My question with all of these live-action Disney remakes is: Who is it for? What’s the audience?

Jen Zoratti: Probably us. I think the fact that they started with that dark Hans Christian Andersen quote, “but a mermaid has no tears, and therefore she suffers so much more,” it was like, OK this is a different thing. I think they added enough to it that it became something new and that actually made me like it more than I thought I would. My expectations were in the basement, though.

EW: Yeah, it’s a darker, more grown-up version of The Little Mermaid, but I don’t know if I really liked it. The Little Mermaid was my top Disney movie growing up and the animated version is still pretty magical to me. I didn’t think this was going to hit that same mark and I was right about that — it was fine.

AV Kitching: I had no expectations; Little Mermaid has never been my favourite. I don’t know who it’s aimed at. I didn’t like it. I don’t know if a kid would like it.

Shelley Cook: This is the first live-action Disney remake I’ve ever seen from start to finish. I liked it, I didn’t love it. My kids are really excited to see it and they’re going to give me grief when they learn that I saw it without them. I’ll come back and watch it with them, though. I’m a bit nervous about the Ursula part at the end — I feel like it might scare my youngest kid.

JZ: The original came out in 1989, when I was four, and it was the first movie I ever saw in a movie theatre. And that part where Ursula becomes giant also freaked me out as a kid, but in this one it’s really, truly scary — she had the face of Linda Blair in The Exorcist.

AK: I was wondering why she looked so familiar!

JZ: There were a lot of unintentional jump scares overall. Like, every time Sebastian (the crab) came on screen, it got me. If you saw him in the wild — like when Sebastian was crawling on Eric — you would scream.

EW: I had preconceived opinions about the animal characters going into it based on the promo photos. I thought Sebastian and Scuttle (who is a gannet, not a gull, in this version) were less gross than I expected them to be, but Flounder? Absolutely not, did not like the way Flounder looked. (Jacob Tremblay plays Ariel’s fishy friend.)

JZ: I think it’s trying to do too much. I don’t think you need to be live-action and photorealistic.

AK: Right, I was like: are we watching David Attenborough or is this Disney? It looks like a documentary; it’s too real.

SC: It was neat to see how they made this come to life. I didn’t like the shark scene at the beginning. Sharks don’t move like that.

EW: Do you know what the uncanny valley is? It’s when something man-made gets too close to looking real and your brain starts saying, “This isn’t right.” Every time there was an underwater scene, I was getting major uncanny-valley vibes. The computer-generated hair and mermaid tails often didn’t mix well with the live acting.

JZ: I thought the casting overall was quite good. Halle Bailey was an excellent Ariel and everyone having racist temper tantrums about her casting needs to shut up forever. Her singing voice is beautiful. Daveed Diggs, Broadway royalty, as Sebastian? Also great. Loved Awkwafina as Scuttle, too.

SC: I think they could’ve gone further in the casting, though. It would have been cool if Eric was a person of colour too — they cast Ariel as a Black mermaid and I think that was awesome and I’m really happy about that. Representation matters so much, and I know this made a lot of little girls happy to see themselves in Ariel. But why not go further?

JZ: What did we think of Melissa McCarthy as Ursula? I thought she was incredible.

EW: I thought she was great, really menacing, and there were a few moments that played with her signature sense of humour.

SC: Ursula is one of my favourite Disney villains. I like that they made her more voluptuous than her cartoon version.

AK: Did you know the original Ursula was based on drag queen Divine? She was extremely popular in the ’70s but she never got to see her cartoon likeness, as she died a year before the film was released.

JZ: What about our new Prince Eric?

AK: Every time Eric came on scene, it was super corny. And Javier Bardem as Triton just doesn’t scan for me; what is going on there? Did he do it for his children? Because I know he and Penélope Cruz have children. I just couldn’t stop thinking about No Country for Old Men, where he plays a terrible killer.

JZ: I also felt like they made Triton meaner. There’s a lovely moment in the animated version, right after he blows up Ariel’s cave, where he feels bad. His whole face changes, just for a moment, and you think he’s going to go back to talk to her. I just feel they didn’t give him the same nuance.

EW: He didn’t seem to feel any remorse until the very, very end.

SC: But even that was kinda meh. I thought the ending was a bit cheesy.

JZ: There were, like, five endings, that was the problem. It was quite bloated.

EW: It’s so much longer than the original. What have they added and what is of value? There was some updated context and I thought it was nice that they expanded Eric’s origin story a bit, but so much of the other stuff was unnecessary.

AK: When he was running down that cliff and singing to the sea, I was reminded of Bollywood films. And he has this wet shirt sort of clinging to him. I realize it could be gender reversal, where he’s the one pining for her, so I could kind of see that they were trying to modernize it a bit. But still… yuck.

JZ: I did like that they added the stuff about the mermaid’s siren song and the lore about how it lures horndog fishermen to their deaths, which feels like important context for Ariel’s voice and why Ursula covets it. Part of Your World still gets me in the tear ducts, and Bailey’s version was gorgeous. However, let’s talk about the new music…

EW: I was cringing through all of the new songs.

JZ: Come on, Lin-Manuel Miranda. As Ariel sings, “I want moooooore.” Although, I did enjoy Scuttle’s rap.

SC: They changed the Kiss the Girl song to be more consensual.

JZ: Yes, I clocked that as well, and it’s good and admirable! But, like, it’s still a movie about a woman who gives up her voice to be with a man she’s known for seven seconds. You can update the lyrics and diversify the casting all you want, but it doesn’t really change all the, uh, problematic elements of The Little Mermaid.

AK: It’s Hans Christian Andersen, so it’s always going to be dodgy. My child is obsessed with The Little Mermaid and is very excited about watching this. Of course I’ll take her, but I hope that she doesn’t decide that she’s gonna have to lose something to get some guy or girl’s attention. That’s what concerns me about the older remakes of Disney. I prefer the newer original stories they’re making now. Very empowering for young girls. There’s hardly any romance; it’s more about friendship, loyalty, trust. These are values I can get behind. I am so done with kissy-kissy stuff for kids.

JZ: I think these remakes are a weird combination of nostalgia and novelty. But, oh my god, can we make some new movies?

EW: It’s so lazy and boring and repetitive.

AK: And our kids really deserve to hear some new stories.

JZ: Like an Ursula origin story! Make the Ursula movie, you cowards!