Disney's THE LITTLE MERMAID live-action movie musical - News & Discussion Thread — Page 8

perfectliar said: "lol so instead they have a white woman literally stealing a Black woman's voice"

Well, she is the villain.

https://variety.com/2023/film/reviews/the-little-mermaid-review-halle-bailey-melissa-mccarthy-1235620560/

"Halle Bailey and Melissa McCarthy Erase Any Doubts About This Remake’s See-Worthiness"

https://www.indiewire.com/criticism/movies/the-little-mermaid-review-2023-live-action-1234864226/

"Rob Marshall's update on the classic mermaid myth will make Halle Bailey a movie star, but the rest of it treads water."

https://www.upi.com/Entertainment_News/Movies/2023/05/22/Little-Mermaid-movie-review/5091684623785/

"Bad effects, new music, length sink 'Little Mermaid'"

At the moment, this film is at 70% on Rotten Tomatoes, but 41% amongst top critics. Not good.

She is extremely talented no doubt. Wish she were starring in a better vehicle for those talents. This will be a hit with the kiddies though.

rosscoe(au) said:
The Scuttle Rap the less said the better.


Lol, the Scuttlebutt rap song seems to be universally reviled.

I've read / heard several reviews say that this is one of their better live action remakes, but considering how the majority of them have been pretty bad, I don't think the bar is set that high : )

7.30 pm season walked out 9.56 pm , overstuffed with scenes that add nothing to the storyline.
Sadly bland and worst of all devoid of magic, charm , wonder.
Halle Bailey is wonderful, but really is let down by the numbers direction.
The musical numbers lack.
Prince Eric should never sing.
The Scuttle Rap the less said the better.
Go watch the 1989 masterpiece instead this weekend.
The kids in my screening were bored.
Yet another misguided cash grab by Disney.

Its not the worst of the Disney remakes, it just should have been better."

Thanks for your review, many people have said Halle is amazing but the rest is very blah. They couldn't have picked someone more handsome for Prince Eric? Out of all the white men with brown hair that auditioned?

I don't think this will be a bomb like Dumbo or as weird as The Lion King, but I think people will be left wanting more. And then they'll turn on the original.

Watched a 6pm showing. TLM is one of my absolute favorite Disney films and I mostly enjoyed. Didn't love every choice by far, but I didn't aggressively hate it like I have every other adaptation (minus Cinderella).



Scuttlebutt was a bad song and bad placement.

Also can't forgive the continued erasure of Her Voice.

Jeremy Jahns has just posted his review. He thought Halle Bailey's performance was great and thought Prince Eric in this iteration was an improvement from the original animated film. But, he had nitpicks about a lot of everything else. He ultimately gave it the same rating he gave Rob Marshall's previous film, Mary Poppins Returns, "a good time no alcohol required (at matinee price)."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyCj3P6ZaTg

I went to see this film yesterday. Overall it is enjoyable and Halle Bailey's Ariel is quite charming (even though the lack of acting experience shows). In some scenes it seems like the material is on top of her instead of the other way around and in other scenes she comes across as very sincere and real.

The film starts with a very big disappointment, as the first 2 songs are cut. Both the beautiful instrumental climax of the castle/swimming merfolk and the song "daughters of Triton" are no longer there. We see the ship in the waves and the camera goes underwater and we hear a few seconds of orchestra building up, and I felt my eyes getting a little wet, and then the shot and music was cut to another shot (with just noise) of the ship again. Which was weird, and then we saw another underwater shot for the 2nd time, and again, a little hint of the instrumental melody of part of your world started and I felt my eyes almost getting wet again. And then it suddenly stopped again?! And then there was a silent shot of Triton and his daughters sitting on the underwater "stools", having a chat without music. And that was that. So basically, the melody went nowhere and stopped out of nothing. This was like a hard slap in my face. This would have been a glorious opening, they even gave us 2 setups towards that melody and they threw it away. Why? I was beginning to ascend out of my seat and then hit with a baseball bat. This really should have been the moment to captivate the audience right away and make them fall in love with the beauty of the film. Now I could tell the audience wasn't charmed at all yet.

What follows is a couple of scenes with dialogue to set the story and setting. The whole story line is the same as the original film, with little changes in details here and there. Sebastian, flounder and scuttle are really not funny anymore and do add little to the film. What I also didn't like was the unnecessary changes in female empowerment, Ariel is now the one who kills Ursula and saves the damsel in distress called Eric. Ariel is the one who refuses the kiss first. Ariel doesn't sign anything with Ursula, she is just turned into a human without proper consent, so we can't really blame her, Ursula also put a little extra something in the potion which makes Ariel know nothing about a kiss or the actual agreement. So we as the audience could never think that Ariel actually wants a man and tries him to kiss her, etc. This all felt a bit unnecessary.

Aside from this forced tweaks, I actually did like the film. There were many moments that put a smile on my face, such as the "Part of your world" scene, the "Under the sea" scene was really endearing and the photo realistic animals made me giggle. The reprise of part of your world had me in tears, it was really well sung and acted. The desire and urge she portrayed was so sincere that she was almost shaking. Like a primal instinct that nobody in the world could stop. Very impressive.

I especially appreciated the scenes between her and king Triton, very intense and emotional and I love the extra dialogue and backstory details. Some of their scenes together had me in tears too.

What also was very lovely was the romance and meetings between Ariel and Eric, it was just very charming and well done. Added little moments that I appreciated. The scene "Kiss the girl" was such a beautiful sincere moment, which caught me by surprise. I never really had a particular interest in that scene. But it felt so sincere and beautiful, like the whole world was good at that moment, maybe a part of it was also the nostalgia, but it was just very peaceful, wholesome and well acted and the song was much more beautifully arranged than the original version. It felt real.

I really began to root for Ariel and Eric here and was getting into the story. I generally liked the scenes on land more than the scenes under water. I also liked the portrayal of Ursula (except for a few added, too modern and popular lines), and she sang "poor unfortunate souls" quite well. I also liked the character of Vanessa.

The final few scenes between Ariel and Triton had me in tears. I have never cried or gotten even slightly emotional with any of the Disney remakes before. But the tears were gone soon when there was no ending music and a very cheap version of "Under the sea" was played during the end titles. Also there are 3 new songs, one for Eric, one for Scuttle and one for Ariel. All 3 are terrible. They pull the film down quite a bit. It feels like they are written by non-professionals.

In my opinion the film was enjoyable overall, with 4 emotional moments, a few funny and endearing moments but also many not so enjoyable moments. All in all, I think these kind of remakes are enjoyable to watch once, but will never live up to the quality, class, basically to the legend that the original animated film is.

Updated On: 5/25/23 at 10:56 AM

verywellthensigh said: "I still wonder what Sofia Coppola would have done with this."

That was going to be a completely different movie based on the original fairy tale. No connection to Disney or the 1989 film. Somewhere along the way the internet got ahold of that story and things got a bit warped

These reviews are rough.

Although, Disney are expecting a $125 million weekend.

I loved the original animated movie.

ACL2006 said: "For anyone that's seen it, is Melissa McCarthy as bad as some people are saying she is as Ursula?"

I thought she was quite good. Her performance certainly takes cues from Pat Carroll in the original but still makes it something new. Definitely made me laugh out loud a few times. The only casting issue I had was Javier as Triton, I found him very wooden/detached.

Updated On: 5/26/23 at 08:52 AM

I really wanted to love this remake - but OUCH!

Stay home and watch the original film.