Where I Watched it: Disney Plus

English Audio Description Provided By Deluxe

Narrated By Michelle Deco

When i was a little boy, I knew that you don’t reprimand your daughters. After all, that is Ariel’s big wish, among wanting to be part of a world that is foreign to her, and kids often look at worlds foreign to them and dream of one day being an astronaut, a superhero, a princess, or simply old enough to stay up past 8PM. The animated classic is often credited for saving Disney animation, and bringing the Disney musical into a whole new world. Wait, that last reference was another movie.

Lately, if it breathes, Disney has planned a live action remake of it. It may shock you to find out that they are remaking Bambi as a live action film. Why? Clearly because we hate our children and haven’t traumatized them enough. But one thing has been true of every single remake so far, and that is they have failed to capture the magic of their animated originals. Not that some of them aren’t fantastic. The Jungle Book is a great remake, and somehow feels different from the animated classic from which it is adapted, even though it does feature some of the music. It was even interesting to see what Tim Burton would do with Alice in Wonderland. Villain perspectives in Maleficent and Cruella have found ingenious ways of using a franchise without copying the original. So where does this latest tale take us?

If you know a lot of racist people, your news feed probably exploded a few years back when Disney made the bold choice of casting Halle Bailey in the lead role. Even if you’re not surrounded by assholes, you likely heard about it. That’s the tragedy of our culture now, is that despite all the outcries about how people will ruin films, we never actually wait to see if they do. And Bailey? She doesn’t ruin The Little mermaid.

It’s mostly the animated tale you know brought to life. As a blind audience, that gimmick doesn’t do much for us, as it becomes a bit more like watching a Broadway musical that just replaced its cast. The stark difference in character designs for Flounder (voiced by Jacob Tremblay), Sebastian (voiced by Daveed Diggs), and Scuttle (voiced by Aquafina) are not going to distract us. They might distract the hell out of sighted kids, as a real flounder is nowhere near as cute as the animated version, and Sebastian is nightmare fuel and designed based on a land crab not even a sea crab.

So what this does offer us is an expanded story for Eric. Instead of just being a mindless piece of ass like he is in the cartoon, where he doesn’t even sing a duet or a solo, he is featured a lot more here. He has hopes and dreams, and far more dialogue and screentime. Considering the film is about an hour longer than the animated version, I’d say half of that was used to inflate Eric as a character, and Jonah hower King is more than up to the task. I have no idea who he is, but I thought his performance was tremendous. Even his solo was nice, though much like Evermore in Beauty and the Beast, it’s pointless. both Eric’s song and the aforementioned tune have counterparts in the Broadway adaptations that would have worked just fine. in fact, Eric’s Broadway solo, Her Voice, was included in The Little Mermaid Live.

The movie jettisons some original tunes from the cartoon. There is no Chef chopping up seafood in a nightmarish scenario, and Ariel’s sisters don’t have a musical intro. honestly, I’d say the movie is better for it, except Lin Manuel Miranda wrote scuttlebutt as a solo for scuttle instead, and that might be the worst song I’ve ever heard in a Disney film. Other negatives include the weird echo thrown onto Halle for her new songs which happen inside her head after her voice is taken, and a rather dumb sequence where Flounder is fully out of water and Tremblay acts like he can breathe just fine. I guess no one wanted to hear flounder choking to death.

The biggest negative here is Javier Bardem, aside from Scuttlebutt. Bardem sleepwalks through this film, clearly here for the paycheck only. it’s his career worst performance. Bardem is the kind of actor you couldn’t dream of saying was possible of this, but after seeing him in Lyle Lyle crocodile and now this, I know it’s possible for Bardem to give a bad performance. he’s on acting Ambien here, and it shows. His Triton sounds like he’s falling asleep, and even when he’s yelling at Ariel, his heart isn’t in it.

And although I think they missed out on the opportunity of a lifetime to have Úrsula transform into Chloe Bailey, and make use of the twins, I can’t ignore that Melissa McCarthy is way better than i thought she ever could be as Úrsula. She’s a shockingly great villain, she sounds great, and while there is a hint of Pat Carol in her voice, it feels like she really makes this her own. Bailey may be the star, but McCarthy is the scene stealer.

The audio description here did such a nice job of trying to create the under the sea environment, as well as several action sequences. There were so many great moments, like little nods to the original film, where Triton lifts himself up just a bit more to say goodbye to Ariel. It’s a small thing, but I loved the care that was put in to matching that sequence, and that it translated to the audience. The audio description does what it can, because it shouldn’t trample the songs. I know for many people, this is a part of contention. Some want audio description during musical numbers, others don’t… because they came for the music. I love the music, and I’m happy it’s not narrated over. There are plenty of YouTube videos already criticizing Under The Sea for having sea creatures not playing any of the instruments Sebastian lists off, and I doubt that would have been pointed out in the description anyway.

Disney will keep making these movies, and some will be better than others. I like it when they take a risk, and make changes like with Pete’s Dragon and Dumbo, even if neither of those two surpassed the original. Truthfully, none of them have. I’d say the Jungle Book got closest of all the adaptations. So moving forward, we can just keep moaning about Moana, or we can accept this is happening, and consider them more like Broadway revivals. A new opportunity to hear a diffferent cast sing the songs you love.

The Little Mermaid isn’t the death of Disney, but I’m not sure it’s the rebirth like it once was. While children of color will love seeing themselves represented on screen, the attention drawn to one actress puts an undue amount of pressure on her shoulders. This film never did live or die by who played Ariel. it was the captivating music, and the story of not being able to wait to live your dreams that grabbed kids in the late 80’s, and still does today.

And adults get to live that experience vicariously through their children now, as they see the light come on as they dream about being part of their world.

Final Grade: B