‘THE LITTLE MERMAID’ Review: Halle Bailey Singularly Buoys A Poor Unfortunate Live-Action Remake

Courtney Howard // Film Critic

THE LITTLE MERMAID

Rated PG, 2 hours and 15 minutes

Directed by: Rob Marshall

Starring: Halle Bailey, Jonah Hauer-King, Melissa McCarthy, Javier Bardem, Daveed Diggs, Jacob Tremblay, Awkwafina, Noma Dumezweni, Jessica Alexander

Disney has hit grand highs (like PETE’S DRAGON and CINDERELLA) and interminable lows (like PINNOCHIO and THE LION KING) when reimagining their animated classics as live-action features. They’ve even reversed perspectives to showcase devilishly devious villains as the protagonists (MALEFICENT and CRUELLA). Perhaps director Rob Marshall’s THE LITTLE MERMAID could’ve benefitted from the latter by making Ursula the Sea Witch its main character. But instead, we’re given an occasionally charming, fairly rote rehash of the 1989 feature, now padded with extra songs, characters and conundrums that add very little to the magic of the original. Plus the film imposes limits on its fantasy elements for no reason.

Mermaid Ariel (Halle Bailey) is fascinated with everything human – their behaviors, their bodies and their trinkets. She’s so obsessed with a life beyond her own in the ocean that she collects all their abandoned goods in a hideaway far from the prying eyes of her disapproving dad King Triton (Javier Bardem), who lost his mer-wife to the folly of man. On the day she disobeys her father by rescuing cutie pie Prince Eric (Jonah Hauer-King) from drowning, Triton torpedoes her curated collection of thingamabobs, whozits and whatzits, sending his tempestuous daughter straight into the tentacled clutches of his long banished enemy Ursula (Melissa McCarthy). She strikes a devil’s bargain with the naive young’un: Ariel can become human permanently if she gives up her enchanting voice temporarily while getting her true love Eric to kiss her by sunset of the third day. Unbeknownst to Ariel, sneaky bitch Ursula inserts a catch into the spell: The mermaid won’t be able to remember the terms of their arrangement, even when her animal friends try to remind her. Hijinks and havoc ensue.

Narrative tweaks function to varying effect. Ariel’s transformation from mermaid to human doesn’t come with a side of beginners body horror frights for little ones. Vanessa (Jessica Alexander, who absolutely understood the assignment), Ursula’s land-dwelling siren used to trick Eric, is pure, unfettered camp. Her appearance is all-too-brief and the movie aches for her after she’s gone. Screenwriter David Magee also finds a better way to inevitably save the day in the climax. Still, its other wannabe progressive additions – diving deeper into the human and mer-kingdom’s “us vs. them”  bigotry and prejudice – is wrapped up in a perplexingly ham-handed, laughable fashion. The audacity of this conflict’s conclusion leaves adult audiences scoffing at the filmmakers’ smug notion that they solved racism.

Considering we’ve recently witnessed the gloriously vibrant underwater spectacle of AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER, THE LITTLE MERMAID’s visual effects look and feel tangibly regressive. Even in comparison to AQUAMAN from 2018, it’s a lousy end product. Aesthetically, the environments appear desperately phony and lifeless, detracting from the actors’ performances and – ironically – hindering our immersion.

Outside of Bailey’s resplendent showstopper “Part of Your World” and all its reprises, the musical numbers don’t have the transportive creativity and ingenuity of their predecessors. The zany, Busby Berkeley-inspired “Under the Sea” suffers greatly: the undersea animals are singled out in the lyrics as playing specific instruments, but are only allowed to dance in this iteration. It’s mystifying that showing them playing instruments is a bridge too far for Marshall in his fantasy where a mythical sea creature becomes human and a photo-realistic crab (Daveed Diggs, adopting a glaringly awful Jamaican accent), fish (Jacob Tremblay) and cormorant (Awkwafina) can talk. We’re living in an era where James Wan showed an octopus playing drums in AQUAMAN five years prior and was applauded; There’s no need to withhold on any creative lunacy. There’s little to no romantic zest in “Kiss the Girl,” as reflected in cinematographer Dion Beebe’s reality-favoring lighting cues and muted tones. Netflix romcoms contain more colorful, saturated imagery than this film, which is tracing over a cartoon. Again, someone needed to remind them they’re making a fantasy.

With exception of Bailey’s effervescent “For the First Time,” which gives voice to her internal monologue when she has no voice on land, the feature’s new songs don’t fare much better. “Wild Uncharted Waters,” for better and worse, shades in the coloring on Prince Eric, acting as a parallel number to Ariel’s “I Want” song, but also draws some ire, highlighting his colonizing quests across the seas. Credit to Hauer-King for his admirable efforts gifting it with a swoon-worthy sensibility. “The Scuttlebutt” grates on the audience’s nerves, and with its ultra-fast rapping by Awkwafina, it’s clear who penned the tune (ahem, it’s Lin-Manuel Miranda).

Bailey is a superstar, single-handedly saving this remake from sinking to the fathoms below. She’s got charisma, charm and a delicately nuanced emotional range, guiding us through her character’s sorrow and sweetness. McCarthy’s malevolence is more “meh-levolent” than anything, done a disservice by ropey CGI and murky lighting. And while she doesn’t try to redo, nor outdo Pat Carroll’s pristine voice work, the material she’s assigned rarely allows for a sinister, diabolical maven to shine, even in her “Poor Unfortunate Souls” number. Noma Dumezweni, who plays Eric’s protective mother Queen Selina, turns in a committed supporting performance, but her character is vestigial at best and deserves better material.

With its pervading lackluster qualities and an unwarranted, elongated run time to boot, it’s unimaginable that most in the future will ever choose this iteration over the brisk, ebullient animated film. Though Bailey makes this contemporary refashioning a viable option, she shouldn’t be tasked to shoulder the heavy lifting.

Grade: C-

THE LITTLE MERMAID will be in theaters on May 26.