It’s there in the headline, pal. I like the new version of “The Little Mermaid.” I like it partly because I’ve seen the animated Disney “Little Mermaid” exactly once. Didn’t “grow up with it.” Don’t have any un-mess-with-able memories of the 1989 hit, which paved the way for an entire renaissance in Disney animation. Didn’t go into it with firm ideas about what they shouldn’t change, or should.
You never can tell which of these animation-to-live-action exercises in IP (Intellectual Property, though it could also stand for “In Perpetuity”) will do the trick. I tend to get that movie-karaoke feeling watching the biggest hits in this Disney IP realm, notably the key members of the billion-dollar club: “Beauty and the Beast.” “The Lion King.” “Aladdin.” Tiptop technological craft, excellent casting, and … why? What’s the gain? The money. That’s the why. The artistic why is beside the point.
Already, many have weighed in and considered “The Little Mermaid,” the latest animation-to-live-action adaptation, as one of the worst and least necessary of its ilk — an ilk that has made billions for Disney, while making a statistically unimportant percentage of outliers (critics, some regular people) less than gratified as they watch the live-action “Lion King” or “Aladdin” or, to be sure, “Dumbo,” and then exit through the lobby in a digital stupor, wondering when these things will run their economic course. Debating which of these movies are fun, or fun-ish, and which are not, has become the equivalent of arguing over one Olive Garden versus another.
