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.
For me, this undersea Olive Garden constitutes a satisfying exception. Director Rob Marshall’s take on “The Little Mermaid” stays faithfully close to the ‘89 basics and many of the scene-by-scene, shot-by-shot design schemes of the animated version. Yet the changes really help. The fleshed-out central romance, the performances of Halle Bailey (Ariel, the mermaid, with songs belted like nobody’s business) and, as her Above World love Prince Eric, Jonah Hauer-King — it all basically works. That shouldn’t be a rarity. But with these pre-branded IP derivatives, an enlivening spirit too often eludes the creators, whatever the global box office has to say about it.
Trigger warning to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who seems to be in perpetual tryout mode as a live-action Disney villain: The revised lyrics and character relationships in this new “Little Mermaid” reflect an attempt to make some songs less potentially objectionable (“Kiss the Girl,” with its make-your-move! directive to bashful Eric, is sung by Daveed Diggs as Sebastian the crab). In David Magee’s screenplay the mermaid/human couple at the story’s center becomes something of actual rooting interest, due to the felicitous casting but also because the roughly 45 minutes of new material raises the stakes without getting pushy about it. Marshall, filming on the Italian island of Sardinia when not confined to Pinewood Studios in England, maybe stuck with too much Ursula for my taste, but above the water, the open-air atmosphere pumps some oxygen into the location work. And Melissa McCarthy works valiantly to keep Ursula from falling completely into drag-queendom. (The creative team of the animated film has acknowledged that drag queen Divine is the key visual inspiration for Ursula, particularly in the eye shadow department, which is more like a separate eye shadow corporate division.)
What doesn’t quite work? As King Triton, Javier Bardem struggles to resolve the hardass side of the undersea ruler, whose queen was killed by one of the Above World people, with the fearful father within. The big action scenes include the climactic, fatal mega-stabbing of Ursula, who in this version is the king’s bitter, vengeful sister, following the Broadway “Little Mermaid” iteration. Storms at sea, pain-based slapstick: These familiar tropes gain very little and, in fact, lose a lot when you’re looking at photorealistic equivalents to the more transporting and imaginative animated originals.
The pluses, though, buoy the end result. As Scuttle the gull, Awkwafina had large comic shoes to fill, since Buddy Hackett voiced the ‘89 version. She fills them in her own brash style, though her rap-patter number “The Scuttlebutt” — basically a livelier version of “The Morning Report” from “The Lion King” — already has gotten loads of cultural pushback from many quarters. Composer Alan Menken has written four new songs to add to the ones he cowrote for the animated film, here working with Disney’s reliable go-to musical north star, Lin-Manuel Miranda. Some of these complement the Menken/Howard Ashman originals more readily than others.
Honoring Hans Christian Andersen, who cooked up the first “Little Mermaid” by borrowing some essentials from the early 19th century folkloric fairy tale “Undine,” director Marshall’s film opens with an Andersen quotation: “But a mermaid has no tears — and therefore she suffers so much more.” Rest assured, only a smidgen of Andersen’s poetic anguish enters Disney’s remake. Some of the revisions and additions strain for relevance, as when hunky but enlightened Eric, back from many weeks at sea, speaks of his desire to “reach out to other cultures so we don’t get left behind.” Smart capitalism by way of progressive values! There’s an idea America will never fully embrace!
Anyway, there you have it: my low expectations have somehow led to a three-star review. It’s as improbable as Marshall, who turned in the lamest of all the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies, guiding “The Little Mermaid” 12 years later to award-worthy consideration — the award being for “Least Bad, Actually Pretty Good Disney Recycling Job” since “The Jungle Book.”
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'THE LITTLE MERMAID'
3 stars (out of 4)
MPA rating: PG (for action/peril and some scary images)
Running time: 2:15
How to watch: In theaters Friday
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