Release dates for The Little Mermaid are May 25 in Australia and May 26 in the US and UK.
With her enormous eyes, soaring singing voice, and apparent purity of spirit, Halle Bailey is as organically Disneyfied as real people can be. It is therefore strange that her choice to play the titular Ariel was ever deemed debatable. The single undisputed high point of the finished picture and the strongest defense of this live action remake project can both be found in Bailey, a dazzling mermaid-core package. All children – not just the white ones – must be given the opportunity to envision themselves as residents of the Magic Kingdom if these films are to have any purpose other than being nostalgia-fueled cash-ins.
However, practically everything else about this flounders like a fish on deck that is about to die. The three of comedic relief characters, to whom this most notably applies: The fish Flounder, the crab Sebastian, and the seabird get moving. The great voice actors, Davide Diggs, Jacob Tremblay, and Awkwafina, are not to blame for this. The problem is that when computer-generated sea life approximates without recognizable facial emotions perform actions that are cute or humorous when performed by anthropomorphized cartoon cuddles, they lose their cute or funny qualities. Scuttle’s instructions on how to utilise a human “dinglehopper” and Flounder escaping a shark attack are just two examples of entire character interaction sequences rendered lifeless by CGI. In any case, you’d be lucky to make much of it out through the underwater video’s gloom.
The original The Little Mermaid is a great classic, so it stings. Its musical portions are some of the best in the Disney canon, combining the wiggle of renowned drag queen Divine with different influences like Harry Belafonte calypso and Esther William’s 1940s aqua musicals. These have been brought back, and new songs like The Scuttlebutt have been written by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Alan Menken, who was the original composer. But once more, performances are badly undercut by performers: while the northern gannet is justly famed for its diving prowess, this species of seabird is utterly incapable of evoking emotion through sound. It might be the beak.
Rob Marshall, the director of Mary Poppins Returns, performed miracles, so The Little Mermaid doesn’t lack talent or support from the public, but the allure of the ostensibly certain box office has nonetheless sunk it. However, there is dry land in sight, and it is the same rocky outcrop on which the House of Mouse was constructed: the insight that some stories, particularly the most fantastic ones, are best illustrated.
