The Little Mermaid (2023)

I'm sure you can help them sort it out, Dunban.
― Fiora, Xenoblade Chronicles

This article is about 2023 remake.
You may be looking for 1989 original film.

The Little Mermaid is a 2023 musical fantasy film directed by Rob Marshall and written by David Magee. A live-action remake of the 1989 film of the same name, the movie was released in theaters on May 26, 2023, to mixed reviews from critics and fans, but more negative reviews from the audience, especially for Disney and The Little Mermaid fans.

The Little Mermaid

A natural disaster of a remake that could have ended with "Ariel" jumping into the ocean and turning into sea foam. You know, like the source material's source material?!

Genre:	Fantasy Musical
Directed by:	Rob Marshall
Produced by:	Marc Platt Lin-Manuel Miranda John DeLuca Rob Marshall
Starring:	Halle Bailey Jonah Hauer-King Daveed Diggs Awkwafina Jacob Tremblay Noma Dumezweni Art Malik Javier Bardem Melissa McCarthy
Cinematography:	Dion Beebe
Music by:	Alan Menken
Distributed by:	Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Release date:	May 26, 2023
Runtime:	135 Minutes
Country:	United States
Language:	English
Budget:	$240.2 million
Box office:	$569.6 million
Franchise:	The Little Mermaid

Plot

The youngest of King Triton's daughters, and the most defiant, Ariel longs to find out more about the world beyond the sea, and while visiting the surface, falls for the dashing Prince Eric. While mermaids are forbidden to interact with humans, Ariel must follow her heart. She makes a deal with the evil sea witch, Ursula, which gives her a chance to experience life on land, but ultimately places her life -- and her father's crown -- in jeopardy.

Bad Qualities

First and foremost, one of the biggest problems with this movie is that much like Disney's previous live-action remakes of the Disney Animated Canon, it furthers once again Hollywood's lame ideology of "everything old is new again" by remaking this film. It also implies that Disney did not learn their lesson from their previous live-action remakes.
As with most modern Disney live-action remakes, it copies everything from its original material beat by beat with barely anything new added.
- It also increased the original film's runtime from 83 minutes to 135 minutes just to develop the relationship between "Ariel" and Eric much more.
Throwing Trash in the Ocean: Halle Bailey's casting was met with severe backlash, as people found her to be an African American woman playing a sea creature whose is described by Hans Christian Andersen stating that "her skin was as clear and delicate as a rose-leaf, and her eyes as blue as the deepest sea", but while she does have a great performance and an amazing singing voice and sounds overall similar to Jodi Benson, her performance isn't as amazing as Benson's from the original 1989 film.
- When criticized for it, she, alongside Disney, insulted critics by calling them "racist" just for refusing to accept this casting, which goes to show that they will not handle or accept any form of criticism for this change.
  - In addition, major media outlets, such as The New York Times, The Hollywood Reporter, and CNN, have blamed racism for the movie underperforming internationally, with The Hollywood Reporter and CNN accusing people living in China and South Korea of being racist just because it underperformed in both countries.
  - A better choice for choosing to play Ariel would be Ariana Grande (even though this would be considered stunt casting), Alyson Hannigan, or any other redhead actress, or better yet, use motion capture to cover it up.
Not only that but Scuttle was pointlessly changed from male to female and Ariel's sisters were changed to being all different types of races.
- Speaking of the latter, this change makes things look confusing for the audience as they are all said to have the same mother. This leads to a plot hole in the movie, because a person can't just randomly have a maternal child of a different race, and while it may be understandable since this may be the result of a very rare genetic mutation, having them all as a different race at once just misses the whole point.
  - Bringing back the criticism from earlier, this is also considered racist.
The visuals, while they look good, are pale in comparison to the animated original. This is not helped by the limitations of live-action, which makes everything look lifeless and slow rather than the fast-paced scenery of the original.
Horrendous and nightmarish CGI:
- First of all, every single animal companion doesn't resemble their original designs, because Sebastian's design looks more like a ghost crab or a live-action version of Mr. Krabs (especially the eyes; oddly enough, Clancy Brown played Undertow in The Little Mermaid 2: Return to the Sea), Flounder resembles a soulless and a badly drawn sergeant major fish, and Scuttle was changed from a seagull into a northern gannet.
- Scuttle's change was so that she could be in the underwater scenes with Ariel, but even then she was only in one with barely any speaking time, which just makes this change pointless.
- Other uses of CGI aren't much better. In particular, a scene (included in the trailer) where Ariel makes a blowfish inflate itself by touching it, is very cheaply animated.
Two songs from the original movie, Daughters of Triton and Les Poissons, were replaced by three new ones: For the First Time, Wild Uncharted Waters, and The Scuttlebutt. While For The First Time is okay, The Scuttlebutt is very awful, if not one of the worst songs in any Disney movie, and is just trying to be hip and relevant to modern times, which sounds like something the original movie never did.
- Additionally, a fourth new song, Impossible Child, was going to be added, but was cut for dramaturgical reasons. Luckily, it will be added to the public at a later date. But still, the reason behind this is confusing.
The songs Poor Unfortunate Souls and Kiss the Girl had some lyrics changes. The reasoning why is very dubious:
- Poor Unfortunate Souls was changed because Disney thought it might make young girls somehow feel that they shouldn’t speak out of turn, even though Ursula is the villain and internally says that Ariel will fail, which just makes these changes confusing.
- Kiss the Girl was also changed because they were worried that Eric would force himself onto Ariel even though Eric did no such thing in the original.
  - To add fuel to the fire, the film's director stated that the song was treating Ariel as an "object of desire, encouraging Prince Eric to kiss her without any consideration for whether she wants that", even though in the original, it was Ariel who was trying to get Eric to kiss her, but he kept on pulling away because he did not want to take advantage of her. This means that Disney completely misunderstood the intention of the song.
- All these changes to these lyrics are not only unnecessary but also disrespectful to the late original lyricist, Howard Ashman, who can't even defend his works since he died of HIV/AIDS on March 14, 1991. Not helping the matter is that the other original composer, Alan Menken, actually supports these changes, which makes it look like they were deliberately disrespecting his death.
Queen Selina, the only new major character in the film, adds nothing to the story and is a carbon copy of Triton, but as a human. She doesn't like Eric exploring the sea just like how Triton didn't want Ariel to go to the surface because of her husband dying out in the ocean.
- She also goes through a sudden shift in character from an overprotective mom to an accepting mom because she witnesses Eric going out to sea to rescue Ariel which causes her to have a realization that Eric would do anything for a mermaid. Yet, how does this make her allow Eric to be independent?
Triton's reasoning for hating humans, because they killed Ariel's mother, Athena, could have been interesting, but is portrayed very poorly as it is barely developed.
- Athena's backstory was given more development in Ariel's Beginning as she was killed by a passing pirate ship, but Triton in that film chose to blame music as the cause of her death because Athena was trying to save their family's music box from being looted by the pirates.
Ursula is also pointlessly changed to Triton's sister who somehow was the cause of Athena's death.
- Not only that, but she also adds an extra spell to her potion giving Ariel amnesia. This has Ariel forget she has to kiss Eric in three days, which, in turn, makes Ursula's transformation into Vanessa very pointless, as it is a fool-proof plan.
- While not shown in the film, the companion book, Guide To Merfolk, explains that Ursula manipulated the humans through a spell that made her look like Athena and capsized their boats, while the real Athena was mistaken for Ursula and was killed by a harpoon. Triton was aware of this and banished the merfolk from visiting the surface while also banishing Ursula. The problem is that why would he have a prejudice against humans because they killed his wife even though he knew they were being manipulated by Ursula into killing her?
The climax of the film was changed from Eric piloting the ship to stab Ursula to Ariel doing the same in the remake. This undermines Eric's heroic role, as it is meant to show that not all humans are bad to Triton.
- It would've been much better had the writers changed to Eric piloting the ship, like the original, while Ariel rescues Selina with Triton caught in the whirlpool. That way, it will show both Triton and Selina that not all humans and merfolk are bad creatures to one another.
This movie even has, we kid you not, a literal well-known pornographic movie star called Stefano Tomadini, under his alias Dante Ferrari, a casting decision that is both baffling and inappropriate, considering that this movie is targeted towards children. Porn stars will sometimes star in films rated NC-17, R, or very rarely PG-13, so having a porn star appear in a film targeted towards younger audiences makes no sense. And yes, we sure wish we were kidding too.
Poor pacing, unlike the original film.
Weak direction by Rob Marshall, who previously directed Mary Poppins Returns, another Disney movie that was way times better than this atrocity.
To rub salt in the wound, Disney even made a CGI animated series for Disney Junior simply titled Ariel, which is even more unnecessary and was probably made just to sell more merchandise, as well as showing how Disney barely responded to the criticism surrounding the film.
While most of the voice acting is pretty good (mostly Jacob Tremblay and Daveed Diggs, who manage to replicate Jason Marin and Samuel E. Wright's charms), Awkafina did a horrendous job voicing Scuttle, most likely due to her being genderflipped. She uses her normal voice, which really doesn't fit Scuttle.

Good Qualities

The performances are good (Awkwafina as Scuttle excluded, although most of her international voice actors do way better jobs voicing her than Awkwafina), with Halle Bailey giving a great performance as Ariel and her singing voice receiving the most praise. Jodi Benson, who played Ariel in the original, makes a cameo here.
The visuals can still look great, especially in certain underwater parts.
Eric, while being undermined as a hero, gets better characterization than in the original film where he was just a love interest. He wants to explore the ocean, just like how Ariel wants to be on land. Even though it's just a copied and pasted version of Ariel, it's one of the few changes Disney made to their character that made it better.
- All of the characters are still likable and retain their original personalities such as Ariel, Ursula, King Triton, Sebastian, Flounder, Scuttle, and more.
Wild Uncharted Waters is a great song, with it helped by Bailey's backing.
The soundtrack by Alan Menken and Lin-Manuel Miranda (except for The Scuttlebutt) is pretty decent.
Poor Unfortunate Souls, despite having changed lyrics, fixed the infamous plot hole the original movie had. In the 1989 classic, Ariel had to sign a contract, proving she could write, but never writes out her feelings to Eric. In this version, Ariel instead has to pull off her scale, because Ursula would have known she can’t write so Ariel could have never written down her feelings to Eric.
While this movie is unnecessary and pointless, it is great to see a Little Mermaid movie for the first time since 2008's Ariel's Beginning.
The costume and set designs look great.
- King Triton is also giving body armor rather than showing his bare chest, which is a nice change.
During the first few minutes of the movie, we see a sad quote from Hans Christian Andersen (the author of the original "The Little Mermaid" novel), which is a nice touch:
- "... But a mermaid has no tears, and therefore she suffers so much more."

Reception

The movie received mainly mixed reviews from critics and audiences with a 68% on Rotten Tomatoes, with 7.2 on IMDb (using IMDb's alternate weighting system to deter review bombers from bringing the score down). While the film was praised for the performances and music, the visuals, character designs, and not changing much of the original were heavily criticized.

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