TMS Movie Review: The Little Mermaid '23

(Walt Disney Pictures)

When the promos started coming out for Rob Marshall’s new live-action screen adaptation of The Little Mermaid, my first thought was Robert Iscove’s TV movie adaptation of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella (1997). Cindy is played by singer/actress Brandy, Whitney Houston is her fairy godmother, Bernadette Peters appears as her wicked stepmother. My favorite aspect of Iscove’s production is how we’re supposed to blindly believe a white king [Victor Garber] and a black queen [Whoopi Goldberg] conceive a Filipino prince [Paolo Montalban]. There’s plenty of color blind casting to be found in The Little Mermaid (2023) as well, most evident by King Triton and his daughters all being different ethnicities. I’ve always gotten a kick out of this kind of diversity on screen. It’s a very theatrical method which naturally fits in a traditional musical setting. Generally speaking, I thought Marshall’s interpretation of the Disney classic was decent. The director had a lot to live up to with John Musker & Ron Clements’ animated hit credited as successfully reviving the Disney brand right when the studio was at such a low point, they were considering closing their animation department. It was also the first of Howard Ashman & Alan Menken’s three groundbreaking Disney musical soundtracks as well, followed by Gary Trousdale & Kirk Wise’s Beauty and the Beast (1991) and Musker & Clements’ Aladdin (1992).

First thing’s first with this new Little Mermaid. Unlike Bill Condon’s disastrous 2017 version of B&TB, this live-action Disney princess—pop starlet Halle Bailey—can actually sing, act and charm the audience. On some songs she even sounds eerily identical to Ariel’s original voice actor Jodi Benson [who of course, is given a cameo in the recent film]. But Bailey has her spin on the character that stands on its own. I’ve seen some call Jonah Hauer-King’s Prince Eric bland, but I actually liked him quite a bit as the royal heartthrob who falls for the sea princess. While Melissa McCarthy usually delivers effective comic relief to the right material, I felt she was phoning it in a tad as villainous Ursula and mostly giving an impression of Pat Carroll’s original performance. Even more underwhelming is Javier Bardem, who looks like he’s sleepwalking through his role as Triton; meaning we don’t get the paternal figure’s iconic “ARIEL!!!” or “URSULA! STOP!” this time around.

(Walt Disney Pictures)

Marshall directed one of my all-time favorite musicals, Chicago (2002), but everything he’s filmed since then has left a lot to be desired, unfortunately. The Little Mermaid ’23 isn’t as disappointing as Nine (2009), but it’s also in the same forgettable realm of Mary Poppins Returns (2018). The CG effects and cinematography are better than the marketing lets on, but also not as endearing as the original 2D animation. It’s almost a full hour longer than the 83 minute runtime of the 1989 classic, but with not much expanded on story or character wise, only making room for more jokes and musical numbers. This, I hate to say, leads to the weakest link with TLM23: the soundtrack. Why you would feel the need to mess with any Ashman-Menken compositions is beyond me. Some of the most enduring and timeless musical songs ever created, and we’re given slight, unnecessary altercations that don’t fix or improve the original words of ‘Kiss the Girl’ and ‘Under the Sea.’ Ursula’s famous ‘body language’ gag isn’t even included on ‘Poor Unfortunate Souls.’ Worst yet, most TLM fans have been visibly bummed at the lack of ‘Daughters of Triton’ and ‘Les Poissons.’ As for the new tunes by Lin-Manuel Miranda, ‘For the First Time’ is fine and a nice addition for more screentime of Ariel singing. I like Awkwafina in comedies and on her Comedy Central sitcom “Nora from Queens” (2020- ) and I found Daveed Diggs’ Sebastian the crab fun enough. But the rap duet ‘Scuttlebutt’ between Sebastian and Awkwafina’s Scuttle is borderline grating. It’s also the new song most obviously written by Miranda instead of Menken or Ashman-Menken. Eric gets his own ballad this time, ‘Wild Uncharted Waters,’ which could have had potential for fresh character development. Instead, the song, sequence and vocals are…just…a bit…😴😴

A genuine improvement in TLM23 is making the land location a Caribbean island instead of a fictional Denmark that also somehow has palm trees, like seen in the original movie. All in all, unless you’re a die-hard fan of Hans Christian Andersen’s original fairytale; or want a fitting double feature with Cinderella ’97, the latest effort of The Little Mermaid is more of a second choice than a definite must-see.