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If the beginning of The Little Mermaid - which includes Ariel’s dealings with Ursula (Melissa McCarthy, having a campy good time) - pays homage to the original Disney version, the middle and parts of the end are, at best, pastiche.

Prince Eric’s island pales in comparison to Ariel’s world - and the charm differential between the two performers makes it challenging to be as enthralled with the rest of the film.

The lovers get a lot more time in the new film, which I’m not convinced is a good thing. Remember Chef Louis trying to cook Sebastian? That subplot helped take some of the pressure off Ariel and Eric’s story. The 1989 version of The Little Mermaid didn’t have the sturdiest narrative, but it offered some droll moments. When Ariel makes her away above ground, it’s hard to build a case for why she needed to leave. His rendition of “Under the Sea” is accompanied by a delightful montage of aquatic life that possesses the same vitality as Disney’s Strange World. Daveed Diggs, voicing Sebastian, brings a reliable flow of humor to the irascible crustacean charged with protecting Ariel. Bailey sounds angelic when singing “Part of Your World,” with a different sense of longing than Jodi Benson, who voiced the 1989 Ariel. Marshall and his team put considerable effort into capturing Ariel’s life underwater, and there’s magic to these parts of the film. There’s not much, unfortunately, done with or explained about this cosmopolitan cadre of mermaids. The changes to the mermaid world come in the form of Triton’s daughters, each of whom are of a different race and, we are told early in the film, are representatives of the seven seas. (I hope for a version one day of The Little Mermaid that takes on the author’s distressing original tale and renders the sea’s menacing reality.) When Ariel and Flounder narrowly escape a ravenous shark, it’s easy to remember the same scene and marvel at the sharpness of this three-dimensional predator. It’s jarring, at first, to see Ariel’s world come to a different kind of life, but you eventually settle into the hyperrealist rhythms of her home.įor the most part, Marshall’s version echoes Musker and Clements’ take on Hans Christian Andersen’s tragic story. The coral reefs look like they could be in a National Geographic spread. The scales on Ariel’s tail shimmer as she meanders through a shipwrecked area looking for treasures instead of meeting with her father (Javier Bardem) and her sisters.

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Flounder (voiced by Jacob Tremblay) resembles a real fish, his skin slimy and slightly puckered. The film opens in a photorealist interpretation of the sea somewhere off the coast of a fictitious Caribbean island. There’s enough in it to fill an evening, but it doesn’t inspire much more than a passing sense of déjà vu. Like other live-action remakes, The Little Mermaid is a neatly packaged story ribboned with representational awareness. There’s a nagging sense of risk-aversion - narratively, at least - and that wariness makes the fun it does have feel sanctioned. Marshall’s The Little Mermaid resembles a lot of recent Disney offerings: It’s sentimental, at times uneven and padded to weather controversy. Reconciling the strength of Bailey’s portrayal with the rest of the film, however, takes some work. Her voice, the narrative’s raison d’être, sounds ethereal, too. The Beyoncé prodigy and the other half of the Grammy-winning duo Chloe x Halle gracefully presents her own Ariel: The character is still sweet and sharp-tongued, but there’s a touch more bite to her defiance. Whether she’s belting out a newly arranged “Part of Your World” or silently observing her less than charming prince (Jonah Hauer King) navigate his own social constrictions, her charisma radiates off the screen. Her performance adds edge to what is ultimately a serviceable film. Thankfully, Bailey doesn’t disappoint as Ariel. (It seems to not have occurred to the objectors that a fictional character does not belong to anyone.) The detractors had no standing, but their outrage fueled the anxious anticipation and expectations around the film. Their complaints of a nonexistent white erasure are littered across the internet under the hashtag #NotMyAriel. Marshall’s Ariel (Bailey) is Black - a choice that sent scores of people clutching their pearls and reverting to racist protestations. Cast: Halle Bailey, Jonah Hauer-King, Melissa McCarthy, Javier Bardem, Daveed Diggs

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