The Little Mermaid

Halle Bailey served a very good performance with a lot of charisma and passion, she also has an impressive voice. In some parts people were clapping from excitement and I shed a tear since I saw her performing her first song.

I'm not a big fan of the growing wave of remakes and live-actions but this movie is something that I couldn't miss, they revisited one of my favorite classics and the result is striking, extravagant, funny, exciting, it has everything I love. I had my doubts since I saw the cast and the character designs (not to mention Ursula's makeup) but these actors have a lot of charisma, the final result is solid and entertaining.

I love Alan Menken and Howard Ashman compositions, The Little Mermaid and Little Shop Of Ho...

"Ariel" (Halle Bailey) has longed for a chance to meet with humans but her sagely father "Triton" (Javier Bardem) has prohibited this. Undeterred, she witnesses a terrible storm that washes the young prince "Eric" (Jonah Hauer-King) overboard. She races to his rescue and leaves him to his people on the beach - both are already in love! On hearing of her latest transgression, dad is now truly furious and loses his temper driving his daughter into the manipulative tentacles of the evil sea witch "Ursula" (Melissa McCarthy) who offers her a bargain - three days on land to obtain true love's kiss or a lifetime in her service. Snag? Well, she will not have her beautiful voice, she will be a mute. A combination of magic, duplicity and serendipity...

FULL SPOILER-FREE REVIEW @ https://www.firstshowing.net/2023/review-rob-marshalls-the-little-mermaid-enriches-the-original/

"The Little Mermaid enriches virtually every narrative aspect compared to the original, deepening Ariel and Eric's arcs while exploring the same core themes without losing any of its predecessor's essence. The relationship between the protagonists is unquestionably more complex and emotionally compelling, while the secondary characters - namely Sebastian and Scuttle - remain genuinely hilarious. Halle Bailey is VERY impressive and the cast accompanies her excellently.

However, it's not without its problems: the new songs are, for the most part, forgettable; the visuals are better than anticipated, but the feeling...

When they get the notion to remake an animated classic into a live action film, Disney is a well-oiled machine. Theyve found varying degrees of success and failure (The Lion King, Cinderella, Pinocchio) along the way, and their latest cartoon-to-real-life adventure The Little Mermaid lands somewhere on the better-than-average scale. There are things that work (a scene-stealing Melissa McCarthy as Ursula the Sea Witch), things that dont (a painfully lengthy run time), and things I never want to see again (the truly dreadful Under the Sea number), but the films reimagined storytelling delivers just enough magic to weather the storm overall.

The film tells the classic story of Ariel (Halle Bailey), a curious and spirited young mermaid who y...

'The Little Mermaid' is one of the better Disney live-action remakes.

I'd personally even put it on the same level as the 1989 animated movie, though admittedly I am not someone with any sort of connection to that original flick. Halle Bailey makes for a good Ariel. Daveed Diggs, Javier Bardem and Melissa McCarthy are solid in their respective roles, I'm not wholly convinced by the latter as Ursula but she is still a decent watch. Awkwafina as Scuttle is probably the character I enjoyed most.

Visually things look nice, I like both the underwater and on firmer ground stuff. Musically it's as good as you'd probably expect, "Under the Sea" and, of course, Ariel's songs are solid, while "The Scuttlebutt" somehow works more than it probabl...