The second movie was not planned for me, but my wife wanted to sit down and watch The Little Mermaid on Disney+. On my watchlist, there is King Richard on Netflix, which is leaving soon. However, there are times when you need to watch a movie together, even if it’s not your type of movie. Let me get this out of the way now rather than later: I prefer the original Walt Disney cartoon over this confusion. of a movie.

I do not know why I am explaining this as it is a movie that we have already watched from our childhoods only to say that the storyline of a young mermaid girl who dreams of exploring the world above on land and has an overprotective father who wants to keep Ariel safe and in the world deep down below.

The differences in this live-action version of The Little Mermaid are what makes it different but not good different just different.

Although the story is the same it’s lengthy and feels most of the time dark even watching an original legit stream on Disney+ makes this extremely hard to watch at times as some scenes are not clear.

The movie goes for over two hours and if you remember the original Disney cartoon it does not go for that long.

The new movie has new songs which I feel neither happy nor sad about. There are four as they advise four new songs but I feel it is three and one reprise of an original you can watch them all below:

Jonah Hauer-King – Wild Uncharted Waters (From “The Little Mermaid”/Audio Only)

Halle Bailey – For the First Time (From “The Little Mermaid”/Audio Only)

Awkwafina, Daveed Diggs, Disney – The Scuttlebutt (From “The Little Mermaid”/Audio Only)

Halle Bailey – Part of Your World (Reprise II) (From “The Little Mermaid”/Audio Only)

I am going to try and write this next thought as delicately and sensitively as possible. The performance musically and acting-wise from Halle Bailey was excellent she has an excellent powerful voice and does have the coval range and acting performance for Ariel in this new version of The Little Mermaid.

The biggest issue I have with this live-action version of The Little Mermaid is the costume and make-up design that they applied to Halle Bailey. The red in her hair should have been deeper and the contrast with her skin colour would have made everything pop more. Halle is beautiful and the make-up and costume department did not do their job well.

Now I am not an expert but my suggestion would be to have made her red look like Janet Jackson on her Velvet Rope album cover.

This is well for my daughter too much she finds Melissa McCarthy playing as Ursula as scary and well she found the original scary as well. Let’s discuss M&M I actually liked her performance although near the end when she turns into the other woman that has Ariel’s voice this was performed by someone else and it should have stayed as Melissa.

The director of the movie is done by Rob Marshall, Rob has brought us some movie classics like Chicago, Mary Poppins Returns, Into the Woods and many others. Like the second installment of Mary Poppins Returns this has potential but kinda is a miss hit.

With Jonah Hauer-King I have not actually seen him in any of his other movies I have heard of A Dog’s Way Home and The Flatshare but never have seen any of them.

I feel his performance was kind of flat I need to watch him in some other stuff to pass fair judgment.

Javier Bardem is in his second musical movie his first being Lyle Lyle Crocodile which was good and in this one, he does not sing he plays the role of King Triton in The Little Mermaid and no there is no sponsorship with Mitsubishi.

Awkwafina is the last person that I want to point out and she plays the bird called Scuttle at first I did not recognize the voice my wife did and we are both impressed at how far she has come since Crazy Rich Asians. Cannot wait for her next show I hope she brings her stand-up down to Australia.

My Rating