The Little Mermaid

Another Disney remake and, sadly, another negative review.

The two go hand in hand, and it’s important to make clear that this is a crying shame.

Criticising Disney just feels cruel and doubly so when the film in question can sell out a cinema on a weekday evening and is so clearly designed for families and young people.

With that said, The Little Mermaid continues this run of bad form on this incessant journey to remake the classics, adding nothing much of note to proceedings.

It’s just broadly ‘meh’ with a few strong elements but a lot of negatives.

Kicking off positively, the look of the film is strong. Disney have upped the CGI game here and it sits alongside something like Aquaman in terms of ‘underwater’ style. It’s certainly darker than the original with some nice character design (particularly Ursula – incidentally, this is helped by Melissa McCarthy being one of the few in the cast who knows exactly what film she’s in and hamming it up accordingly.)

The songs are good too with strong sequences. Lead Halle Bailey has an incredible voice and is easily the best thing here.

However, however, however, the film just cannot escape that desperate whiff of pantomime that has affected so many of these live action attempts. With stories this classic and well known, that’s always a risk but the period costuming and general hamminess of much of the acting just detracts from what’s going on.

It’s a fine line which McCarthy, chewing scenery for fun, stays on the right side of but, if you get it wrong, it’s frankly laughable. Sadly, Javier Bardem just looks a little lost (his appearance in the climactic scene drew laughter from the audience – it’s not meant to be funny.) If they had managed to convince Harry Styles to take the part of Eric, perhaps that would have saved things but, alas, you expect the cast to step out and take a curtain bow at the end.

Is this a bad thing? Perhaps not, and clearly families and young ones will love the film. It is darker and more modern, it updates the original well and there are even a few creepy moments and jump scares thrown in for good measure.

However, for the film fan it just doesn’t work. Admittedly, we’re not the target audience but can only judge what’s up there on the screen.

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