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Little Mermaid (2023) review

So I thought about blocking this review out, or simply not dropping it until later, but like… My dudes. This movie came out in freaking 1989. You’ve already seen it. Maybe not specific parts of this movie, but the beats are almost identical to the point where there’s literally no reason to not drop this.

So first off, the movie opens with introducing Eric on a boat. The only notable thing in this scene is taking note of what’s not in it. Mainly the fact that the sailors aren’t singing. It’s not a memorable song in any way, but you all know this song. The absence of it is jarring and begins the first major problem with this movie and pacing, which I’ll get into later.

Then, we introduce Triton and his six mermaid daughters. Now, you might have seen promo images released maybe a month before the movie came out featuring Ariel’s six sisters. They’re all different races (one is blonde, another Asian, another is a darker black than Ariel, etc). The sisters are introduced as being minor goddesses of each ocean. Which was a plot point that people report had been dropped from the original movie. However, literally none of this is important, and this is dropped almost as soon as it’s brought up. It would have been something interesting to explore, but no. Triton always was the king of the oceans, but this is a role that is straight-up explained in the new movie, rather than something that you kind of read-between-the-lines. Also noteworthy in this scene is something that’s not present: music. Again, we’ll get back to this point later.

The introduction of Ariel herself played out exactly as it did in the original. Shipwreck. Shark. Chase. It added nothing to the movie, but it also took nothing away from it.

Also, as jarring as Flounder’s initial character images were, I have to say that I think that I prefer him vs if they’d had a straight-up CGI flounder. That is to say, directly copied from reality, ala the Lion King remake. He’s cartoon-y enough that I kind of didn’t mind him after considering his character. But I’ll get more into his actual characterization and role in the movie probably after my beat review.

After this, we have the introduction of Scuttle who is voiced by Aquafina. The realization that this is who had been cast sent a pit of dread into both my husband and myself. This was probably not going to go well, and we ended up being right later on. Scuttle is still some kind of sea-bird (I’m not enough of a birder to identify the proper species, if there even was one to begin with????), but this is important for the scene that follows. In the original, Ariel leans her forearms on a large rock that seems to be Scuttle’s homebase. In this, Scuttle literally dives under the water for probably about 5 minutes to explain the concept of a dinglehopper to Ariel. Yes, birds can dive under the water to catch fish, but holy cow, Batman! They can’t actually breathe underwater!

I’m pretty sure that there was a scene between Ariel and Triton after this, but it was unremarkable that I can’t exactly remember. Then, Ariel goes to her cave of human trinkets, where we have the movie’s first musical number. Now granted, it’s probably the number one song that everybody thinks about when they think of the music from Little Mermaid. But at the same time, we’re now a good… I want to say 30 minutes into this movie. It’s been literally the first musical number, and they’re opening on a giant show stopper like this? The pacing of this movie felt so awkward and forced, and this was the first prime example of this happening.

Following this is Ariel being drawn to the surface by the fireworks being set off for Eric’s birthday. She hops into a lifeboat to watch the dancing crew. The camera goes to Ariel’s perspective to show that she can really only see the crew from their knees down. This might not seem significant right now, but put a pin into this, because I will be discussing this movie’s lack of foot fetish themes later. (Yes, this is important, as much as I loathe to admit.)

The storm happens. The only noteworthy addition to this scene is that there’s a bit when Max jumps into the water, and Ariel helps guide him over to the lifeboat, where the crew help get him up. (Does the dog die? No he does not.)

Following this is Ariel taking Eric to the shore. She leans her head against his chest to check that he’s alright. Which removed a minor joke from the movie of Scuttle telling Ariel that he thought the heartbeat could be heard in the feet. Which is one of those foot fetish moments that I mentioned earlier. In a movie with themes about legs and feet, the removal of this scene felt rather jarring.

Following the crew showing up to find Eric, Ariel does have her iconic “Part of Your World” splash on the nearby rocks. The writers might not be imaginative, but they’re also not stupid.

In the original, the statue of Eric was unveiled as a birthday gift to the prince. However in this, the statue kind of exists without any sort of explanation. Ariel never has a moment of actually finding it and mooning over Eric’s stone face, the way that she did in the original. Is it actually of Eric, or was it simply a random statue being carried on the ship? I can’t even say with certainty either way.

Random aside (and I’m not even sure that this is the correct scene order, but I don’t care), but when Triton asked Sebastian to keep an eye on Ariel, he mentioned that Sebastian was his majordomo. Which is a pretty far cry from the music director role he was in in the original. BUT, as Sebastian left this meeting, he complained that he was supposed to be a royal adviser. Which is a not exactly a majordomo.

Following this is the Under the Sea moment. Ariel actually joins in this number, almost in a sarcastic way which was honestly kind of fun. BUT… This also means that Ariel has to be there for the final reprise. In the original, she’d gotten a message from a seahorse about the Eric statue, and had left halfway through the number. So in this, when Sebastian looks around for Ariel and she’s not there, I literally said out loud “She literally left five seconds ago. Try harder in looking for her!”

Then there’s a scene where Ariel’s six sisters are shown cleaning up the mess Eric’s ship left. They complain about all of the damage that’s been done by the ship, and say something along the lines of “It’ll take 1000 years for the coral to recover”. Ariel chides them, and says that it’s not as if the humans intended to crash. She then flees, and her sisters allude to the idea that Ariel is in love with a boy, which is making her irrational.

Following this is Triton’s tantrum in Ariel’s curio-cave. And while I do have notes about his behavior, it’s got nothing to do with my commentary about the differences between this movie and the original. I feel like that probably deserves its own. The entire scene was pretty on-par with the original though, so… Yeah. It happened.

Up until this point, there had been a couple of scenes that kind of introduced the concept of Ursula. Much like how in the original, the concept of the sisters representing the oceans was scrapped, so to was the idea that Ursula was Triton’s sister. This one outright stated as much. Although, I have to say… I thought that it was bad the idea that this obviously not white man could somehow father 7 daughters of wildly varying ethnicities was bad. But it’s got nothing on Triton’s and Ursula’s parents creating first a man who is half fish, and then a woman who is half squid. Yes, they’re magic, but at the same time… HOW.

Anyway, so Ursula had been spying on Ariel via her pet eels, Flotsam and Jetsam. So while I felt like the introduction to Ursula’s character itself was more dragged out, the actual point upon which Ariel met Ursula was pretty much the same. The only real difference was that when Ursula used her magic through Flotsam and Jetsam to talk to Ariel, to get her to leave the cave and come see her… Ursula introduced herself and Ariel said “The sea witch?” “The sea wi-?” Like Ursula had legit not heard that this is what people in the city thought about her. It was legit one of the funniest moments in the movie… Which is telling, because the comedy moments were so sparse in this remake.

So Ariel goes to Ursula’s evil cave of evil, but there’s a few notable but tiny differences. When she goes in, she is grabbed by something. But it’s not the “unfortunate souls” who are trying to stop her from making a huge mistake. And during the actual musical number, they intentionally left out a few key moments. One of them with Ursula explaining: This one longing to be thinner That one wants to get the girl And do I help them? Yes, indeed And then goes on to explain: Now it's happened once or twice Someone couldn't pay the price And I'm afraid I had to rake 'em 'cross the coals If you’ll remember during this number, Ursula went to her cauldron and made little figures to demonstrate exactly what she meant. Tiny figures of a man and a woman who became attractive, and fell in love with each other. But then after they failed to make their payment, they were turned into worms. This was completely absent in this movie, leaving their fate more than a little ambiguous at best. This is the thing that I’ve been talking about this entire time: this movie doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Everybody has seen the original one. We know what the consequences are if Ariel fails to get that kiss in 3 days time. Only that there are consequences to non-payment.

The other missing moment is Ursula explaining to Ariel that she won’t have her voice, and Ariel questioning how she’s supposed to get this kiss. Then Ursula saying “You’ll have your looks. Your pretty face. And you must not forget the importance of BODY LANGUAGE”. The last part which is accompanied by a rather sensual wiggle on Ursula’s part. Maybe Disney thought that this was too mature for children, despite Little Mermaid remaining a classic children’s movie for 30+ years now.

In fact, as I sit and write up this review, I’m struggling to remember Ariel questioning literally anything at all during this scene. Ursula sang a a little, and the next thing we know, voice is gone. She’s human now.

It’s also worth nothing that after Ariel left, Ursula made a comment along the lines of that she’d added a bit extra to the spell to make Ariel forget that she needed to kiss Eric within 3 days. She wanted Ariel back down there, no matter what. But we’ll circle back to this in a bit.

We pause briefly in Ariel’s story to do this movie’s signature movie: a half-assed attempt to bring life to random background characters. The character who is introduced now is not somebody who was ever in the original. And maybe that’s a good thing, maybe not. But like everything else, I think that it could have been interesting to explore this, but the movie literally never let any of this happen.

For you see, Eric did not suddenly poof into being one day. Like everybody else, he has parents. Who are the king and queen. Shocking, I know. As I said, they were never even mentioned in the first movie. They must exist somewhere, but they aren’t even in the castle where he lived.

It was briefly mentioned while Eric was still on the ship that he was adopted. This will be important for later. It’s also mentioned that his father, the king, is dead. Will also be important.

Now back home, he greets his mother, who is upset about her son’s most recent misadventures on the water. She comments that 6 different ships have been lost while returning to their island home. Eric’s defense is that he must update their island home, and connect it to the outside world. Which is a fairly worthy cause, I think that we can agree upon. But the queen chides him, saying that the vials of vaccinations that were on the ship he’d been on are not doing anybody any good since they’re currently at the bottom of the ocean. She also makes a point to say “The god of the sea does not favor us.” Which made me think that it was her way of kind of fast-tracking her approval of a relationship between the granddaughter of the god of the sea and her son. She’s also kind of upset that Eric keeps talking about this mysterious woman who’d saved him from the shipwreck. He’s obsessed with finding her, thinking that she might be in some kind of trouble or something. This is obviously worrisome behavior for anybody, and forget a literal crowned prince.

Now, going back to an earlier pin I had you put in place, the queen is notably black. Which in itself isn’t a problem. Her race has little to do with the actual plot. But Eric himself is pretty much an exact cast from how he was in the original animated version. White skin, black hair, cheek dimples. He’s a dreamboat. He’s also WHITE. This movie is shown to take place somewhere in the Caribbean, possibly in Jamaica or Barbados. The movie does little to hide this fact, giving all of the islanders heavy accents, casting a lot of black people as the villagers and castle servants, and even at one point showing somebody playing a steel drum. So with all of the talk about why Ariel needed to be race-bent, and the movie going out of their way to introduce Eric’s mother as being black… Why in the world is Eric white? At this point, him being black would have made more sense. It’s also never explained where Eric came from, or why he was adopted by the royal family.

Circling back to the point Eric had brought up to his mother about needing to bring the island up to date, it’s also worth noting that the queen, Eric himself, and Grimsby were all wearing most decidedly mid 19th century EUROPEAN fashions. Fashions that they wouldn’t have been able to get unless somebody from Europe had come to the island. On a ship. The same could also be said of their castle itself, the silverware, the plates, etc. HOWEVER, all of the random villagers were wearing more traditional Caribbean clothing. So unless the island itself is simply that out of touch, and this movie is supposed to take place a lot later, literally nothing about this makes a lick of sense.

The final point that I need to make about Eric is his title as a prince. As I mentioned, Eric had off-handedly dropped the fact to the viewers that his father, the king, was dead. Yet for some reason, he still maintains his title of prince, rather than taking on the title of king. Now, it is possible that the title was granted to him via his mother (who was the actual ruler, rather than the father), but that’s also not lining up with anything ever done in history. I’ll use the British monarchy as an example, since not only is it familiar, but it’s also a perfect example of what it is that I’m talking about. Queen Elizabeth was the actual ruler. She married Philip. Whom I’m sure everybody would agree upon was titled PRINCE Philip, rather than king. This is because the male consort is always a prince, but the female one is always a queen. (No, I’m uncertain of why. You’d have to deep-dive on that by yourself. Sorry.) So even if the queen had been the actual ruler, her husband wouldn’t have been titled as the king. There’s literally no reason why Eric wasn’t the king already in this movie, other than the fact that he’s supposed to be a prince. (As usual, I know too much about certain things to ever actually enjoy them. {Yes, I am a delight at parties; why do you ask?})

There was also an Eric solo song sometime before Ariel showed up. And while I didn’t hate the idea of him having his own song to kind of explain his feelings about the shipwreck and subsequent saving, the song itself was so unremarkable. I literally forgot it the second it was over.

Going back to Ariel, she swims up to the surface after having been given human legs… and human lungs. Upon reaching there, she’s accidentally scooped up in a fisherman’s net. Which I did actually enjoy a lot more than her making it to the beach, and Eric happening upon her.

It’s at this point that Scuttle shows up, and does the “Something is different about you…” moment. However, much like the scene with Eric and Ariel on the shore after the storm, this movie fails to deep-dive into the foot fetish moment. Part of me wondered if it had been difficult to keep the actress properly covered so that she could wiggle her toes for the CGI bird, but mostly I’m annoyed. Because a major theme of this movie is Ariel getting those feet, so a foot fetish makes an awful lot of sense. But no. The moment is completely and utterly missed.

Back on land, some of the villagers tell the fisherman that he should take Ariel up to the castle; that they’ll know what to do with her up there. However, the literal only reason why none of the villagers themselves offered to take Ariel on seemed to be simply because the plot demanded that Eric and Ariel meet.

As Ariel is taken into the castle and the housekeeper (?) decides what to do with her, we’re subjected to another solo song from Ariel. However, since Ariel has obviously lost her voice, this entire thing comes off as more like… her inner monologue? It’s like they didn’t know how to properly express literally anything unless it was done via song. I thought that this song completely bogged down the movie, and took up way too much time. The entire thing could have and should have been glossed over, but no. We have to turn it into a montage, dammit!

Eric only meets Ariel after she’s had her bath and is more or less dressed. Again, noting that Ariel is dressed in corset, bloomers, a proper English dress (which is suitable for the hot, island weather) and boots. While her outfit mimics the outfit she wore in the original cartoon, it’s at odds with how all of the villagers are dressed. Eric had rushed to the room to see Ariel after the servants told him about her arrival, but was disappointed to find out that this girl can’t talk; she can’t possibly be the young woman who’d rescued him.

Ariel is told to rest after that, and Sebastian makes his way to her. He finds out that Ursula had made Ariel forget about the 3-day kiss business, but we’ll circle back to that shortly. The only reason why he and Flounder know about this is because the two of them had followed Ariel to Ursula’s cave, and overheard most of the Poor Unfortunate Souls business.

After this is pretty much the only new scene that added something of value to the movie. Ariel wakes up from her nap and decides to go exploring. She finds a library full of trinkets, as rich people often have. As she’s looking around, Eric comes in and comments that nobody but him comes in anymore. Despite my enjoyment of this scene overall, there’s this really long bit where there’s this carved mermaid figurine that Ariel had picked up, and he’s like “Oh, my little mermaid!” It was super awkward, and went on for much longer than it should have. After that, Eric happily showed Ariel some maps. He makes a comment that there’s some unexplored/uncharted areas still out there, which makes me think that the timeline for this is back in the 1800’s. As I said, the royal clothing choices were interesting and poorly thought out. Grimsby comes in, and Eric says that he’d like to show Ariel around the town tomorrow. Grimsby tells Eric that he had previously ordered all of the carriages be sent out in search of his mysterious shipwreck hero. And that Eric is to remain at home until he feels better.

Eric insists, so off they go in the morning. With a little nod and wink from Grimsby. There was also a few seconds where Grimsby was standing by the head housekeeper, and I thought that we might get a subplot romance between the two of them. But we literally never saw the housekeeper after that scene. Alas.

The scene with Eric and Ariel kept to the same general beats, while somehow expanding upon it. I both loved and hated this. Loved it because it was nice to see the two of them actually bonding and spending quality time together. Hated it because it lasted too long, and only served to pad out a movie that was already like 90 minutes in at this point.

However, thanks to Ursula making Ariel forget about the curse business, the set up for Kiss the Girl needed to be more forced. Scuttle stole Eric’s hat, and dropped it into a really convenient rowboat. Where this boat came from, I haven’t the foggiest. It is an island, but it seems kind of silly to have a boat on a lagoon when you could simply go out onto the actual ocean.

Once the two of them are out there, Sebastian says that they need to set the mood without actually alerting Ariel as to what’s going on. Pin this, will circle back in one second. Scuttle then tries to set the mood herself, and I thought that it was funny how the movie actually switched to Eric’s view to hear what that sounded like in his ears. That is to say… a local seabird making an unholy ruckus around dusk.

Sebastian then sets up the song in the same was as the original. But then he starts to sing, which seems to be completely at odds with what he’d literally said a minute earlier! At one point, Scuttle, Flounder, and Sebastian are sitting on the end of the boat oar, doing the refrain from the song. If either human had literally turned their head a fraction of an inch, they would have seen it. The scene made completely and utterly no sense whatsoever. And made me wonder why they even bothered by having Ariel forget anyway.

The two of them row out from under the canopy of trees, where Eric begins to show Ariel some of the different constellations. He tries to ask for her name at this point, and makes a few random stabs in the dark with common names like Catherine and Elizabeth. She points up towards Aries, which Eric had shown her a second earlier, cuts him off as he says Ari- and kind of makes a gesture until he stumbles upon the name Ariel. Which I thought was a much better way of having him figure out her name than having Sebastian whisper in his ear. Which never made much sense to me.

After Flotsam and Jetsam overturn the boat, Ursula decides that she has to do something to ensure that Ariel fails. She starts throwing ingredients around, all of which her tentacles try to offer their own help. In a way that kind of felt like it was supposed to be a joke, but never quite got that far. Eventually, Ursula is all “Oh, there it is!” and then turns herself into a human, where she goes and meets Eric.

The next morning, Scuttle wakes Ariel up by flying into her room and rapping about how she’d heard some gossip about Eric proposing to somebody later that day. The only thing worse than finding out that Scuttle is voiced by Aquafina is finding out (the hard way) that Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote a song for Aquafina to rap. The entire thing continues to fill me with so much rage, I’m not sure that I can even properly express my anger over this scene.

After Ariel finds out the devastating news that Eric isn’t going to marry her, Scuttle then discovers Ursula’s deception. Again, this scene is almost word-for-word from the original. Except that she doesn’t do it in SONG. So it’s disappointing. What’s worse is the realization that instead of getting Ursula’s “I’m so evil” song, we got the Scuttle/Sebastian rap.

There’s also a scene of Ariel sitting and moping on a rock. And we get yet another “silent” song from her. It’s a reprise of Part of Your World, which I don’t mind on the surface. But I felt like yet another song done in this “silent” style was too much. Especially because we hadn’t been inside of Ariel’s head, and there’d been no more singing by her up until this point.

As Eric’s engagement party goes forward, his mother seems kind of happy over her son’s upcoming engagement. To a girl that Eric claims to have only officially met literally a few hours earlier. Yes, Eric has been brainwashed by Ursula. But at no point does she say “Hold up, something ain’t right here.” Maybe obsessive and compulsive behavior is normal for her son. But at the same time, this isn’t him looking for some random girl; this is marriage. And it’s not simply any marriage, but the future queen of this island nation.

When she eagerly offered up an heirloom family ring for Eric to use, did I start to wonder why Disney had bothered with her character at all. She felt like a cardboard cutout of an actual person. Aside from her introductory scene, she never once expressed any actual opinions. She cheerfully went along with whatever was happening in any given scene.

Not too long after this, Scuttle comes up and takes the ring that Eric is holding. This causes Ariel to show up and tackle Vanessa/Ursula to the ground. Not only were there guards, but also plenty of party-goers who had come to celebrate the engagement between Eric and Vanessa. However, the only thing that stopped a single one of them from pulling this unknown girl off from the would-be queen was… the plot demanded their inaction. None of it makes any sense, especially as the two women were literally rolling around on the ground like puppies.

But, Ariel smashed the shell that contained her voice. And for one moment, a glowing orb hung suspended in the air as her voice was piped in. At this point, people were frozen in place simply because… what the hell is going on? What is that thing?

It goes back into Ariel, who is finally able to talk once more. Eric realizes that she’s actually the woman who saved him, and the two of them are about to kiss. But it’s too late… the sun is setting. (Which was never given at the drop-dead timeline by Ursula in this movie. Only in the original. So it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.) Ariel turns back into a mermaid, much to the horror of everybody gathered there for the engagement. Ursula then transforms back into herself, takes Ariel, and dives off a cliff. (Which the fall would have probably killed them, but whatever.)

As the final battle progressed, the entire thing felt rather… phoned in. The characters had long since grown beyond who they were from the original movie, but the writing itself seemed to be intent on keeping to the original beats of the cartoon. The scene that the movie had been building up to this entire time was decidedly underwhelming and not exciting at all. Even if I hadn’t known what was going to happen, I doubt that I would have cared much. That’s how bored I was with the entire thing. It didn’t help that this probably happened around the 2 hour mark.

Probably about a day after the big battle, Triton decides to turn Ariel into a human. I’ve always felt like the scene of Ariel rising from the ocean in that sparkly, silver dress was as iconic as the splash on the rocks. But I guess the costume budget was spent on those 19th century dresses. So the only thing Ariel is wearing is the same dress she’d been wearing the entire time… Which is now dirty and wet from having been dragged through the ocean in the fight with Ursula.

After this, the two of them get married. And again, Eric’s mother seems to be perfectly cool with her son marrying a girl he met like 4 days earlier. Granted, at least she knows that maybe good fortune would follow Eric and Ariel as they set out for a sea honeymoon, but still. Four days.

As the two of them get into a rowboat to go out to the big ship, every single merfolk citizen shows up to see their princess off. They climb up onto rocks, but also get into the fishing boats of the villagers, who had come to see their prince off. And for some reason, everybody is oddly chill with probably several dozen merfolk showing up. Despite the fact that this is the first time that even the audience has seen any of these characters.

All in all, this movie was only like a quarter of a step above both the Lion King and the Beauty and the Beast remake. That is to say that Disney had little to offer by way of new content to this. They never once allowed the characters to actually evolve and grow organically beyond the pre-set beats from the original movie. Everything felt half-assed. For sure, questionable casting and costuming decisions were made.

Two last parting thoughts: First being, in case you hadn’t noticed, but I barely mentioned Flounder in this review. He was in a large chunk of the underwater scenes, and showed up from time to time when Ariel was on land. But he also didn’t exactly say or do much that added anything of actual value to the plot. He existed, and that’s about all I can say for his character.

The second which is something that I should have squeezed into my super huge aside about Eric, but I forgot, and then the longer I put it off, the weirder it seemed to try and squeeze it in… But regardless of Eric’s biological status as the queen’s son, he’s still the heir and next in line for the throne. The queen lamented about how he could go out onto the seas when it was known to be dangerous… Yet somehow still let him do so, anyway. If he actually was any kind of ruler, he would have delegated the shit out of reaching out to other countries to “bring the island into modern times”. Like yes, go on your honeymoon. But at the same time, don’t force Eric to go and make treaties with other countries for supplies and news.

Also also, my husband reminded me that they completely removed the Sebastian/cook scene. Which was sorely missed… Not only because it was my favorite scene, but also because this movie was so completely devoid of all and any humor.

TLDR: yet another lackluster live action remake from Disney. They have learned nothing from this, however. Disney will re-offend. Up next appears to be live action Lilo and Stitch??? And possibly Moana?????

#little mermaid #disney's the little mermaid #The Ravenclaw mod

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