The Little Mermaid (2023)
Disney's remake will enchant both kids and adults with its resplendent beauty
Ariel (Halle Bailey) yearning for a chance to join the world of humans “up there”
The Little Mermaid (2023)
Dive in. The underwater sequences in the new mostly live action The Little Mermaid are gorgeous and transfixing. It feels like they could swallow you whole. The 30% CGI never gave me a moment’s worry.
While its mermaid heroine Ariel (Halle Bailey) longs to visit the world of humans “up there” on land, I wasn’t anxious to come up for air.
The gliding sea creatures “down there” spiral hypnotically. The saturated colors and seemingly endless dimensions of the aquatic world feel boundless but homelike, where one could belong.
We see early that Ariel longs to transcend it. While director Rob Marshall and his design team smartly let us behold the majesty she’d leave behind.
As in the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, Ariel and her six sister mermaids are ruled by their benevolent but headstrong father, King Triton (Javier Bardem).
Triton’s major domo is a sprightly crab named Sebastian (wittily voiced and sung by Daveed Diggs of Hamilton). He dutifully enforces the King’s edicts yet has a soft spot for Ariel.
The original score’s most fondly remembered song is the bouncy “Under the Sea”, a jaunty calypso celebration of the ocean’s wonders, and Diggs gives it a lush tropical pulse and a cheeky Broadway sheen. The design pops.
Triton sits on his throne with his tail powerfully swirling beneath him, holding aloft his fiery bright scepter with indisputable authority.
He sternly reminds his subjects that humans have only captured and destroyed sea life.
But Ariel believes there’s more to humans than the threat they pose. She has three frisky companions who worry about her disobeying Triton yet share her wanderlust.
Ariel takes that upward leap with a prowess and persistence she didn’t know she possessed.
The story, set in the 19th century Caribbean Sea, gets underway soon after we meet Ariel, when a ship with a hearty crew is overcome in a storm, catches fire, and sinks.
The crew all escape to lifeboats, but one of those vessels breaks in the stormy waves, and sprawled half-conscious on it is Eric (Jonah Hauer-King), Prince of the nearby island kingdom.
Ariel tugs his body ashore, saving his life. Seeing nothing more than Ariel’s face and long ringlets, Eric retains only a fogey memory of a lovely “girl” who brought his body ashore.
Touched by Eric’s humanity, Ariel, back down below, is determined to make it into his world. But how could a mermaid survive on land?
Enter the wicked sea witch Ursula (Melissa McCarthy), an octopus condemned by Triton to live in an underwater cave, with her enormous neon-lit tentacles swirling malignantly.
Ursula retains magical powers and is eager to strike a deal: she’ll endow Ariel with the body, including the legs and feet, of a woman for three days.
Malign Ursula (Melissa McCarthy) coaxes innocent Ariel (Halle Bailey) into a perilous bargain
But that’s all the time she’ll have to garner a kiss from Prince Eric. If she fails, she’ll be returned to life as a mermaid and fall under Ursula’s spell, giving the octopus sweet revenge against Triton.
When Ariel joins humanity, Sebastian follows her on land to help her realize her dreams. So do a dizzy sea bird, Scuttle (voiced by Awkwafina), and a sheepish, faithful Flounder (voiced by Jacob Tremblay).
I had only vague memories of Disney’s 1989 animated original, but even for those who haven’t seen it, it isn’t hard to guess where all this is heading.
And, though the nearly one hour of added runtime drags a bit, the romantic tropes are lightly and charmingly rendered.
There are minor missteps. Ariel’s awkwardness in adapting to humans and their ways is too drawn out and sometimes clunky.
For instance, she plucks a flower, bites off the petals and childishly chews them. Surely, she wasn’t so thoughtless about what she ate undersea.
But such lapses aren’t glaring. What will keep audiences, including children, at least those at the packed showing I attended, captivated is the sweeping underwater panoramas and the lulling vistas of a calm Caribbean Island Kingdom.
With its gaily costumed multi-ethnic folk ruled benignly by Eric’s mother Queen Selina (Noma Dumezweni), this festive place feels like a welcoming haven for Ariel.
The sensation is Bailey, whose voice can be both uplifting and soothing, giving Ariel’s yearning for a new life a reverberance deeper than the usual Disney princess cliché.
As she sings, you begin to understand Ariel’s insatiable curiosity and unease about what’s on land, different as life there surely will be.
But can she kiss Eric before the three days run out, and will Triton forgive her if she chooses life with humans over her ocean home? The island’s lure holds the answers.
What made the 1989 Little Mermaid memorable were the Howard Ashman and Alan Menken songs, some reprised here delightfully.
On par with “Under the Sea” is Bailey’s stirring rendition of Ariel’s “Part of Your World”, sent aloft with a rich, crystalline yearning. Bailey’s vocal clarity and force elevate a mermaid’s story into what comes to feel like Ariel’s destiny.
McCarthy, in an oddly engaging, ripely evil performance, is truly scary – but not too frightening for kids – singing “Poor Unfortunate Souls” to convince Ariel that her life under Triton has become unendurable and Ursula’s magic can transform it.
Lin Manuel Miranda has added lyrics to some new Menken songs. None are especially memorable, but they move the story along.
Hauer-King acquits himself manfully as the handsome, dashing Prince, and equally effective is Dumezweni as the Queen, Eric’s cautious but loving mother.
The sensation is Bailey, whose voice can be both uplifting and soothing, giving Ariel’s yearning for a new life a reverberance deeper than the usual Disney princess cliché.
Ariel (Halle Bailey) is enchanted sharing the human world with Prince Eric (Jonah Hauer-King)
As she sings, you begin to understand Ariel’s insatiable curiosity and unease about what’s on land, different as life there surely will be.
This remains a fairy tale, powered by magic. Yet it offers a subtle real-world message.
Ariel as a human acquires legs and feet. But she soon learns that those appendages demand that she not merely trod but walk proud.
She can’t meekly drift into a new life. She has to take a stand and seize it.
That’s more than whimsy. This Little Mermaid lifts our spirits as we watch Ariel dare to become more. Yes, the beauty down below is enveloping, comforting, assured.
But to be not just “part of” but fully immersed in Eric’s world needs courage. Until she took a risk, Ariel couldn’t have known that she had it all along.
There’s plenty in that realization for adults even without children to wonder at and take pleasure in.