Little Mermaid 2023 Review

The 2023 live action Little Mermaid did everything damn-near perfectly! From the music, to the acting, to the designs, Disney did what needed to be done! After their last live action film, Peter Pan and Wendy, with receiving almost the lowest score ever on Rotten Tomatoes for audience review, it was clear they needed a comeback. Which is exactly what the Little Mermaid did!

Starting off with just focusing on the vocals and music, Halley Bailey, who plays our gorgeous princess Ariel, won the hearts of (almost) everyone and impressed the director from the very beginning. The director, Rob Marshall, expressed in an interview that Bailey was the first woman to audition for the role and set the bar higher than he has ever seen. Marshall expressed "We had to see everyone else to give them a chance. We had to be sure that she was our Ariel." And she absolutely was! We get a mixture of new songs as well from the beloved cast. Melissa Macarthy gives us a twist on the classic timeless villain them song, "Poor Unfortunate Souls", originally preformed by Pat Caroll, who got the character Ursula from the framed drag queen, Divine, back in 1985, when production started for the animated version. Another actor who got their own song during the live action was Jonah Hauer-King and Awkwafina, who play Prince Eric and Scuttle. King's song "Wild Uncharted Waters" touches on every heartbroken guy longing to get their woman back by any means necessary. You can hear the pain in his voice and in his face as well when you see it on the big screen. That is one of the main differences I have noticed with Disney's live action films, well their musical ones, they give some of their main characters a chance to express their sad, mad, or some sort of negative emotions. It was done with Jasmine(Naomi Scott) from the 2019 Aladdin with "Speachless" and the Beast(Dan Stevens) from the 2017 Beauty and the Beast with "Evermore." Both characters from these two movies were going through something that could completely change their life and couldn't get their words out, so they sing it. Going back to Little Mermaid, Awkwafina's character, Scuttle, gave us a more positive song. Without giving too much away, it's a song about sharing the news, news Scuttle thought was good news, with the help of Sebastian(Daveed Diggs). Awkwafina's song "The Scuttle-but" was a funny catchy song that people were haters about in the social media world, but was a hit with a lot of the movie goers and their little ones. It definitely was a hit with me! With catchy words and slightly different melodies and words, the new live action version puts you under a musical spell. Just don't end up like the rest of the shrimp at the bottom of Ursula's cave that are under her spell.

The acting in this movie was PHENOMINAL! All of the actors did a lot to bring this movie to life who kiddos who were excited to see a new face and older people who were excited to see their favorite animated princess come to life in a new and incredible way! As well as some new characters who got a twist to their characters as well.

Finally, the designs! I wanted to make note of even though there was a lot of CGI used within the movie, the creatures are all actual people in order to create their movement during scenes and dance scenes. As for the costume design, the senior costume makers Jane Bogunovic, Maria Endara, and Jennifer Powell, bring to life the Caribbean style and flavor to the costumes. Since the movie is set in the 18th century, the designers wanted to focus on the corset dresses, tight shoes, and pulled back out of the face hair for the royals and their people in the castle and focused on the look itself but wanted to make sure that they are similar, but somewhat looser.

Overall, the movie is incredible and will go down in history for our community. I hope to see more of Disney using their fictional characters this way. It is perfectly fine to make fictional characters ANY TYPE of race.

<Photo credits go to Walt Disney Studios>