La Petite Sirène

I don't take anything away from the actors, I take everything away from the director and script. Bland and boring is the best way to describe it.

The director I blame because seriously half of this movie should have been cut.

The screenwriters I blame because wow how do you make a live action remake this boring and bland. It's Disney for crying out loud.

Again I don't blame the actors at all, they did the best with a super subpar script.

I don't wish to give spoilers, because to anyone who wants to see this movie and make their own opinion please do. The main point is simply I'm glad I waited until this was out of the theater. This was a bloated mess that needed oversight from someone who cared about the Disney brand.

In fairness to the actors they all deserve credit and I would give a shout out to the casting agent who put the right people in the right place. It's too bad that the writers and director were not the right choice for this film.

4 stars for decent acting in a subpar Disney remake. This film needs to go in the vault.

The movie is long and tedious. I was ready to be whisked away to a magical underwater world with filmmaker Rob Marshall's highly anticipated live-action retelling of this classic Disney movie. My grandkids were excited to see the remake of their favorite "Little Mermaid" movie but became bored after 20-minutes after the movie started. The movie was unusually dark and foreboding and unsuited for a younger audience in my humble opinion.

Not sure I like the trend to make poorly written remakes of classic, beloved movies. I will have to rethink going to future Disney and Pixar movies since the characters were unappealing and plot dragging on.

I mean it's an okay film. But is that what Disney wants to achieve now? Just to make okay movies? What happened to making great and lasting ones? Is that just a thing of the past?

My biggest qualm with this movie is that the acting performances from the cast was lackluster. These Disney classics are sacred in a sense that they made us emotionally invested in them. It's disappointing to think that animated characters were able to "act" and exhibit more emotional pull more than live actors. The original made us feel for these characters.

This version had no heart in it, it's just the shell of the 1989 classic with an attempt to impress contemporary audiences but it still fell flat on its face.

The scenes in this movie felt rushed and it was just hard to watch all together without thinking they just had a checklist of events they wanted to make sure was there. The dialogue was sub-par. The new rap song was simply unbearable. I had my hands over my ears while it was happening.

The only thing I could compliment about this movie are the visual effects. I liked the feel of the setting. But other than that. It felt more two dimensional than the cartoon.

Missed the mark in so many ways: It's a children's movie, why are the colors so dark and muted (I did like Ursula's glowing tentacles)? Not saying it had to be bright, bubble gum pop colors but I could barely see what was going on half the time. Just doesn't seem the imagery was made with children in mind.

Why no background vocals? The musical numbers in the original Little Mermaid were FANTASTIC. This time they tuned them way down and took away all the excitement. Hallie sings well, but I still think background vocals would have made all of the songs sound soooo much better.

Loved Melissa McCarthy as Ursula.

Since they went out of their way to explain why Eric had parents of two races where was the explanation for why King Tristan had daughters of all races?

It was a decent attempt, but an absolute fail at being anywhere close to as good as the original. Meh.

One actress is not enough to save a movie even if she plays the main character. This happens all the time and this remake is proof of it. The weakest thing in this version, of course, is the CGI characters. I thought the worst thing ever seen in these remakes was the dog from 2019's Lady and the Tramp, but this Flounder is outrageous. It's the Jar Jar Binks of Disney's remakes. And this Sebastian looks odd and graceless. Three years and Disney couldn't do any better? Are you serious? In overall, the underwater scenes are not what I expected to see and, as some critic says, "recreated with Windows 10 screensaver graphics".

Now let me explain what is the problem with Ursula. In an animated feature you can exaggerate the expressions any way you like but you can't do that in live action. This is not Melissa McCarthy's fault, of course, but I don't lend ears to those who praise her performance with biased reasonings. And the changes in the final scene were simply the last straw but I won't spoil anything here. Seriously, I couldn't believe it when I watched it.

In summary, the movie doesn't work because Halle Bailey is surrounded by things that don't work. And that's not Halle's fault, it's all Disney's fault.