Michael's Movie Grade: F
Another awful Disney remake.
The fundamental problem with these Disney remakes lies not only in the execution but in the very idea. The 2D animation of the original films is a very different style of filmmaking than the mixture of live action and CGI of the remakes. Because of this you can't do the same thing in both styles and expect the same result. When these remakes try to directly copy certain scenes, these scenes can't do anything but fall flat. This is especially seen the song numbers of this movie. In the 1989 film, the visuals during Under the Sea, make it feel like we have been fully immersed in this underwater fantasy world. We were enchanted by this magical world and caught up in the pure energy and imagination of the visuals. In this remake, it feels completely lifeless and joyless. In the 1989 movie, Poor Unfortunate Souls created a real feeling of suspense and danger. Here it simply looks like an underwater level of a video game and in no way makes us feel any dread about what will happen next. These scenes only had the effect of making me wish that I was watching the 2D animated movie instead. It doesn't help that much of the CGI here is often unpleasant to look at. This is especially true of the designs of Sebastian the crab and Flounder the fish, both of which can be an uncomfortable mixture of cartoony and realistic and both of which are simply ugly. The giant cartoony eyes on the otherwise ultra-realistic Flounder will haunt my nightmares. When Sebastian first appeared on screen, I found myself laughing (something I never did when this film was trying to be funny) before there was any joke, because I couldn't believe that this design actually made it to the screen. It doesn’t help that these designs make it impossible for these characters to physically show any emotion with their faces or bodies. Despite the length of this film, I never got used to these awful designs and they looked just as terrible to me at the end as they did in the beginning. This makes it hard to ever emotionally connect with these characters. The underwater world is incredibly bland looking and offers no sense of magic or wonder. A fantasy movie like this should make one feel like they are transported to another world but with visuals like this, it is hard to in any way feel engaged with this world. Even the above ground scenes have a bland and lifeless look to them with little to make them stand out from the many Hollywood costume films over the years.
As for the story itself it often times feels very overstuffed. This movie copied much of the 1989 film nearly shot for shot and line for line, but it also added quite a bit making the original 83-minute movie into a 135-minute movie. The problem was that the 1989 movie was that length because the filmmakers knew that was how long it took to tell the story and nothing more was needed. Here there is much more than is needed to tell the story and this can make the film really drag. True that a remake can be a completely different take on a story, but with the exact copying of many scenes this opportunity is wasted. In other words, this is the exact same take on the story only stretched out to a longer length. If this film was telling the story in a different way than perhaps this longer runtime could have been necessary, but as it is it just feels like padding to an already complete story. It doesn't hurt that these new scenes often are not very good and sometimes embarrassing. The new songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda (who had previously written songs for the Disney animated films, Moana (2016) and Encanto (2021)) are shocking quite bad. The prince's "I want" song is immediately forgettable and the rap number (I am sadly not making that up) is embarrassing is to watch. That rap was so bad, it was hard to believe what I was actually hearing. There are also attempts here to make Prince Eric a less bland character than he was in the previous movie, but they fail and there is still not much to him, only now this really boring character has much more screen time. As I stated before the humor is awful and there is not one comedic moment here that even slightly works. The only parts of the story that somewhat worked were parts that still worked much better in the 1989 movie. This makes the whole film feel pointless and makes one wish they were watching the 2D animated movie instead.
The only thing I liked about this movie was Halle Bailey, who is positively charming as Ariel and is the only thing that brings any real life to many of the scenes. I simply loved her performance and wished that it could have been in a good movie. She also has a truly beautiful singing voice. On the other hand, is Melissa McCarthy as Ursla. She is completely miscast here and the attempts to add the actress' regular screen persona to this role fell flat and made the character completely annoying. Not only this but it took away from the creepiness of this character.
Unfortunately, these Disney remakes show no sign of stopping and this movie is a great representation of just how bad these films can truly get.
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