The Little Mermaid (2023) - Movie Review

In the Caribbean sea, lives a little mermaid curious of the human world but kept from it by the fear of her father. She spends all her time dreaming of this mysterious world and one day when a ship wrecks near her, she rescues a human prince and falls in love. Without her father's support, she is lured and tricked by the sea-witch into an impossible deal. On land, she has three days to get a true love kiss from the prince of her dreams or the sea-witch will own her live.

The Little Mermaid (2023) is a new live action adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's original fairy tale and Disney's previous animated movie of the same name. Halle Bailey has taken on the role as the main character Ariel and though the announcement was divisive between the fans of Disney and The Little Mermaid because Bailey is a person of colour and the animated Ariel is very fair skinned, Bailey has done a great job portraying this open hearted and open minded, curious mermaid. Bailey has proven to be the right person cast for the role and only thing that could have been better, is if they had made her hair a brighter and stronger shade of red. Likewise, when it was announced that Melissa McCarthy was going to play Ursula it was also met with many negative opinions as it is a role very different from what we are used to see her in but again it turned out as a well made casting choice. Though they have given her some early monologue in the movie where she explains her plan and relationship with King Triton and it feels contrived and adds an unnecessary element of new backstory to the character. Overall the entire movie has a good and stable cast, some roles could have been done better, like I think Triton is a bit of a soft cast, but overall it is really great.

However, the thing that sort of drags this movie down is Disney's current idea increasing the realism and decreasing the magic and wonder. The constant use of hyper realistic CGI made animal characters, that looks nothing like their animated counterparts are sort of a small eyesore. It is a world were fantastical creatures like mermaids and sea-witches exists, so why can these beloved character not look like their animated versions. They are going to be CGI created anyway and it only makes them look uglier by making these realistic animals instead. But when yo u look past these CGI animals, the rest of the movie is very beautiful, it is a little dark and loses a bit of the magic of under water world but still beautiful.

In the end, I like the movie. I am probably not going to watch it over the animated version but I like it. It is very true to its animated version, it is beautiful and Awkwafina is making Scuttle a good comic relief. I do not see why they found it necessary to rename all of Ariel's sisters but that was a choice they made. I am leaning towards giving it four out of five stars, I feel like that is the appropriate rating for The Little Mermaid (2023).