Review of The Little Mermaid (2023) by Lenny86 — 26 May 2023

I give it a 1 because the woman does have a gorgeous voice. However, the enormous visual changes in this film, with moving from animation to live-action, are far too significant and numerous that they become a major distraction. Because if this, it fails to evoke any positive nostalgia from the original Disney animated classic.

Flounder, Sebastian and Scuttle as “real” animals are strange to watch. They come across as off-putting and creepy rather than loveable and cute. Neither of my kids or I enjoyed it.

They did add some new feminist elements to the film, but people complaining seem to be forgetting that this movie was, and has always been, a story about female empowerment. The thing people seem to ignore is that if the genders were swapped and Ariel was a man and Eric was a woman it would be labeled a misogynistic assault-fantasy. Ariel trespasses and boards a private ship, finds a dark corner in which to secretly leer at a man she instantly decides she “loves” (lusts after), and then after rescuing him, proceeds to cuddle and touch his unconscious form on a beach. Not to mention fantasizes and paws over a stone statue of him in her secret cave. On top of all that, she decides to uber-stalk the Prince by using a physical deception, by way of a spell, that enables her to infiltrate and encroach upon his private life even further. If that’s not bad enough, Ursula then uses a spell to force him into a marriage he doesn’t consent to. The real victim in this movie is Eric. He’s only there to be the subject of these of these women’s private agendas, to wed and bed him.

That being said, live-action adaptations almost never live up to their animated predecessors. So, IMHO this film didn’t really stand a chance from the get-go, regardless of the flurry of politics surrounding it.