The Little Mermaid (2023) Review

Ariel is a very curious young mermaid who wants nothing more than to understand the world out of the sea, so makes a trade with a sea witch. Her voice for human legs so she can meet the Prince that she saved during a ship wreck.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Disney are continuing the theme of making live action films of the animated classics and while I have not been fully on board with them all, I actually was looking forward to this one. The Little Mermaid is one of my favourite Disney films and I am very happy to say that I throughly enjoyed how they adapted it. Underwater films are rather difficult to get right and at times for me the hair and the movement of the arms are still looking a bit strange (same with Aquaman) but the actual performances and how visually amazing it all looked took away from that.

Ariel is the daughter of King Triton and is very curious about humans and the world above the water. She is forbidden to even go to the surface by her father and that just makes her want to do it even more, I guess in life everyone has been there with that type of situation when told not to do something it just grows the curiosity.

We then also see Prince Eric on a ship and he is curious about everything and not ready to take on his responsibilities either. So when they end up in trouble in the sea with a storm hitting, he can remember a mysterious woman who saved him and then searches everywhere. Unaware that it was indeed a mermaid that saved his life that day and wants nothing more than to find her and that voice.

Ariel showing up in the Kingdom without her voice does not bode well for her chances of that true love kiss to make the spell by Ursula permanent. Naturally though Ursula has made it very difficult for Ariel to be able to do this and put some other little things within the spell. It’s up to her sea friends Sebastian and Flounder to help her along with Scuttle. This makes for a nice crossover from the animated film to the live action remake.

Keeping all the classic songs with some new additions thanks to the great Lin Manuel-Miranda which quite frankly I feel as though we could have had even more from him within the film right? Directed by Rob Marshall, who I am still forever grateful for his adaptation of Chicago to film given how much that really sparked my love for musical theatre from it just being ok to extreme. He does a great job on this film as well.

Halle Bailey is a fantastic talent and I really enjoyed her all round performance and what an incredible singing voice she shows off during her different musical numbers. She manages to capture the naive and curious nature of Ariel in the best possible manner. Daveed Diggs, Jacob Tremblay and Awkwafina all impress with the voice work for the different animal characters and are all given some really fun and light hearted moments. Jonah Hauer-King is very good casting as Eric and I felt as though he had enough charm for the role. Melissa McCarthy was a scene stealer for me though and absolutely nailed “Poor unfortunate souls” which is my favourite song from the whole thing.

An impressive adaptation even if underwater and real life people are still so hard to get visually right in that sense, but other than that life under the sea seems pretty good.