8/10 is about where I'd put this one too, which is a perfectly respectable score in my book.
But I can see where this would be a 10/10 for some people, especially in the context of like black girls getting to see themselves in a Disney Princess besides Tiana. I read this post on Facebook a couple of days ago that was really touching
https://www.facebook.com/Jacalynwetzelw ... 1etH9hWjHl
On the other hand, I can't see legitimate reasons for so many people giving it a 1/10. Even if a person is like adamantly against Disney remakes on principle, this is not even close to their worst one. So the argument that the 1s and 10s are somehow cancelling each other out doesn't really hold for me.
Anyways, a week after that fateful viewing, I've had some time to sort through my own thoughts and piece my own reaction a little more ...
Starting with things I DIDN'T like ...
I respect that they didn't want to mess with perfection, but they also had room to play around with more of the details of the narrative, and it still would have been a "faithful adaptation." I felt like something around 50% percent of the lines from this film were lifted directly from the animated film. There were a few lines that obviously came from the animated film but they modified like one or two words, like Scuttle's "Have I ever been wrong? I mean when
it's important?" vs "Have I ever been wrong? I mean when
it counted?" That created a sort of uncanny valley effect for me.
And then there were changes that kind of cluttered the film for me. These weren't wall-to-wall for me like some of the other remakes, but I still think it speaks to a qualitative difference between how they made the animated film and this remake. One that I keep coming back to is how they play Eric after
Vanessa shows up. In the animated film, it's clear that by the end of the second day Eric has chosen Ariel and that the only reason Ariel doesn't get the kiss is because Ursula is manipulating him magic to make him fall for Vanessa, but here it's not totally clear whether Eric is legit under a magic spell or whether he's still halted between two opinions. As a result, when Eric goes all "it was you all the time," it kinda feels like the only reason he's choosing Ariel over Vanessa is in fact because he realizes that she is the fantasy girl he was after. In the animated film, it doesn't read as him being flimsy because that discovery comes after he had definitively chosen Ariel, and he was only stopped from ratifying that choice with a kiss because he was in fact stripped of his agency in the intervening time. I may have to watch that scene again to get a better read of it, but it kinda felt like they were undermining his whole arc, and their whole romance, by playing it this way.
I was skeptical of the amnesia caveat when that was leaked, but I'm even more confused by it after the fact because it did not have any kind of pay-off in this film. None at all. It doesn't meaningfully change how the romance plays out, it is not something that Ariel has to overcome. It is useless story material, and I can't even really wrap my mind around why they felt the need to include it. The best I can come up with is that they were responding to complaints that Ariel doesn't rush to kiss Eric in those final moments before the third sunset, so they tried to justify it by giving Ariel and excuse to not hurry up and kiss the dude.
I had known for a long time that Ariel was going to be the one to kill Ursula. I've said before that it's a perfectly valid choice even if I don't think that Ariel
needs to in order to qualify as feminist, but I don't think that just having
Ariel and Eric swap places was the way to go.
I feel like there is no internal logic for Ursula zeroing in on Eric like that except communicating to the audience that they were S U B V E R T I N G E X P E C T A T I O N S by having Eric be the "damsel in distress." Leading up to the kill shot, I had thought maybe they were going to play it like this is her getting back at Eric for contributing to the death of Flotsam and Jetsam, which would have been tangential but at least somewhat connected to her motivations, but Ursula's only rationale was "So long, lover boy!" This is another space where I felt like the film would have benefited from going off-book and creating an original scenario where Ariel's victory would have felt organic. Eric was just a third-tier pawn in Ursula's game, her main adversaries have been Ariel and Triton all along, so that's where her attention should have logically been during this segment. If they had written a scenario where Ariel somehow takes out Ursula while her attention was on Triton, that would have made sense to me.
Again, I think it's perfectly valid to want Ariel to take out the villain in her own story, but I'm still waiting for Disney to pull off that story element convincingly and satisfyingly.
And that's kind of the summation of things that bothered me.
Things that I really LIKED ...
This arguably had the best all-around cast of any of the remakes. I think Halle brought all of Ariel's sweetness and spirit without crossing over into saccharinity, which is where most LA princess characters tend to go. She and Jonah had such fantastic chemistry. And as someone who was vocally upset over the casting of a comedic actress like McCarthy in the role of the bad guy, I want to offer this public apology because McCarthy actually filled a hole left by a decade without Disney animated villains. The voice cast was all on point, with Awkwafina probably being the standout. I see a lot of people haven't really been feeling Bardem's performance. I didn't personally share that sentiment. He didn't have any particular standout moments for me, but I also think that by design his character doesn't give off the same energy as the rest of the cast, and I liked the sort of Shakespearean quality he brought to the film.
The Andersen quote at the start sent me into an emotional spiral that I never really recovered from, as did the serene score from that first minute of the film. Acknowledging the source material like that was not only clever and respectful, I think it also showed a level of understanding to why this story has endured for so long. More than just a generic homage, the specific passage they chose from the text indicated that they not only actually read the story this film came from, but understood it on a thematic, emotional level. With that one creative choice they did a lot to earn my trust.
The visuals were nice for me. I still would have preferred that Atlantica be like an actual underwater palace and not just a cluster of rocks, but the depth, color, and texture of the undersea world made me glad I actually did the 3d viewing this time.
"Under the Sea" was probably the best number for me. Going in I had some concerns about the fish gesticulating their fins in a way that evoked human dancing, but even with that, the staging of the scene alone kinda made me understand why this film deserved a live-action remake beyond just it being next on the list.
Ariel riding on the sea turtles as they cha-cha'd on the ocean bed was probably the highlight for me.
Concerning the new songs, I prefer "Wild Uncharted Waters" over "For the First Time" in terms of inherent musical value, but I preferred the execution for Ariel's number over Eric's in the context of the film itself. Eric's number adds more to the story as a whole (and just fills a gap left by the love interest not having any song), but I don't think that the visuals of the song added anything to the experience. Ariel's song, on the other hand, didn't feel as essential to me, but I think it worked better with the onscreen visuals.
The fantasy bit toward the climax of the song where Ariel is singing in her own head helped build anticipation for her finally meeting Eric, which then added to the drop when she realizes what losing her voice really cost her. I actually would have really liked seeing the whole number play that way where every time we hear Ariel singing, we kind of enter that darkened theater space where Ariel is vocalizing her thoughts, and then just have the final verse play out with voice over in the "real world."
All around, I think this one landed a lot better than it had any right to.
). The original wedding dress is 10X that outfit, dated or not. Little things like that are why I'm sort of two minds on the box office, I think it sort of deserves to only barely break even, perhaps lose a few million. Not TLM property itself, just the people who made the decisions on this remake don't really deserve to have the kind of success Aladdin, B&tB, and TLK's remakes managed, imo, and things like that and random name changes / song cuts are the reason why.
