The Problem With "The Little Mermaid" (Review)

this video is brought to you by Squarespace the all-in-one website platform for entrepreneurs to stand out and succeed online The Little Mermaid is not the little mermaid it's The Little Mermaid the live-action remake of the Disney classic The Little Mermaid these live-action remakes are easy targets these days right and I try to avoid them at all costs we don't really need another guy on YouTube making a video about them we get it they suck also I don't like buying tickets to things where these sales will most likely mean more of these movies not that my ticket makes a difference at the end of the day but most importantly I kind of just stopped caring about these movies they're for kids and always have been and frankly I'm not a kid anymore I'm a big man but my curiosity got the best of me with this one because even the people behind this had to at some point admit that a live-action Little Mermaid would be a tricky one to pull off and I just had to see how they went about it I also love the original Little Mermaid and I wanted to I wanted to see it I want to see it I'll be honest and I well I didn't love it and I think I'll it'll be fun to talk about so here we go if this had any upgrade from the original it would probably be Halle Bailey singing she has a gorgeous voice I love the original music but Halle Bailey kind of blew me away with this I can't say as a whole that it delivers what the musical numbers we'll unpack them in a second but I really thought her singing was great the acting is another story what I have to say about Holly Bailey's acting is about what I have to say about most aspects of this movie it was directionless which is to say I can't put that much blame on her she just didn't really do anything with the character she's just trying her best to emulate the original and it just comes off a little stiff and directionless the only thing she's really using as inspiration is that first film and in doing so captures the spirit of that character beautifully but when dealing with a bigger film like this coming in at 2 hours and 15 minutes especially in live action I feel like she needed to bring some sort of weight to the performance and to make her believable and she just doesn't really bring that weight or if she did it was lost in the CGI but we'll we'll again we'll talk about that in a second and you know what I don't know what's worse that stiffness or whatever they decided to do with Aquafina as Scuttle and David digs as Sebastian once again no disrespect to either of these actors I like them both but their voice acting here just really was not working for me I mean at least they chose a place to take the characters but I don't know if this was the direction God there's a rap scene between the two and it's just so much worse than you think it's gonna be and Melissa McCarthy is Ursula maybe this is a hot take again another actor who I do like but what a disappointment her voice is fun she's doing a funny voice it's going all sorts of places and it gets the job done but her face is again so stiff and wooden where's the energy where's the villainous grin the sliminess she just looks bored which fair but come on the best performance in this thing is Jessica Alexander as Vanessa Ursula's human transformation she brings it and plays up the cartoony evil look which I realize as I'm typing this is the minimum but hey we'll take what we can get here I thought she was fantastic and it's a shame that she was in so little of the movie I saved the best for last starting with Jonah Howard King as Eric a face that looked incredibly familiar until I realized he's our boy from a dog's way home a movie that long time fans of the channel will know is a K Dog classic and Jonah to me scratches that same itch that Noah sentineo does for me this this hunky hot guy that I can't take seriously ever which makes everything he does so silly even if it's a serious scene and he's running up a mountain I'm just like he looks funny when he drops the line my Little Mermaid it's comedy gold but nothing he does is ever as funny as whatever the hell Javier Bardem is doing with uh King Triton between this and Lyle Crocodile this man is on a roll he is running the family film industry for most of the movie he's nothing to write home about he's just doing his usual thing but the last 10 minutes are so unintentionally funny he just keeps popping up in the ocean out of nowhere just sitting in there up to his pecs and it's one of those things where I'm like how long has he been sitting there watching these people the hair the crap the weird face he's making any sincere moment in those last 10 minutes went right through me because of how silly he looked it's worth the price of a ticket to be honest now if you're paying attention I wasn't crazy about any of these performances really besides the one that it only existed outside of the water with little to no CGI involved which is to say I don't know how much of this I can blame on the actors especially Hallie Bailey when so much of this movie is them talking to tennis balls you really notice how limiting this way of making movies is in just the first 15 minutes they have this long establishing shot of the ocean and yeah in IMAX it looks cool and pretty I was actually genuinely surprised at how much I was enjoying it the colors actually kind of Pop the camera swirls it looks neat and then the characters uh start talking literally in the first scene where they have to have any sort of interaction King Triton talking to his daughters things look immediately bad and like they aren't in the same room this technology does give you beautiful scenery and really cool environments but oh my God doesn't make every other scene look silly and unnatural they're just floating heads on top of CGI tentacles you warm up to it but it never gets to a point where you can take it seriously and that's a huge flaw again it's a kids movie we don't need to take stuff like this that seriously just look at Spy Kids 3D a certified Masterpiece but I would at least want the actors to not feel so trapped and lifeless in these environments besides aren't kids movies usually the kinds of places where you see super over-the-top silly performances for a kids movie this feels weirdly dull while we're talking CGI let's address the animals I will say this is better than whatever they were doing in The Lion King but it still doesn't really work for me again I'll give Aquafina the benefit of the doubt here maybe her voice acting was better suited for a character whose design actually matched how exuberant her voice sounded because it just sounds weird coming out of such a real looking bird it feels like barely a step up from what we were doing in Racing Stripes like how do we get here and the same thing with Sebastian one of the most important characters in the movie we see a lot of him he should be expressive like he is in the original it's what makes the under the sea number so exciting and fun it's what makes the kiss the girl song so fun but because he looks like just some crab that's slightly cartoon uni it just felt weird I will say Max the dog works it's still a cute dog he wasn't that cartoonish in the original film either that he was fine Max walks out of this unscathed not something I haven't seen a lot of people address is the length this thing sits at 135 minutes the original being 83 minutes does feel a little rushed at times they obviously have to play certain scenes up a bit more in this new one especially the climax but two hours and 15 minutes for the little mermaid is ambitious that said I never noticed the editing which was really nice nowadays especially with these Blockbusters I always end up seeing a handful of horrible Cuts because Studios treat younger audiences like they have the attention span of a squirrel and I was pleasantly surprised to see how smooth this was even when they had to cut around shitty line reads they made it work as I start to wrap things up I should mention one of the biggest annoyances and that's the color palette the thing about the original Little Mermaid is it's one of the most vibrant animated movies out there it's it's one of Disney's best each scene comes with its own unique color palette and visual aesthetic each is so distinct and it all pops every underwater scene in this movie kind of Blends together it all looks the same it doesn't matter if we're with King Triton or if we're with Ursula for a lot of it we're looking at the same dark shade of blue maybe this is a snobbish complaint I just I like color and I wish this had more of it it got a little dull after a while all of this said I think this movie is a step up from The Lion King like a huge step up Holly Bailey's singing brings a lot of life into this she is a great Ariel even if she doesn't really pack a punch when she isn't singing the editing is smooth there's nothing offensively bad besides that rap scene by Disney Live Action remake standards yeah it isn't the worst thing in the world and that said it actually feels too scared of being lumped in with other Disney remakes to Branch out and do something new so much so that what we end up getting is a stiff at times beat for beat remake of a much more imaginative movie but once again you might as well buy a ticket just to see Javier Bardem it's it's what a sight anyway thanks for watching go watch The Little Mermaid and form your your own opinion and before you head out I want to thank this week's sponsor Squarespace the best place to go to build a website and make that idea of yours happen they have this thing called fluid engine a Next Generation website design system that has made it infinitely easier to make your awesome ideas come to life you start with the best in class website template and customize every design detail with reimagined drag and drop technology for desktop or mobile if you're an aspiring filmmaker like myself you should really 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Channel: Karsten Runquist

Views: 238,348

Keywords: The Little Mermaid, Halle Bailey, Awkwafina, Daveed Diggs, Javier Bardem, Melissa McCarthy, Disney, Animation, Live Action, Remake, Sequel, Animated, Fish, Ariel, Flounder, Under the sea, part of me, musical, music, scene, explained, review, analysis, rant, ending, clip, video essay, filmmaking, film, movie, movies, bad, oscars, spiderman, frozen, fish, karsten runquist, new, 2023

Id: eecGR-6vhwg

Length: 9min 12sec (552 seconds)

Published: Fri May 26 2023