Spent tickets on this and excluding Halle Bailey, it's just a constant devoid of soul, sure the cast is well acted & performed & I did appreciate the new additions how it wasn't a scene from scene remake. But the best parts of this movie is everything that it borrows from the original. There's just 1 moment that it expands that feels good & that's the prince Eric song, and I did like how him & Ariel get more time. However you do feel the plot/story being prolonged in the process. It doesn't flow as good as it should. These are slight nit picks, but Haley Bailey is just amazing as Ariel, she has the voice & charm, her & Eric shine. With that aside a lot of other things are a let down. Melissa McCarthy had some good moments as Ursula but it's just another lacking depth version, her version of unfortunate souls was just lacking anything interesting, no dancing or wit either, in fact not only this but the musical parts of this movie felt completely bland. This version of Under the sea felt like a cheap drunk Karaoke commercial, the production does not mesh well either & looks occasionally ugly to look at. And I think that's where this film fails big time, I didn't believe Ariel was "part of this world" it felt half baked even in direction, is this A remake? A reimagining? Or a carbon copy? It felt so desperate at trying to appease the adults who grew up with the original making it more realistic, while also appeasing the kids, & also appeasing the modernization with some obvious & questionable changes. If you're going to change an icon like Ariel & race change her, that's fine, I love that & support that, but I feel there was a huge missed opportunity here, this film would have succeeded if it was a reimagining & focused on a darker tale, because the tone on this film is just all over the place, a darker & realistic approach would have been cool, maybe with a darker spin to these songs, times it felt that this movie wasted at copying the original was time it could have spent being unique & the creatures looking way too realistic didn't make me care for them one bit, rather than trying to be all these things at once it should have focused on being one or the other.
Someone needs to nail these remakes to a 4.5 / 10.
Someone needs to nail these remakes to a 4.5 / 10.