‘The human world is a mess’
Like many other little kids, I was always into Disney Princesses and like many, I had my favourite, Ariel! I can’t name an exact reason why The Little Mermaid was my favourite princess film (apart from the banging songs) but it always has been so when the live action was announced back in 2016 I was so excited and I’ve been waiting for it ever since.
Considering I’ve been waiting about 7 years for this live-action you can imagine that I have built quite a lot of hype onto this, yet it still completely exceeded my expectations. I will obviously have a little bit of bias here as it is a favourite but there was also a lot leaning on this being enjoyable for me and with a lot of negative comments on social media when some of the clips began to release I was just a little bit nervous.
Starting off, I booked the earliest screening and attended alone (that’s how dedicated I was to seeing this) the title started and I was hooked, it almost felt like being a little kid again. I saw many comments of people worried the imagery would be very dark but it felt quite the opposite, it was bright and colourful under the sea and was visually stunning – I’m really amazed at everything they managed to do considering it’s a pretty difficult job to have half the film set underwater. The sisters of the seven seas were all stunning also with beautifully designed costumes and it all worked together amazingly.
The original film is only 90 minutes long however this was around 135, I saw a lot of comments with people concerned about that, but honestly I think it was for the better, it fleshed out the story so much more making it easier to connect with the characters and the story whilst also adding more emotion. I can imagine it would’ve felt fairly rushed and had a lot less magic if they stuck to the original 90 minutes. There were also some pretty incredible scenes, one of those being the ship-wreck scene towards the beginning, you feel really gripped to it and was tense to watch!
Finally, onto the songs, Halle’s voice is just incredible! I believe there’s no one else who could’ve done this role justice and she was the perfect decision, I really hope to see her in more. Moving on from that her voice definitely wasn’t wasted, in the original Ariel doesn’t actually have many songs but this time she had some extras written in to do her justice. Prince Eric also had a new song which was really good and whilst I’ve seen lots of comments about Scuttle’s – it was fun and that’s all it was meant to be! The whole cast was incredible to me and really did the original movie justice, honestly? I think it might be better.
Although this is basically me gushing about how much I loved this I just needed to get my feelings out! However if you are contemplating seeing this film you definitely should! I adored it and am already thinking about going again!
Watch the trailer here: https://youtu.be/kpGo2_d3oYE
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