A live-action remake to cash in on the success of recent live action animation remakes but at least they were interesting as The Little Mermaid delivers a dry, bland and quite frankly unwatchable affair at times. Here’s our The Little Mermaid IMAX review.

The youngest of King Triton’s daughters, Ariel is a beautiful and spirited young mermaid with a thirst for adventure. Longing to find out more about the world beyond the sea, Ariel visits the surface and falls for the dashing Prince Eric. Following her heart, she makes a deal with the evil sea witch, Ursula, to experience life on land.
Disney announces a live-action remake of a beloved classic and the whole world asks the question ‘why’. 
There just doesn’t seem any need for these kind of films that seem to be ruining every single Disney animated classic title in the catalogue. I only enjoyed The Lion King live-action movie because I was in 4DX, Disney and 4DX are a match made in heaven but this time around it was an IMAX screening.
The reason I chose IMAX is because the trailer looked so heavily ridden with CGI that only an IMAX screen could bring out the computer generated colours with enough vibrancy for me to enjoy its visual appeal even if the film was utter trash. It came in handy as my fears were confirmed almost immediately, the film is utter trash.

Animated sequences play out rather strangely with some CGI scenes feeling as though Green Lantern and Aquaman just had a baby. They don’t look natural, the same water sound effects play every time a character moves in a copy and paste unimaginative laziness and director Rob Marshall seems to enhance the cheesiness of the movie to the point where it’s overpowering and nauseating.
Halle Bailey is the shining light of this movie with vocals that don’t sound autotuned and her performance being captivating and true to the character but even she is upstaged by a crab. Yes, a crab.
Sebastian (voiced by Daveed Diggs) is leagues ahead of the entire cast that if it wasn’t for his humour and line delivery I’d have probably walked out. Which says a lot considering I somehow managed to stay seated during the entire Super Mario Bros movie!
The same story from the animated movie takes place here as a teenage Ariel ignores her father’s orders and goes off exploring forbidden parts of the sea. She keeps a cave of belongings until she rescues a castaway, a human Prince Eric (Jonah Hauer-King) and saves his life. He’s smitten by her voice and she’s smitten with his humanness?
 
I can’t quite wrap my head around her falling in love with the first guy she sees with legs instead of fins but hey, stranger things have happened.
The Little Mermaid feels much more bloated than its animated counterpart running at nearly an hour longer than the 1989 animation. Melissa McCarthy puts in a questionable performance as Aunt Ursula which just felt over-acted and the last scene was just so unbelievably stupid that it’s gone from animated film to creature feature Godzilla flick within a moment.
I’ve never watched a CGI film before and thought that they had gone too far with the CGI but this is definitely it. It just doesn’t work and at times is quite difficult to watch. Tricking the audience into thinking you did filming underwater is just lazy filmmaking with CGI filling in the gaps of this corner cutting instalment.
It’s when we go onto land the the CGI becomes bearable as northern gannet Scuttle (voiced by Awkwafina), Flounder (voiced by Jacob Tremblay) and Sebastian all look superb. Like, really good!
The Little Mermaid is getting bad reviews for a reason aside from all the controversy that has surrounded it since its release. It’s very simple. It’s just not a good film and here’s hoping for a Sebastian spin-off movie because in one character was the comedy, heart and soul of what a Disney movie should be but it was lost in a bigger tank full of damp squib.
I haven’t nodded off in the cinema for many many years but my head was definitely nodding quite a few times through this soulless Disney live-action cash in.

Our Rating

Summary
Disney should just leave these Live-Action remakes alone. I’m sure Moana will go the same way and from a business standpoint it makes sense these films will obviously make a LOT of money but from a filmmaking and storytelling perspective, they’re ruining the classics we all know and love as a new generation has to suffer these bloated soulless creations.