Hello everyone! 🙂

Welcome to ‘Bradley’s Basement’ blog and I’m Tim Bradley!

I’ve seen the latest 2023 live-action remake of Disney‘s ‘The Little Mermaid’ at the cinema! 🙂 Since I’ve seen and reviewed the original 1989 film as well as ‘The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea’, it’s only fair that I share some thoughts on the latest live-action film and whether I like the film or not. 🙂

And to be honest, yeah, I did like this film. I still prefer the original 1989 film, but I found this an enjoyable interpretation of ‘The Little Mermaid’ story in Disney form. I noticed some structural changes made to the film’s plot. These include elements absent from the 1989 film to the 2023 film.

For example, the underwater concert that was at the start of the 1989 film is replaced by King Triton simply reuniting with his daughters, only to see Ariel absent. The story is mostly the same, but I couldn’t help notice certain differences in the 2023 film after having seen the 1989 film many times.

The 2023 film’s ending is longer compared to the 1989 film, stretching out Ariel ending up becoming a human by her father. There’s also the absence of Ariel not telling her father that she loves Eric when he’s about to destroy her collection of human items, which makes sense in terms of the story.

The 1989 film had a sloppy love story going on between Ariel and Prince Eric, which I enjoyed, but it’s something that wouldn’t quite work in a retelling for a modern audience. I like that Ariel and Eric get to know each other and the romance between them goes step-by-step and seems more natural.

It helps that 2023’s ‘The Little Mermaid’ is about 2 hours and 15 minutes compared to the original 1989 film that’s about 1 hour and 23 minutes. Ideally, I would’ve liked everything in the 2023 film to match to what’s in the 1989 film in live-action form, but I appreciate this film doing its own spin on things. 🙂

The performances of the cast are very good. Halle Bailey is very good as Ariel as well as Jonah Hauer-King as Prince Eric. It was interesting to see the two characters having their desires in life and how they paralleled with each other whilst the human and merpeople worlds were against each other. 🙂

Melissa McCarthy stars as Ursula, the treacherous sea-witch whom Ariel makes a deal with to become human. Jessica Alexander plays Vanessa, Ursula’s human alter-ego who tries to win Eric’s attentions instead of Ariel, which is what I expected, as it matched to what occurred in the 1989 film.

There’s Javier Bardem as King Triton, Daveed Diggs who voices Sebastian the crab, Jacob Tremblay who voices Flounder, Ariel’s best fish friend (I was expecting Flounder to be more yellow and blue in live-action), and there’s Awkwafina who voices Scuttle. Yes, Scuttle is female, not male. Which I’m fine with.

I recognised two stars from ‘Doctor Who’ in this film. There’s Noma Dumezweni (who played Captain Erisa Magambo in ‘Turn Left’ and ‘Planet of the Dead’) as Queen Selina, Eric’s adoptive mother. There’s also Art Malik (who guest starred in ‘The Ghost Monument’) as prime minister Sir Grimsby .

Art Malik was also in the final ‘Sherlock’ episode called ‘The Final Problem’. Apparently, Jodi Benson, who voiced Ariel in the original 1989 film, makes a cameo as a market vendor during Ariel and Eric’s tour of the Caribbean island kingdom. So, the two Ariels actually met in the movie then. 😀

The songs and the music are very good in the film. Songs from the 1989 film are carried over into the 2023 film, including ‘Part of Your World’, ‘Under the Sea’ and ‘Kiss the Girl’. There’s also new songs like ‘Wild Uncharted Waters’ by Lin-Manuel Miranda of ‘Mary Poppins Returns’ and ‘Encanto’ fame.

So, 2023’s ‘The Little Mermaid’ was a nice film to check out. I can’t say it’s better than the 1989 film, as that was the film I grew up with. I still enjoyed this version and appreciate it doing its own thing in its storytelling and developing characters whilst having familiar elements including songs and music.

I’d like to think my late sister Bethan would have enjoyed this film if she saw it today. 🙂 Incidentally, this film was directed by Rob Marshall, who also directed ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides’, ‘Into the Woods’ and ‘Mary Poppins Returns’. Quite a popular Disney director, right? 🙂

By the way, I’m shocked Chef Louie didn’t appear in the film. Max the dog appeared, but not Chef Louie? 😐 Then again, no-one could replace René Auberjonois. I also felt a ‘Finding Nemo’ vibe whilst watching this film.

Thanks for reading!

Bye for now!

Tim 🙂