weflyy ofcourse

Definitely one of the better Disney remakes. I watched this with my children (aged 10 and 8) and we were all really entertained by it. Halle Bailey is brilliant, her voice is incredible and even when Ariel can't speak she is able to capture all the sweetness, naivety and sincerity of the character in an understated but captivating way. I like how they fleshed out Prince Eric's character and the relationship between him and Ariel makes more sense to me now. Jonah Hauer-King's Eric is compassionate and charming in a cute way. Melissa McCarthy's Ursula was pretty good but personally I felt she could've had more fun and gone all out with it but I also understand not wanting to copy the original too much. 'Poor Unfortunate Souls' was very good though. Have to quickly mention Jessica Alexander here who plays Ursula in disguise and wow, did she understand the assignment. She left an impression after maybe a couple of minutes of screen time, so fun to watch. Sebastian got the most laughs from my kids and I quickly got used to his character design that I initially HATED as Daveed Diggs gave him enough personality to make it work. Scuttle was fun, especially with Sebastian although I understand why adults might find her grating, my kids loved her. I thought making Scuttle go underwater to Ariel rather than Ariel go up to the surface was a smart change for this film. I still hated Flounder's character design (I know they were going for photo realism but he just looks dead, I'm sorry) but I thought his voice was very sweet and sold the friendship between him and Ariel. Speaking of those three characters I wasn't sure how a lot of the scenes would work but they absolutely found a way. For example, in 'Kiss The Girl' they were played deliberately more for laughs without taking away from Ariel and Eric at all. The songs were great, including the new ones and YES, including 'Scuttlebutt'. At the end of the day, this is a kid's film and anything that gets kids as hyped and giggling as much as this short song did belongs in a kid's film. I personally loved 'For the First Time' and how it was shot. So as you've probably seen, overall we really enjoyed it. There were a few negatives however. All in all, the film looks great but there is some VERY dodgy CGI, one that stands out for me was King Triton's entrance. You can tell the money was spent elsewhere but it was a shame for a beautiful sequence to end with THAT. Speaking of King Triton, he felt a little bit flat to me. There was some clunky dialogue, 'my little mermaid' and 'when you came to us 21 years ago' stood out. As previously mentioned the relationship between Ariel and Eric was great but because the chemistry WAS there I felt like I just wanted to see a little bit more from that but again, kid's film and I totally understand that it would've been taxing on the attention span but it's just a personal thing for me. So yes, some very minor gripes but on the whole really enjoyable and didn't once feel bored, worth a watch and actually surprised me after seeing the trailers. I recommend taking slightly older kids, 100%.