Laura Lee

Overall the movie was enjoyable but nothing like the original. I was curious to see how Disney was going to do The Little Mermaid live and it was...bearable. There were some parts where my husband and I laughed due to bad CGI or bad acting. First off....what happened to the cute side kick Flounder we all loved as little kids?!!! In this live version, there was nothing cute about Flounder and he was so tiny he got lost in all the backdrops of the ocean. Flounder was my biggest disappointment. Disney left out the pink dress Ariel wore when she first met Eric, the dinner table interaction, Sebastian's struggle in the kitchen with the chef and Ariel's magical walk out of the ocean in a sparkly blue dress! Sebastian and Ursula were well played and really carried the movie forward adding some laughs to the audience. I have to say Melissa McCarthy realllllly killed it as Ursula. Man! She was the only one that brought an original character to life! I wished there was loving interactions between Ariel and her dad and Ariel and her sisters. In the original, you can tell all the sisters had a sisterly bond as they got ready for the concert and at one point Ariel tucked a sea flower behind King Triton's ear as she twirled away. However, in this version there's barely ANY loving family interaction and all the daughters responded with a "yessir" manner to their father. So Coooold!!!! And the daughters' song at the concert was cut out. Halle Bailey was a cute Ariel and her voice was amazing but her acting wasn't that great.There was the part where she did the big iconic Little Mermaid splash behind the rock and I noticed that she slowly slid up the rock as she sang. It was quite awkward and cringy to watch. I have no objection that Disney chose to cast her but wished they kept the iconic red hair Ariel. My husband loved The Scuttlebutt song but I thought it was awkwardly interjected into the movie let alone The Little Mermaid movie! If it was a song made outside of the movie or played at the end with the credits rolling, it would have been more fitting. The song was well written but to me, it didn't go with The Little Mermaid at all! Disney really pushed their agenda for empowering women and other political agenda. I wished they didn't do so at the expense of down playing the men's role. Prince Eric was not as confident as he was in the original. Why can't the genders be equally empowered? I like that diversity was incorporated but perhaps it was over the top? All of Ariel's sisters were of a different race and it came off as King Triton having multiple of wives. Besides that, my husband and I thought the live version turned out to be scarier than the cartoon version. From Ursula mixing potion to how she turned into an octopus in front of the crowd and how she became gigantic, it was all pretty accurate to the original but somehow it just looks less kid friendly in the live version. Our son had never seen the cartoon so we kept looking over to him to make sure he wasn't freaking out.