On 09 Aug 2021, Yak <yak@inbox1.com> posted some
news:sesqa2$v84$41@news.dns-netz.com:

> Lee wrote
>
>> I'm going to make more popcorn and watch woke Disney bleed to death.

Search for "The Little Mermaid side-by-side," and you'll land upon several
user-created videos drawing visual comparisons between Disney's 1989 hand-
drawn animated hit and the trailer for the new star-studded "live-action"
remake directed by Rob Marshall. Many of the shots � Ariel breaching the
water's surface while dramatically tossing her long red locks behind her,
for one � are so eerily similar in composition that they almost present as
carbon copies.

This is, of course, by design; the studio wants viewers to notice its
ongoing commitment to recycling. At this point, Disney has its formula
down pat: Take one of its beloved traditionally animated properties,
update its sensibilities for modern audiences just a bit, recast it with a
bunch of familiar faces and voices, and rehash it all in "live-action"/CGI
form. And over the last couple of decades, it's consistently worked, often
to the maniacal tune of around a billion dollars at the box office.

To paraphrase Horatio Thelonious Ignacious Crustaceous Sebastian: Disney,
hmph! We give it an inch, and it swims all over us!

Time will tell if Marshall's Little Mermaid will make a billion dollars �
I certainly wouldn't bet against it � but the rest of the ingredients in
this superfluous seafood stew have already been stirred into the pot. The
movie stars Halle Bailey as Ariel, the headstrong merprincess obsessed
with the human world and who longs to be a part of it, much to her anti-
human merfather King Triton's (Javier Bardem) chagrin. So when she falls
in love with the handsomely bland human prince Eric (Jonah Hauer-King),
she makes a deal with Ursula (Melissa McCarthy), the slinky sea witch, and
trades in her voice to become a human herself.

But there's a catch; a mute Ariel must woo Eric enough to grant her a kiss
of true love within three days, or else she'll be back under the sea and
under Ursula's control. (In a tweak from the original movie, Ursula slips
a mickey in Ariel's spell that makes it so she's unable to remember
needing that kiss; I, for one, did not have Ursula 2.0 being even
dastardlier on my Disney live-action reheats bingo card.) With the help of
her faithful animal sidekicks Flounder (Jacob Tremblay), Sebastian (Daveed
Diggs, who made the baffling choice to keep the faux Caribbean-ish
patois), and Awkwafina (who, thankfully, no longer has that Blaccent),
Ariel ultimately gets her man, her voice, and her father on her side.

The primary function of this cynical exercise is to induce in viewers a
warped combination of nostalgia and d�j� vu, so as such, there are only
two ways to measure its merits. The first is to stack it up against its
peers; in this case, The Little Mermaid 2.0 is not oppressively atrocious
in the way Aladdin 2.0 and Pinocchio 2.0 are. Like the decent Beauty and
the Beast 2.0, there are a handful of moments and a performance or two
that manage to stand out amid the cacophony of uncanny, deadening CGI.
McCarthy's Ursula feels both akin to Pat Carroll's indelible voice
performance in the original and, at certain moments, stands on its own,
especially during the perfect villain song "Poor Unfortunate Souls."

<https://www.npr.org/2023/05/22/1177439851/the-little-mermaid-review-
remake-disney?ft=nprml&f=191676894>