Why The Little Mermaid is bad news for cinema

It is disappointing to learn that, after critics and cynical audiences everywhere had sharpened their fish knives in the expectation of the new live-action Little Mermaid film being a catastrophic disaster, early reviews have suggested that it is… fine. It attracted a great deal of attention, and some criticism, for the casting of the black singer-actress Halle Bailey in the lead role of Ariel, on the grounds that sea-dwelling mermaids must, after all, be white-skinned redheads, as she was in the seminal 1989 animated film. Yet Bailey’s performance has been universally acclaimed, with her delivery of ‘Part of Your World’ being singled out for particular praise.

The reason why so many are disappointed that we do not have a Cats­­-level disaster on our hands is twofold. Firstly, the trailers promised a truly terrible film, complete with frightening, oddly andromorphic crabs. That the results are merely acceptable has produced a reaction in connoisseurs of bad movies a little like sitting down for a five-course feast of lobster and being served pickled herring in its stead. Secondly, and more importantly for the future of cinema, if The Little Mermaid is a success at the box office, the recent, regrettable trend for Disney live-action adaptations of their animated classics will continue unabated.

With the exception of the surprisingly excellent (and pleasingly dark) Cruella, the recent stream of Disney remakes has been remarkably undistinguished cinematically. There were the Tim Burton travesties of Dumbo and Alice in Wonderland and Jon Favreau pointlessly remaking a live-action Lion King with uncanny photorealistic talking lions. There was also, of all people, Guy Ritchie directing a pre-slap Will Smith as the Genie in Aladdin, and conspicuously failing to erase memories of the late, great Robin Williams in the process. The new vogue for trying to extract a tenner from audiences before the results slide on to Disney+ has been wholly depressing. Contemporary Hollywood prizes the dread IP (intellectual property) above all else, and what better way of offering viewers something tried and tested than a remake of an animated film that they’ll have seen a hundred times before?

Of course, there are some additions and spins on the material. The new Little Mermaid film features songs tweaked by the ubiquitous Lin-Manuel Miranda, portrays Ariel in a far more explicitly feminist light and runs nearly an hour longer than the original. For lovers of kitsch, you also have proper actors in the form of Javier Bardem and Melissa McCarthy in suitably watery costumes and make-up. But by and large, the tweaks are surface-level, rather than reaching deep beneath the water. If you’ve seen the 1989 film, or even read the Hans Christian Andersen tale that inspired it, the new picture is almost breathtaking in its irrelevance.

I believed that even Disney was tiring of its cultural necrophilia. New versions of Mulan and Pinocchio came and went without any recognition, and the recent Peter Pan and Wendy – which may be more notable for giving Jude Law another juicy character role than for anything intrinsically interesting in the film itself – was consigned directly to Disney+ without any attempt to bother cinemas. But alas, the probable success of The Little Mermaid means that a whole raft of remakes and re-imaginings are coming to punish us.

Did you long for a live-action Lilo and Stitch? Was a desperate wish for The Aristocats with computer-generated cats keeping you awake at night? If so, it’s probable your every dream will be answered. But for the rest of us, the prospect of hundreds of millions of dollars being wasted on new versions of Hercules, Snow White and The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a deeply miserable one. The stranglehold that Disney has over contemporary cinema is generally regrettable, with everything from the Star Wars series to the endless, soulless procession of Marvel films testing the patience of even the most enthusiastic of consumers. Yet even the usual way that audiences tend to show that they do not want to see a film – by not going to the cinema – no longer remains an option, thanks to their ubiquity on the streaming service.

So whether or not you were mildly intrigued by The Little Mermaid, if only for Javier Bardem’s magnificent beard, my advice to you would be to dip beneath the sea and hope that the whole, miserable tidal wave of mediocrity washes over cinema before too long, Otherwise we’ll be well and truly sunk.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s World edition.