“The Little Mermaid” Review
This is likely the second best live action adaptation of a Disney film that I’ve seen yet, with Jungle Book still at the top because of how much I liked the new stuff they introduced to the film. Disney has gone both routes with these adaptions, with some of them introducing too much new stuff (Beauty & The Beast) or being nearly verbatim remakes of the originals (Lion King), but I think they found a good balance with The Little Mermaid. Something that their tech teams have gotten concerningly good at is the natural looking animals in the live action cgi sections, there were times that I 100% could not tell there was CGI going on during a scene with talking crabs and fish.
Halle Bailey of course hit it right out of the park, I had some concerns if only because I knew that about half her screen time was going to be a muted situation, but she’s such an expressive actress and honestly, such a pretty person, that the times she couldn’t speak didn’t seem out of place or forced.