"Ariel" (Halle Bailey) has longed for a chance to meet with humans but her sagely father "Triton" (Javier Bardem) has prohibited this. Undeterred, she witnesses a terrible storm that washes the young prince "Eric" (Jonah Hauer-King) overboard. She races to his rescue and leaves him to his people on the beach - both are already in love! On hearing of her latest transgression, dad is now truly furious and loses his temper driving his daughter into the manipulative tentacles of the evil sea witch "Ursula" (Melissa McCarthy) who offers her a bargain - three days on land to obtain true love's kiss or a lifetime in her service. Snag? Well, she will not have her beautiful voice, she will be a mute. A combination of magic, duplicity and serendipity plays it's hand now and she ends up close to the prince, having adventures with him and falling even deeper in love - but can she get her kiss? Will the wicked "Ursula" let her? First things first - this isn't a patch on the 1989 version. It has a clunky, over-produced, musical theatre feel to it that consists of mediocre acting and some serious over-scoring. The delicacy and charm of the characterisations and songs has been subjected to grand orchestrations and whilst Bailey can certainly sing, the delivery is more about her ability to belt out the songs rather to than imbue them with any emotions relevant to the charm of the story. McCarthy is quite effective - if only she would stay still for five seconds and that leads to the other disappointment with this film. It works perfectly as an animation - why introduce elements of live-action to it? Neither the story nor the film benefit from the cluttering mix of CGI and real visuals. As with the recent remake of "The Lion King", the song lyrics, for reasons that don't seem clear to me, have been reworked - this time by the always over-rated Lin-Manuel Miranda whose "Scuttlebutt" song is just plain annoying. It wasn't broke - why fix it? At times there is a little engaging chemistry between Bailey and Hauer-King, but for the most part this is an unnecessary, and overly long, rehash of a fairy tale that seems to me to have been made because it could be, not because it should have been. Disappointing.

<em>'The Little Mermaid'</em> is one of the better Disney live-action remakes. I'd personally even put it on the same level as the 1989 animated movie, though admittedly I am not someone with any sort of connection to that original flick. Halle Bailey makes for a good Ariel. Daveed Diggs, Javier Bardem and Melissa McCarthy are solid in their respective roles, I'm not wholly convinced by the latter as Ursula but she is still a decent watch. Awkwafina as Scuttle is probably the character I enjoyed most. Visually things look nice, I like both the underwater and on firmer ground stuff. Musically it's as good as you'd probably expect, "Under the Sea" and, of course, Ariel's songs are solid, while "The Scuttlebutt" somehow works more than it probably should. I do think the run time could've been trimmed a touch, but that's not a big deal.