"Then I'll use her as a prawn in my little game..."
Clocking in at a third longer than the original classic animated movie, the latest in Disney's back-catalogue plundering gets the (semi-)live action treatment, with disappointing results. The undersea first act is vividly colourful and rendered in extraordinary detail, but it drags, the CG-made-over characters look odd and they never look fully integrated with the environment, and things do not improve much as it moves to dry land and the royal castle. In terms of the humans, Halle Bailey is acceptably sweet as Ariel if alarmingly young-looking, Jonah Hauer-King is rather - um - wet as the Prince Eric, Melissa McCarthy is good value as the scheming Aunt Ursula, and Javier Bardem is oddly restrained as King Triton but livens up eventually. The occasional songs are given the full-tilt Frozen approach, but even they underwhelm. The whole approach here is rather tepid and twee, with the extended running time not really used to any great purpose, making this easily one of the weakest of Disney's live-action-remakes so far.
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