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I’m done moaning about these Disney live action adaptations. I’d written a whole intro going on again about how these films represent the absolute worst of a contemporary movie industry shamefully fearful of original content, but I scrapped it. These are happening whether I like it or not so maybe I should just sit back and enjoy the pretty images, the easy humour and celebrity turns that have become the mainstay of these seventeen or so movies. Some, like Dumbo and Pinocchio, are fairly bad but most are fine, and they can’t keep doing them forever. Discounting the sequels, they’ve already remade roughly 34% of their animated back catalogue, and if you add in the films that they have announced as already being in production then that goes up to 56%. I also don’t think we are ever going to see a photo real version of Chicken Little or Home on the Range are we, so while this juggernaut is rolling on at the moment, at some point it is going to stop.

In the meantime then here is The Little Mermaid. I love the 1989 original; when I ranked the Disney Animated Films it was second only to The Jungle Book, so let’s not waste any time on whether this one is better or not. Of course it isn’t! Like a lot of these older older animations though, there are a few details that do stand to be updated. Not so much that a new version was actually required, as was arguably the case with last month’s Peter Pan & Wendy, but enough that they have been very careful to make the wise amendments where they needed to.

The main criticism that is levelled at The Little Mermaid is that Ariel is too easily prepared to leave her life and family behind because she falls for a man. This is not entirely fair as it is clear that she is already fascinated by life on land even before she meets Eric but this part still doesn’t sit easily from a feminist point of view. Her desire to live on the surface is definitely made more of a thing here then and she generally has a lot more agency. They even emphasise this in the opening words to Sea Witch Ursula’s big song where she now says ‘she’s in love with the human world’ rather than just ‘she’s in love with a human’.

I always had a bit of an issue with the Kiss the Girl number as well, where Sebastian the Crab once sang: ‘Yes, you want her. Look at her, you know you do. Possible she wants you too, there is one way to ask her. It don’t take a word, not a single word, go on and kiss the girl.’ I know what they were going for here but actually from a consent point of view the one way to ask her is actually to ask her. Sure I’ll concede that every moment in cinema where the tentative romantic couple slowly approach one another for that first touch of lips wouldn’t be improved by an informed discussion beforehand, but still. It turns out I’m not the only one who has this concern though as this song now explicitly includes the line ‘use your words and ask her’. They also make it so that Ariel forgets she needs to land a smacker on Eric to break the spell as well, so now she’s not forcing herself on him either.

Then there are Triton’s other daughters who are no longer giggling women just spending their days singing and doing their hair but are now key political figures in this ocean domain, each ruling over a different one of the seven seas. Prince Eric gets his own longing ‘I want’ song alongside Ariel’s Part of your World tune so that levels things out a bit too. Finally our plucky protagonist is a lot less passive in the big battle at the end so that’s another big plus.

The insertion of each of these elements are definitely statements on the part of the film makers and they are all welcome additions. Mind you there is one other thing that seems to be pointedly included that I didn’t understand. In this narrative the prejudice toward humans held by those under the sea seems to be around them eating marine life, but right at the start the friendly seabird Scuttle snacks on a fish herself (it’s a her this time; the character has been gender swapped). No circle of life explanation, she just straight out murders one of Ariel’s little buddies and no one ostracises her. There are other new bits that only really confuse the story, around mermaid magic and international trade and stuff, but I found I could forgive these more.

In the end though you only need to watch that wonderful YouTube clip of young black girl’s watching the trailer to see why this film absolutely had to be made:

The promise of taking an established Disney Princess and making her a black woman is absolutely realised by the full movie. Ariel is a proper inspiration here and Halle Bailey plays her brilliantly. She has such screen presence and is an absolute delight to spend time with. There wasn’t as much reaction so there wasn’t quite the same media attention but this follows the aforementioned Peter Pan & Wendy that itself gave us a black Peter Pan and Tinkerbell and there is opportunity for some of the future films to go the same way. They have already cast a Colombian woman as Snow White but that upcoming movie has some different things to do in respect of appropriate representation.

Interestingly the whole story has been relocated to the West Indies, albeit a very ‘Disneyland It’s a Small World’ version of these famous island countries, meaning that many of the people Ariel encounters on land are also non European. Eric is still a white guy though, despite his mother being Caribbean, and significantly so is Vanessa who is briefly Ariel’s love rival at one point. Since Vanessa is really Ursula, who is played by Melissa McCarthy, they were never going to make her black but Vanessa as presented here is actually your much more typical Disney Princess figure so settling her up as a fraudulent alternate to the more authentic Ariel has greater meaning in this context.

It also has to be said that this film is less brutal than its classic predecessor. You might think that’s an odd observation in relation to The Little Mermaid but when wryly describing the cartoon to a friend recently I did say it was the tale of a teenage girl who gets in too deep with an evil witch and ends up being mutilated, while one of the other main characters ends up in a murder room where someone tries to scoop out his insides and serve them up fried. None of that is a lie or even much of an exaggeration. The ripping noise that accompanies the image of Ariel’s tail separating into two legs in the original movie is gone now, and the whole kitchen scene that sets Sebastian the crab against the manic French chef Louis is also entirely absent. It would all just have been a bit much in live action. Mind you Sebastian himself is a bit freaky as rendered here and you would probably want to kill him with a spade if he approached you on the beach in real life. The early shark attack has survived the transition from one medium to the other but even that is quite inert compared to how it was in two cell animation.

All in all though, if this movie had to exist in this form then this is absolutely as good as it could have been. The tunes are as pretty much good as they always were, especially Part of Your World, and there are a few new tracks that fit in okay. One of these turns into a bit of a rap but when you have Lin Manuel Miranda writing a song for Awkwafina and Daveed Diggs then that was kind of inevitable.

In the end it is impossible not to be charmed by this film. Much of that is down to Halle Bailey but it also has a simple fairytale innocence that appeals. I definitely did enjoy the pretty images, the easy humour and the celebrity turns. Roll on Lilo & Stitch.