What Were the Reviews of the Little Mermaid Live Action
'The Trivial Mermaid Alive!': It's Better When It's Wetter
ABC's hybrid telecast of "The Picayune Mermaid" seemed equally defenseless between two worlds as its heroine.
At times, last nighttime'southward ABC telecast of "The Piddling Mermaid Live!" seemed as defenseless betwixt two worlds as its heroine.
Was information technology supposed to be a i-of-a-kind live idiot box effect? Or was this just another re-airing of an blithe classic? Was it a nostalgic reminder of Walt Disney Studios' long clan with network television? Or was it a two-hour commercial for all things Disney?
The most important question: Was information technology entertaining? The reply: mostly yep. As the Disney executives learned xxx years ago, a handful of catchy Howard Ashman and Alan Menken songs nearly always covers upward any shortcomings.
"The Little Mermaid Alive!" wasn't a straightforward live-action adaptation of the 1989 animated pic, nor was it a Boob tube version of Disney'south 2007 Broadway musical. Instead, the producers borrowed an idea from the recent Hollywood Bowl concert presentations of "The Piddling Mermaid," by alternating between the original film'due south footage and some new live performances of its large musical numbers.
Even abridged and cutting into chunks, the film remains a delight. Back in 1989, Walt Disney'south animation division had been in the creative doldrums for decades until "The Little Mermaid," with its Hans Christian Andersen-inspired story of a mermaid named Ariel who sacrifices her vox to a sea witch, brought families back to multiplexes in droves.
The visual mode and animation in "The Little Mermaid" looks crude today, at least compared to what the studio would produce in the 1990s with "Beauty and the Beast" and "The King of beasts Male monarch." But the uncomplicated dearest story, the colorful characters and Ashman and Menken's toe-tapping music still make the picture piece of cake to watch, and rewatch.
Jodi Benson , the phonation of Disney's original Ariel, introduced "The Little Mermaid Alive!," earlier giving manner to the new version'south alive-action lead: Auli'i Cravalho , best known for voicing the title character in the 2016 Disney hit "Moana." Queen Latifah played the witch, Ursula, while Graham Phillips took on the function of Prince Eric.
The reggae performer Shaggy played Ariel'due south anxious adviser, Sebastian, a comical crab who had 2 of the night's showstoppers: the rousing, Caribbean area-spiced "Under the Sea," and the seductive ballad "Kiss the Girl."
The actor John Stamos reprised a part he'd previously played at the Hollywood Bowl: the fish-eating fiend Chef Louis, who gleefully belted out the darkly comic number "Les Poissons." (Anyone who can meet the words "Les Poissons" without immediately proverb "hee hee hee haw haw haw" in an outrageous French emphasis has clearly never seen the 1989 "Fiddling Mermaid.")
All of these performers handled the material well. The stunt casting of celebrities has sometimes been a drag on live Television musicals, but this cast could sing, and the animated characters handled most of the dialogue.
Queen Latifah was particularly impressive, sounding accordingly deep-voiced and sultry on Ursula's large vocal, "Poor Unfortunate Souls." The bottom-known Phillips was likewise a surprise standout, bringing depth and resonance to "Her Vocalism," a song from Broadway's "Piddling Mermaid."
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The special's staging was more hit-and-miss. The Broadway musical's elaborately costumed dancers were mostly replaced with puppets, which gave the performances visual impact merely sometimes fabricated the production look similar a depression-budget local kiddie Television set prove.
Unlike some of the other live Television receiver musicals, the studio audience was only intermittently a factor, and rarely for the meliorate. The crowd mostly stayed silent when the movie was playing, then whooped and then loudly at Queen Latifah and John Stamos that it was sometimes difficult to hear Ashman's witty lyrics.
In general, the transitions from animation to live action looked smooth, although the pieces still felt disconnected. The overall consequence was like watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, where the natural flow of marching bands, floats and balloons is periodically interrupted by stripped-down, out-of-context excerpts from Broadway shows.
Overall, "The Little Mermaid Live!" probably wouldn't have been the all-time way for a newcomer to feel the original movie. Just the special's end-and-start approach may have sparked some warm feelings amongst Telly viewers onetime enough to recollect the weekly "The Wonderful World of Disney" broadcasts, which oftentimes presented treasures from the studio's vault in truncated versions, cleaved upwardly by commercials. (Granted, a lot of the ads in last night's show were for Disney Plus, the visitor's upcoming streaming service that couldn't take existed thirty years ago.)
And every at present and then — if not quite often enough — the live material in "The Niggling Mermaid Live!" did event in some real Disney magic. When Cravalho equally Ariel sang the archetype Disney "I wish" ballad "Function of Your World," and then floated above the audition equally though swimming through the air, the moment was genuinely thrilling — not unlike how information technology felt to sit in a theater in 1989, and encounter an American popular-culture establishment spark back to life.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/arts/television/review-the-little-mermaid-live-disney.html
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