'The Little Mermaid' swims in familiar waters

A young mermaid named Ariel (Halle Bailey) makes a deal with her aunt, the sea witch Ursula (Melissa McCarthy) to trade her beautiful voice for human legs so she can discover the world above water and discovers a kind prince (Jonah Hauer-King) on her journey. However, her father Triton (Javier Bardem) demands that she return to the ocean at once. With the help of her friends Sebastian, Flounder and Scuttle (Daveed Diggs, Jacob Tremblay, Awkwafina), Ariel tries to understand the world above, while the world below falls into the clutches of Ursula...

Live-action remakes of Disney animated movies are big, important business for the Mouse House. The sort-of-kind-of live-action remake of 'The Lion King' with Donald Glover and Beyoncé scored a box office of $1.6 billion in 2018. 'The Jungle Book', closer to a live-action in that you had a real person playing Mowgli, made just under the billion mark and was instrumental in kicking off this trend. As technology progresses, we're now at the point where something like 'The Little Mermaid' is a reality where once it was only a distant dream.

For the most part, 'The Little Mermaid' is an enjoyable retread of a familiar story. Newcomer Halle Bailey is eager to impress, and her voice carries her through where her performance does not. More than that, hearing Alan Menken's songs refreshed and revitalised reminds us how good they were. Melissa McCarthy might seem like an obvious bit of casting for Ursula yet, sadly, she doesn't quite commit to the bit as well as some other obvious choices. Daveed Diggs is an excellent choice for Sebastian, with the calypso-inflected songs adding a real bounce to certain setpieces, while Jacob Tremblay's Flounder isn't quite the horrifying fish monster that poster portrayed him as. Javier Bardem, sadly, is at sea in this (no pun intended), while Jonah Hauer-King barely makes an impact, despite his best attempts to sing with his whole chest and stake a claim on the territory ceded by the likes of Hugh Grant or James McAvoy.

Rob Marshall is no stranger to taking on musicals - in fact, it's generally considered to be his forte, what with the unbridled success of 'Chicago' and managing to convince Daniel Day-Lewis he could sing in an Italian accent for 'Nine'. Much like the entire movie itself, he feels like the obvious choice and almost borders on an uninspired one. There's never anything in 'The Little Mermaid' that sparks with real insight or wonder, but it's competent and it's got just enough of the magic that made the original such a huge hit. The changes to the story are cosmetic at best, with the usual amendments made in order to suit modern tastes and sensibilities.

Ultimately, 'The Little Mermaid' delivers what it set out to do - a live-action remake of a much-beloved animated classic, with enough embellishments and edits to make it more or less worth the visit to cinemas. Those who loved the original will find enough of it here to love it all over again, and those who never saw it will get a glimmer of it, but not quite the full shine and glow.