ONE THAT GOT AWAY

Opening this weekend...

The Little Mermaid--It may be hard for younger people to understand what a big deal the original Little Mermaid was back in 1989. Disney is now so monolithic that it may be difficult to grasp the degree to which the firm, while still tops in the theme-park world, had become something of a lazy backwater in movie terms in the '80s. Animated features like The Black Cauldron and The Great Mouse Detective and Oliver & Company were profitable enough, but they weren't pop-culture landmarks that characterized childhood for a couple of generations.

With The Little Mermaid, one could immediately sense a sea change (sorry). Later animated Disney flicks like Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King became more beloved, perhaps, but that adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen tale set the trend, and the template. When title character Ariel looked toward the surface, opened her mouth and warbled, in the voice of Jodi Benson, that she wanted to be where the people were, she redefined what the word "princess" meant in our culture, and reshaped children's entertainment.

The key, of course, was the musical form. Earlier Disney flicks had songs, some of them classics, but The Little Mermaid was a true musical comedy. The tunes, by composer Alan Menken and lyricist Howard Ashman, were charmingly playful, but they also channeled adolescent longing into their fantasy situations. Ashman, who died in 1991 before the release of Beauty and the Beast, didn't know what he started.

The songs are the best thing about the new Little Mermaid too. I hadn't heard Ashman and Menken's tunes in decades, but they shake the movie to life at once, and a couple of new numbers by Menken and Lin-Manuel Miranda, including a rap for Awkwafina as the seabird, are strong as well. Halle Bailey sings "Part of Your World" with an expressive warmth that deepens the lyrics, and she brings a lovely, openhearted wonder to the role that's hard to resist.

The calypso number "Under the Sea," performed here by Daveed Diggs, is a crowd-pleaser again, and Jonah Hauer-King, in the comparatively thankless role of the Prince, rousingly handles his solo tune "Wild Uncharted Waters" (by Menken and Miranda). Melissa McCarthy brings sly humor--but not too much camp--to Ursula the Sea Witch in "Poor Unfortunate Souls."

The film could have used more music, and less filler. This Little Mermaid's director is Rob Marshall of Chicago and Dreamgirls, and he shapes the numbers excitingly--with the help of the Alvin Ailey Foundation, in the case of "Under the Sea"--but he can't do much with the in-between stuff. And there's a lot of in-between stuff; the new movie runs well over two hours, while the '89 original clocked in at well under an hour and a half.

Most of the non-musical sequences are poky, even interminable. This is especially true of the dry-land scenes, shot on a beautiful Sardinian coastline and set in a Caribbean-tinged storybook alternate past that feels much more like an overpriced, ersatz resort. The underwater scenes, with their immersive fanciful glitz, play better, but even they dawdle.

I've avoided most of the "live-action" (though heavily CGI-enhanced) remakes of Disney animated films in recent years. I did see Jon Favreau's 2016 Jungle Book, which was okay, mostly because it didn't stick too slavishly to the '67 film. But the idea of re-doing Beauty and the Beast or The Lion King in slick but unconvincing live action seemed, beyond the obvious profit potential, gratuitous. Fine as the performers are, this Little Mermaid seems that way too.