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.

MERRY CHRISTMAS...

...from Less Hat, Moorhead!

Into the Woods—A friend of mine likes to say that “Grimm’s Fairy Tales” and “Pittsburgh” are two of the more aptly named entities in creation. I can’t agree with him about the second; I’ve always been fond of Pittsburgh. But there’s no arguing the grimness of those tales.

So Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s 1986 fairy-tale musical Into the Woods can’t really be called “dark” by comparison to its source material. This retelling of several Grimm yarns is dark only by comparison to the toned-down and glitzed-up style of fairy tales popularized by Disney and its ilk over the past century. Perhaps ironically, it’s Disney that has produced the lavish, star-studded and entertaining movie version of Into the Woods opening today.

Set, like a Ren Faire, in a period-vague Once Upon a Time with elements of the Renaissance, the 19th Century and the 20th Century—the Big Bad Wolf dresses like a swing dancer—Into the Woods weaves the stories of Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, Cinderella and Jack and the Beanstalk around the plight of a Baker and his Wife who are unable to conceive. These two learn from a neighborhood Witch that this is because of a curse upon their house. She gives them the recipe to lift the curse, which brings them into contact with the other characters.

Rob Marshall, who more or less revived the big-screen musical as a viable genre with his 2002 Chicago, directs nimbly, but with an agreeably more straightforward, less hyper-cut style. His work is accomplished, but as usual with musicals, the real key to its success lies in the cast, and the score.

The standouts in the cast, for me, were Meryl Streep, a hoot as the Witch, Emily Blunt as the Baker’s potentially naughty Wife, James Corden as the kindly young Baker, and a startling, apparently genetically-engineered little belter called Lilla Crawford as Red Riding Hood. Johnny Depp is droll in the brief role of the Wolf, Tracey Ullman is funny as Jack’s fed-up Mum, Anna Kendrick makes a sweet Cinderella, and as her self-impressed Prince Charming, Chris Pine, along with Billy Magnussen as Rapunzel’s Prince, scored spontaneous applause from the preview audience with whom I saw the film for their self-parodying duet “Agony.”

As for the score, it’s very, well, Sondheim-y, which for many is about the highest compliment a score can be paid. It’s pretty, if not, overall, as melodically soaring as some of Sondheim’s; it has a more frenetic, haywire sound, in support of the complex, almost patter-song lyrics. It’s compelling, though—when each number is done, you know you’ve really heard something, and you want to hear it again.

About halfway through the movie—at the end of Act One in the stage version—the plot strands are all ingeniously brought to a traditionally happily-ever-after resolution. But Sondheim and Lapine want to remind us that happily-ever-after is fantasy, and that a wish fulfilled always comes at a price—worth it, maybe, but never painless.

The long second act in which the characters wander the forest, struggling with the consequences of their wishes, is the unconcealed point of Into the Woods. But while there is much good music and comedy in this section, you can feel the impatience of the audience—plenty of them were quite satisfied with the corny fake ending, and palpably regard this elaboration as a tiresome imposition (I understand the school-play version of the show simply drops Act Two). It isn’t enough to ruin Into the Woods, but many viewers would have been perfectly happy with happily-ever-after.

So anyway...

Monster-of-the-Week: …let’s make this triceratops skeleton come to life in Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb our Christmas Day MOTW…