The Little Mermaid was one of the best live action remakes, as it adds components to the original story that make it worthwhile. However, weird looking CGI, Awkwafina and the style of these Disney live action remakes, have this movie feeling bloated but still a fairly fun experience.

The story follows Ariel (Halle Bailey), a mermaid who longs to be among the people of the surface. Her father, King Triton (Javier Bardem) demands that Ariel stays under the sea with her best friend Flounder (Jacob Tremblay), her assistant Sebastian (Daveed Diggs) and Scuttle the Seagull (Awkwafina). However she is drawn to the surface by the love of her life, Prince Eric (Jonah Hauer-King) and the wonders of the surface world. The dynamic of ‘fish out of water’ is there – really true love and finding where you belong in the world are all themes that are explored by our main characters.

The best part of the movie was the performance of Ariel by Bailey. The singing ability, the charisma and flair that she brings to the performance truly makes the movie what it is. The highlights are when she is talking or singing or has the ability to flex her acting muscles and take control of the movie. The performance from Melissa McCarthy as Ursula was also a standout performance, and the scenes with both her and Ariel were the best parts of the movie. 

The singing and dance scenes were also very fun, as they were full of color, life and great vocal performances. The recreation of under the sea and a part of your world were fabulous and were the best parts of the movie. The care into each and every one of the vocal performances outside of one song were great and adapted to screen very well.

However, not every musical number nor scene looked good. Awkwafina and her rap song within the movie were some of the most painful 2 minutes that I have ever had to go through. The song was unnecessary and added nothing to the story and stole screen time from characters and stories that were actually interesting. Every scene with Scuttle was worse because Scuttle was there and the disappearance of Scuttle from the film would have made for a welcome site.

A lot of the scenes underwater looked very strange, as the hair floating and moving looked unnatural in the movie. Flounder within the film also looked very strange and was scary to look at throughout the film. This caused Flounder to lose a lot of the charm that he had in the original and for it to go away for the most part. The CGI looked good for the most part, but King Triton looked awkward throughout the entire movie and his performance was very flat.

All in all, the movie was not a terrible time and I did enjoy it for the most part, however it is still unnecessary to be made because of how good the original is. If you need a mermaid kick, just watch the original and save yourself the two and a half hours that this movie takes to tell the same story.