What Happened to 'The Little Mermaid'?

The cries of anti-feminism still swirling around the original The Little Mermaid, released in 1989, seem to misunderstand that Ariel (voiced marvelously by Jodi Benson) is a young woman fueled by boundless curiosity. Her exploratory spirit and desire for adventure on the surface world finds an outlet in Prince Eric, but he’s hardly the cause or impetus of her curiosity. In the 2023 live-action update, Halle Bailey gets it; she foregrounds Ariel’s sweetness but also maintains her desire to face the unknown, the two sides of her personality stitched together with vitality and charm. It all comes through in her singing voice, which has a clarity of emotion in its range that is beautiful. But Bailey is, unfortunately, completely failed by the dull, misguided production around her. As the studio has done with other live-action remakes, Disney betrays its own lack of imagination and an essential misreading of what made its original children’s fare such a joy to audiences in the first place.