Come on, the Little Mermaid live action CG animals are looking good

Here’s one controversial take on Disney’s new live-action remake of The little mermaid: Despite all the bitchingthe CG animals actually don’t look that bad.

Make no mistake I don’t think they look Good, especially compared to the original film. Far from it! But in the actual film, they don’t look as repellent as in some trailers. Most of the clips released for promotional purposes focused on recreating scenes from the animated classic as closely as possible, which means inserting realistic-looking fish, Sebastian the crab, and other creatures in moments where they primarily react to the human (and mermaid) characters . And realistically rendered animals just don’t have the same impressive facial expressions as their cartoon counterparts.

Seeing how a normal, realistic crab reacts to a yearning song isn’t particularly interesting visually. But watching a realistic crab scurry around trying to keep up with walking humans while frantically waving its tiny claws to get Ariel’s attention – it’s actually hilarious on screen. The 2023 Little Mermaid feels like this close to realize how funny it looks when a real person talks to a crab or a fish and expects an answer. When director Rob Marshall and the animation team surrender to this absurdity and how ridiculous their sea creatures look, it works surprisingly well.

Image: Disney

The film works because of these interactions. Some of the larger set pieces, like the performance of “Under the Sea,” don’t come across as well as the funnier moments, because the focus is on a group of animals dancing around without facial expressions as they enjoy it, making their demeanor seem stilted and forced . In this version of the story, the big musical number looks like a high school biology lesson on the subject parts of a cell. It turns out that when sea creatures don’t have expressive faces, they kinda look like this organelles.

That’s the reason for the live action Lion King looked so bad: they were all CG animals, and there was nothing to fight against for contrast. Seeing their stilted, expressionless animal faces as they endure great tragedy and revival felt like watching a nature documentary with a voice by Donald Glover. But the combination of these animals with humans is indeed comedic gold.

It is not clear whether these scenes in The little mermaid are intentionally hilarious or are just a side effect of the photorealistic animals. But the realism is played up for laughs enough times that it feels like the former. Javier Bardem’s Triton bending down for a serious heart-to-heart conversation with a crab is wonderful. Ditto for the scene where Flounder gasps and flops onto the deck of a ship while trying to say something to Ariel until Sebastian, who doesn’t have time to watch him other This headstrong young person just pushes him off the boat and back into the water. Scuttle also has her moments, making loud, obnoxious seagull noises and generally flapping around and getting in the way like seagulls do.

Everything somehow works in its own weird way. The live-action version doesn’t have the beautiful art of the 1989 original. And the animals aren’t as expressive as modern audiences would expect from an animated film — or even live-action movies like this one Sonic the Hedgehog or Alvin and the Chipmunks, where the animal companions are more cartoonish and therefore capable of great, expressive emotions. But instead of trying to chase that look, the filmmakers got behind the new one Little Mermaid have developed their own way of making talking animal companions. As with so many things, their approach isn’t all that catastrophic as vociferous internet backlash makes it seem.

The little mermaid is out now.