If Disney insists on regurgitating its classics, at least we can hope future retreads such as "Lilo and Stitch" do it as effectively as "The Little Mermaid" does.
Unlike many of these "live action" (there's still plenty of animation) remakes of animated masterpieces, there are reasons to revisit "The Little Mermaid" that don't have to do with Disney's bottom line.
For starters, that creepy "Les Poissons" song, in which a mad chef tries to cook winsome, singing creatures, has been excised. And the masochism of the 1989 adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's story — in which title character Ariel basically gives up everything to smooch with the dullest character on screen — has become a more satisfying resolution that honors the story but brings it into the 21st century.
Fans will recognize most of this "Mermaid": Rebellious Ariel (Halle Bailey) chafes under the rules of dad King Triton (Javier Bardem). She spies pirates on a ship (the movie spends too much time with them), one of whom she falls for.
He's Prince Eric, who romances her after she saves him from a shipwreck. But, in a fishy take on "Romeo and Juliet," he's from the land and she's from the sea, so things can't work out until Ariel's evil aunt Ursula (Melissa McCarthy) promises she can stay on land if the prince falls in love with her in three days — something Ursula then does everything she can to prevent from happening.
One thing that's almost inevitably disappointing about these remakes is that musical sequences that originally had the freedom to do just about anything, because they were drawn by imaginative craftspeople, became leaden attempts to recapture that magic (see, for instance, the difference between the Busby Berkeley marvels of the original "Be Our Guest" and the tedious Emma Watson "Beauty and the Beast"). That's not the case here, where director Rob Marshall ("Into the Woods") — with an assist from members of the Alvin Ailey Dance Company — finds ingenious ways to make the lively "Under the Sea" every bit as inventive and entertaining as the original.
"Under the Sea" is sung by original "Hamilton" actor Daveed Diggs, who supplies the voice of Ariel's crab pal, Sebastian. He's terrific, but the MVP of this "Mermaid" is the bad guy — who's almost always the most fun in Disney classics.
McCarthy goes back in time for her fresh take on Ursula, using a mid-Atlantic accent (which, for perhaps the first time ever, makes sense because she's in the middle of an ocean that might be the Atlantic) and bringing the villain to life with doses of Bette Davis carnality and Ruth Gordon weirdness. Pat Carroll's performance in the original is an all-timer, but McCarthy makes the role her own. Even her groan-y puns ("You're a prawn in my little game") are fun.
