The Little Mermaid (2023)

A Woman Needs a Man Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle ("I've Got Twenty!")

or 

Mermaids Aren't Real But Racism Sure Is.  

Disney's The Little Mermaid was a revelation when it came out in 1989. At the time, Disney had been in the doldrums, creatively and financially (hard to believe, I know—this was before they found a new creative voice and, if not having it, buying it). Oh, they'd experiment a bit half-heartedly and always with an eye to the budget, which would constrain the imagination or goals. And the Disney brain-trust, "The Nine Old Men" as those original brilliant animators were called, were one-by-one dying off.

 

Then, Jeffrey Katzenberg came in on the coat-tails of in-coming Disney CEO Michael Eisner. A head-strong Paramount exec who finally tired of that studio's inexhaustible ability to shoot itself in the foot in order to assuage middle management egos, Katzenberg skedaddled to Disney and determined to take it back to its glory days of being THE animation studio. Directors John Musker and Ron Clements had the idea of making an animated version of Hans Christian Anderson's "The Little Mermaid" (not knowing the studio had once considered doing that in 1935). A Broadway veteran now working at Disney, Howard Ashman—with composer Alan Menken, the two had a hit with their musical version of "Little Shop of Horrors"—was approached to help with structuring the story and songs, and, together, Ashman and Menken took a Broadway musical approach to the proposed film. The result of that work is legendary.

Now, with Disney recycling their past cartoon triumphs as live action films, eventually they had to revisit this one, the first of the Disney "renaissance" films. The 2023 "live" version of The Little Mermaid is as good as it can be, given that it couldn't possibly live up to its animated version; this was the problem with Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, and most of the others in this doubling-down effort. Live-action (even live-action enhanced by CGI) just can't live up to the pace of animation, so there are moments that drag and make you wish for a song to interrupt things.

As for those songs, they're the best thing about this version (although there are three new ones—by Menken and Lin-Manuel Miranda—that are good but can't compete) and produce moments that are positively goose-bumpy (one song—the giddy and murderous "Les Poissons" was dropped, perhaps wisely). One interesting aspect to this version is the choreography for the already-Oscar winning song "Under the Sea" was done by the Alvin Ailey dance troupe.

Anything new in the mix that's good? Well, I like that they've moved the locale to the West Indies, as opposed to colonial Europe. That's a breath of fresh air and certainly justifies the Caribbean rhythms in the songs. And, the casting, certainly (and we won't even address the initial internet bitching...which never made any sense to me). As Ariel, the mermaid who wants to get out of the pool, Halle Bailey is a real find. Exotic of features to seem truly otherworldly, she carries the entire movie on her shoulders and belts out the songs exquisitely, throwing her own spin on them and taking them to a higher level.

I can't even imagine the tortures she had to go through making this movie—the location work on water, the constantly moving underwater shots that had to be done in front of a green-screen, and the awkwardness of basically having to work only from the waist up and project joy and grace while doing it. That's tough duty for what is essentially a first feature starring role. You think there's pressure underwater? Try pulling something like that off!

In the role of Atlantica's crusty-as-coral-King Triton, Javier Bardem takes the too-familiar pater familias character from the cartoon and, as usual, slyly informs it with little subtle bits of business one doesn't expect and appreciates. Awkwafina is a fine substitute for Buddy Hackett as Ariel's squawking friend Scuttle, Daveed Diggs is just fine as crabby Sebastian (although the character design is a bit...off), and, hey, Art Malik gets to not play a villain after so many years! I just wish Jacob Tremblay (who is usually scary good!) had more to do in his fish part.

But, the piece de resistance is Melissa McCarthy's turn as the sea-witch Ursula—the part played by Pat Carroll with such venom in the original. McCarthy is a comic gem, who has too often settled on sub-par movies that she has troopered through trying to improve. Here, she's got a great part, a great song—"Poor Unfortunate Souls"—with an "Angela-Lansbury-nightmare" intensity, combined with a whip-saw sense of timing that's simply amazing. And give some credit to Jessica Alexander who manages to match it for Ursula's human guise.

Even the traditional Prince Charming chap is okay (Jonah Hauer-King), unthreateningly handsome in a bewildered sort of way, the way Disney likes them. And adapter David Magee has made sure that Ariel and the Prince at least share the dissatisfaction of living in royally oppressive households so they have something in common. Still didn't solve the issue of why Ariel just doesn't write what she needs to say after her voice-ectomy.

But, there's another issue that didn't come up with the original and that mostly has to do with timing. In an environment when we've had Brave and Frozen in the children's entertainment mix, isn't the old canard about "true love" and a "handsome prince" pretty old-hat? Sure, it seemed commonplace in the 1950's and any number of rom-coms still depend on it, and, yes, the 1989 version presented it unquestioningly. But, they could have changed it, challenged it, maybe nuanced it a bit more; after all, the 1989 cartoon changed the ending of Anderson's story where the mermaid didn't get the prince and died. Children would have been traumatized, of course. The tears would have flowed like rivers down the aisles, breaking like waves against the concession stands.

Speaking of concessions, I don't know why, given Triton's apparent powers, he couldn't make things a bit more even-keeled in the sacrificing department of the Ariel-Eric relationship. He can give his daughter legs, but can he also change the Prince into mer-Eric? How are the couple going to visit Atlantica on holidays? Why does she have to change? Why can't he? Her song says "Part of Your World" not "I'm diving in with both"...(what's the word?) "feet." A little parity would have been nice. A little less stalking of the human, and maybe a little less "once they find true love it'll all turn out all right"*.

 

No one believes THAT fairy-tale!

* It's what bothered me about the Wonder Woman films, too.

Nine

Mary Poppins Returns is great. But here's an earlier musical by its director Rob Marshall that stunk, despite a rich subject matter and some great stars. 

Written at the time of the film's foisting.

"How Do You Solve a Problem Like Fellini?"
or
"There Ought To Be Clowns (Don't Bother, They're Here)"

There is a great movie, I'm sure, to be made of the Tony Award winning musical Nine. But this isn't "it." Nor, I think, was "it" an intention for the production company to do so.

In fact, it is hard to determine what "it" is, and what "it" intends to do. Is it a musical adaptation of Fellini's 8 1/2, or of Fellini's life? Is it even an adaptation of the original musical, as there are far more songs left out of it than are in it?* Locations are changed, circumstances and motivations are sliced and diced. One wonders what was so wrong about a hailed musical confection that the late Anthony Minghella and Michael Tolkin (who wrote the script), current director Rob Marshall, and the producers seem to be running away from it.

They aren't the only ones, merely they slowest of the pack. Daniel Day-Lewis was a last minute first tier replacement for the more suitable Javier Bardem when Bardem walked off the project pleading "exhaustion"—but not exhausted enough to flee, evidently. Bardem makes very wise career choices. Nicole Kidman replaced Catherine Zeta-Jones after the producers wouldn't acomodate her demands to expand her part. One wonders why they'd balk about making any more changes for their Chicago Oscar-winner after making so many of their own.

But, truth be told, the thing is a sorry, sorry mess. Not true to its source, its inspiration, or even to itself, one reads the description of the original musical and wonders why it is not the movie. But one gets an inkling. Fellini's film, made about a creator's inability to create a harmonious chorus of the voices in his head, his muses, his collaborators and backers all clamoring for attention had a structure, a purpose and an approach. But it did not have a lift, a creative inspiration until Fellini made it about a director rather than a writer. Fellini had no trouble making it, letting his conscience and unconscious be his guide (or Guido, if you will). On the contrary, he was energized by it. His "film that got away" would not occur until a bit later in his career.

The creators of Nine saw it as about themselves, and the difficulty of achieving a vision. One sees the disconnect with the Fellini inspiration as soon as the musical Guido's obsession with the Folies Bergiere is brought to song. Folies Bergiere? Mama Mia! Where's the Circus? Fellini equals circus! Comprende? But, "Nine" the musical—not the film, that gets even worse—is glitz and spangles and presentation with a smattering of psychological insight embroidered in a mash-up (one can't call it a mixture) of half-inspired and un-inspired songs.

"Nine," the movie, is a whoring down of that concept. Big stars. Small ideas. A polyglot of a tribute to a movie it doesn't understand, and the Broadway production that the money-men didn't feel had enough pizzazz** to put keisters in the seats (Because nothing makes you want to "Fosse, Fosse, Fosse" and booty-shake like ennui and creative stagnation!***). So, we've got Day-Lewis (he's fine—not too believable, but at least he's not doing a John Huston imitation this time).**** We've got Nicole Kidman and Penélope Cruz (wonder what they had to talk about on-set?), Kate...Kate Hudson (??), and....Fergie?(!!). Then, to give it some ethnic legitimacy they throw in Sophia Loren***** and Miramax staples Judi Dench and Marion Cotillard. Cotillard is heart-breaking as the Giulietta Massina look-alike wife—played by Anouk Aimée in Fellini's film (she's even got Massina's brave smile down). Dench does fine by her number, silly and irrelevant as it is, but as if to gin up any excitement, they work over-time trying to make it entertaining. Cruz gets a sizzling number as director Guido Contini's mistress-played by Sandra Milo in the original film. Kidman plays Contini's past star Claudia (based on the Claudia Cardinale character in 8 1/2—which would have tied in with Zeta-Jones' participation, but goes back to the original inspiration, "ice queen" Anita Ekberg for Kidman's participation). Loren plays Contini's domineering Mamma, usually a grotesque in Fellini's films. Director Rob Marshall undercuts the material by over-cutting, editing all the momentum out of the music, which veers from worthwhile ("Be Italian" given a rip-roaring rendition by...give her credit, she's the best thing here...Fergie of "The Black Eyed Peas") to the filler ("Cinema Italiano" given sass by Kate Hudson, but shot and edited like an MTV version of the old '60's "Shindig!" program).

I was looking forward to this one, but very high expectations leave the biggest craters when they fall. Not a fan of musicals, Nine only confirmed why I've rarely enjoyed them, as they can be false and irrelevant to anything resembling life or the impulse to song that it might evoke.

This adaptation of an adaptation of a somewhat autobiographical work by the artist, even though titularly and musically adjusted for inflation, just isn't worth as much as the original. Artistically, it is bankrupt.

* Three new songs were written for it, all of them unmemorable—in a bid to score more Oscar nominations for The Weinstein Company which oversaw this sorry mess.

** Imagined conversation: "Y'know? Everybody's singing about their feelin's an' everything! There's not enough dancing with women with big bazooms, and Alfa Romeo's and Fiat's!! Know what I'm sayin'?" 

*** Although Fosse did make a musical based around a heart attack.

****...which reminds me, the last movie I've seen that ended (like Nine) with the director-figure saying "Action" was Clint Eastwood's White Hunter, Black Heart—where Eastwood was playing (and imitating) John Huston!

***** Did it occur to the makers that the only Italian in their film celebrating Italian cinema is Loren? And that she didn't work with Fellini?

Mary Poppins Returns

Impractically Perfect In Every Way
or
Wind's in the East, Mist Comin' In/Like Something is Brewin', About to Begin/Can't Put Me Finger On What Lies in Store/But I Feel What's To Happen All Happened Before...

Having experienced Walt Disney's Mary Poppins as a child back when it was released in theaters away away back in 1964 and having it seared into my memory as a favorite—even after an adult re-appraisal had me concluding that P.L.Travers iconic flying nanny was something of a bitch—I had many reservations going into Disney's Mary Poppins Returns. 

One should never do that. It's just bad form. It could preemptively spoil one's enjoyment of such things, even if said things are, by nature, sequels, given to expectations and reflections of the first. Prejudices. Better to walk in with the expectations of a child—"Tell me a story!" Take it from there. Put away childish things and preconceptions. Leave the past behind, even though there are traces of echo informing your opinion. Nostalgia is for sissies. Don't let the old influence the new and just (forgive me for using the phrase in regards to another Disney film) "let it go."

(Okay, enough hedging, how is it?) Terrific, actually. I'm not a fan of musicals, but when they're exceptionally well done and the songs have a reason for being there and play with the language, then I become a fan of them. And Mary Poppins Returns delivers. I know when I'm enchanted by a movie—a smile has appeared on my face—and I was flashing incisors throughout most of the movie for just the sheer brio and panache of it. I have minor picayunish quibbles—consigned to near the wrap-up—but I won't spend much time on them. Best to concentrate on what's good, and there's plenty.

The Songs—the filmmakers don't shy away from it, they know they have tough competition from such Sherman Brothers songs as "A Spoonful of Sugar," "Chim-Chim-Cher-ee," "Feed the Birds," "Stay Awake," and, of course, "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious." But they face it head on, not with an overture, but with the first song, the place-setter, featuring Lin-Manual Miranda's "leerie" (lamplighter) on the rounds turning off the gas-lights around London.

Director Rob Marshall (of Chicago and Into the Woods) stages this with lovely swooping camera movements that allow the eye to breathe a little while never distracting from the song, but the song is a gem, and just the first of extraordinarily tuneful melodies that have added complications and variations to the patterns, less repetition, with dexterously placed book-smart, syncopated lyrics by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman (with consultation from the surviving Sherman Brother, Richard M.). Maybe too dexterous, too complicated for wee folks to wrap their tonsils around. That may not be a bad thing, but might work against the songs becoming immediate "hummable" (that requirement for greatness) standards. It doesn't make them any less noteworthy, though, and there's precious little "filler" material amongst them.

The Plot—The story has Mary Poppins (an extraordinary Emily Blunt) returning to the Banks house at Cherry Lane at the time of "The Great Slump." The Banks children, Michael (Ben Whishaw) and Jane (Emily Mortimer) are now grown and in crisis. Michael still lives there with his three kids, Anabel (Pixie Davies), John (Nathanael Saleh) and Georgie (Joel Dawson), and trying to cope with recent death of his wife and the imminent foreclosure of the family home. Sister Jane is a constant presence helping with the children's care, even though in many ways they are now more grown up than their grieving father, a starving artist who has recently taken a clerk's job at the Fidelity Fiduciary Bank that his father worked for. The head of said bank is the scoundrelly William Wilkins (Colin Firth in slow burn mode) who is a grasping opportunist and has little good about him (save for some laudable anti-discriminatory hiring practices).

The kids are little adults, aware of the family crisis, and in need of a childhood, which Ms. Poppins is there to provide, but also to help Michael get through this rough patch, and help all heal with the grieving process, and not look to the past but embrace the present and the possibilities of tomorrow. Oh..SPOILER ALERT!

Grief is quite a mature theme for a kid's movie (as was the original's premise of the saving of Mr. Banks, who had lost the ability to be a father while handling the role of the bread-winner*). But, Michael, after a life of arrested development (way to go, Mary!) following his bliss sketching and letting his wife deal with the financial ramifications, is now at his wit's end taking an actual job in order to make ends meet, and providing for his family (minus one). Boo to the hoo. This puts a lot of pressure on poor Ben Whishaw to not make Michael a pathetic loser, but, the actor manages to make the character understandable and sympathetic, which shows how fine an actor Whishaw is.

And since we're on the subject: 

The Performances—Look, we all love Julie Andrews—even if you've never supported her movies—and her Mary Poppins is, indeed, practically perfect in ever way. But, give it up to Emily Blunt, her Mary is better, a bit more like the P.L.Travers conception, with less of the obviously loving looks in the eye, but more of the controlling, adroit, slightly conceited, but no less incandescent spirit that is Mary Poppins ("We're on the brink of an adventure, children. Don't spoil it with questions!"). Given her precedent, then she must be perfect in every way. Rest assured, she is, with occasionally surprising additions of sauciness. I'd hire her to look after my kids in a heart-beat.

How is Lin-Manuel Miranda?—he's a surprising choice to portray a cockney labourer, but does he have the charisma to pull it off? Oh, yeah. Miranda has that "gotta dance" enthusiasm that can go either way in one's affections, but the man is such a trooper, he's immediately ingratiating, and welcome every time he appears.

Universally, every performance is accomplished and twinkly, the kids not cloying, and actually endearing, Julie Walters' housekeeper is a stitch, the cameos by Meryl Streep (at one point, Miranda says "I can't quite place your accent..."), Angela Lansbury, and Dick Van Dyke are delightful, all in service to a marvelous entertainment.

Which leads to...

The Production—The staging and direction by Marshall is sumptuous, accomplished, but feels a bit elephantine, almost a bit like the difference between the original Mary Poppins and George Cukor's film of My Fair Lady (the poster displayed above even resembles Bob Peak's poster for that film) released around the same time.** I put that down to the editing, which was a bit snappier in Robert Stevenson's film, but also because computer animation allows for greater scrutiny of images, in contrast to the matte paintings of the original.*** That might account for the feeling of "lingering" in the film. This is merely a "quibble" on my part.

But, when it comes to the traditional animation, Marshall insisted on "old-school" with line-drawn animation for the "Royal Daulton China" sequence, which is seamless and is the best integration of live-action with cartoon since Disney first experimented with it in 1923. It is all-together great and leads to a Music Hall sequence that is delightfully presented and shows off Blunt's and Manuel's musical talents at full throttle. 

I had a big smile on my face throughout a large part of Mary Poppins Returns, the kind that I rarely get most times, but happens in those instances when  a movie not only transports me, but challenges me because it is so smart and accomplished, and where there's ample craftsmanship in every aspect, but it also evokes delight. 

There is so much sturm and drang in movies these days, that it is wonderful to see a good movie that is so sweet during the Holiday season. Makes me nostalgic for those special event movies that catered to the whole family in those times and where everyone would enjoy themselves...and the movie.

Walking out, I thought to myself that the only thing the original had that this one lacks is memory.

But, give it time. This one will become just as cherished and only be more appreciated with repeat viewings.

* Oh, this is just silly, but it makes me think of a mash-up of Mary Poppins with The Godfather where Mary visits Lake Tahoe to help Michael Corleone not lose his family while trying to protect them. 

** In that year's Oscar race, there was a bit of a controversy: Julie Andrews was nominated for Best Actress for Mary Poppins, but also nominated was Audrey Hepburn who was chosen by Warners President Jack Warner to play the role of Eliza Doolittle, which Andrews had originated on Broadway to great acclaim. The choice of Hepburn over Andrews was considered a great snub, but left Andrews available to do Poppins, her first film role.  When Oscar time rolled around, the Academy chose Andrews for Best Actress.

*** The masterful work of Peter Ellenshaw, whose work is acknowledged in the film.

Into the Woods

Not as Grim (as Grimm Can Be)
or
The Family That Slaps Together Raps Together

Rob Marshall's output as a director has been problematic. He managed to make a fully fleshed-out version of the stage schematics of Chicago, then followed up his multi-Oscar-winner by making a mess of Memoirs of a Geisha, then only managed to sporadically liven up a film version of Nine (but without evoking any ghosts of Fellini, on whose work the whole thing is based). One looked at the plans set photos for Into the Woods and wondered if Marshall was making it or Tim Burton.

However he got there, it was the right path, because Into the Woods, his adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's 1987 Grimm fairy tale mash-up may be his best movie ever after. Marshall's directorial touch post-Chicago has been mostly heavy-handed and cheerless, and only occasionally lightening up in musical moments. Here, the film doesn't flag whenever the music stops.

Blunt and Corden practice their baby-holding techniques

The "real world" of Into the Woods is a fairy tale land where anything is possible...in the confines of one village. There, various stories from the imaginations of The Brothers Grimm intersect to form one story of wishes coming true and going horribly (horribly) wrong and the resulting consequences. In the village is a baker and his wife (James Corden and Emily Blunt) who cannot conceive a child due to the curse of a witch (Meryl Streep) owing to the previous generation's actions. There is also a little girl (Lilla Crawford) in a red cape who is on her way to visit her invalid grandmother, a matriarchal family of women (Christine Baranski, Lucy Punch and Tammy Blanchard) who regularly abuse the runt of the litter (Anna Kendrick), a rather dull-witted farmer's son (Daniel Huttlestone), tasked by his mother (Tracey Ullman) with selling the family cow, and the sister of the baker (Mackenzie Mauzy) (abducted by that same witch) who is locked away in a tower with nothing to do but let her hair grow.

Lilla Crawford as "Red"

The story's machinations and complications take place in a nearby woods which are lovely, dark and Johnny Depp'd (he plays the Big...well, smallish...Bad Wolf), with a crowded thicket of swamps, quick-sand, dangerous cliffs, ghosts and spirited trees, crowding the path to the castle of the King who has two charming, handsome, and extraordinarily dramatic princes (Chris Pine and Billy Magnussen) who must have inherited the trait from their Mother's side.

Anna Kendrick as Cinderella

The music and songs are by Stephen Sondheim (slightly toned down by the Disney studio, which produced) who has a fine time mixing and matching rhyming schemes—but with a difference.  Most movie-goers experiencing musical fare (like...Disney...again) have their "tent-pole" songs (called that because they support the structure of the movie with key-points, like tent-poles, roughly one every 15 minutes) expressing emotions in stasis (or "this is what I'm feeling right now").  

"The woods are lovely, dark and Johnny Depp'd"

Sondheim goes a couple steps better as both song-writer and dramatist—his song's catalogue a character's change of emotion or realization, their thought processes more than their emotions, their motivations, not their feelings. Sondheim's songs travel, propelling the story and characters along, not stopping the show to get a song in, and the lyrics are so dexterous and nimble that, if anything, the pace increases, rather than slows for a musical "time-out."

Mauzy as Rapunzel "lets her hair down"

It is Marshall's best film to date—well cast and performed (everybody can sing...and well), nimbly paced and production-designed somewhere on the border between Burtonville and the Gilliam-verse.  It's fairy-tale land, but things can turn pretty Grimm (despite Disney's efforts to homogenize the material*)—one notices early on that there's a lot of face-slapping going between families. Things do not turn out happily ever after, and the consequences are irrevocable, despite some hocus-pocus, bovine resurrections and after-lives.  But, the through-line is the journey from life to myth, the passing of reality into legend, as it should be. Nothing down-beat about that.

Chris Pine does...some...Shatnering...as the Prince

Performances are uniformly excellent and done with verve, but standouts are Streep, Blunt, Depp and Pine (the "Agony" duet is a comic highlight), working with good material that is consistently entertaining and deep, adding extra dimension to the so-familiar words on pages, breathing life and giving voice to old chestnuts and bringing them to full bloom.

* For instance: the Wolf's song "Hello, Little Girl" has some of its more wicked aspects stripped from it, the princes' reprise of "Agony" (which makes them even more fickle) has been cut, and the ultimate fate of Rapunzel (who is given short shrift, anyway) is not even mentioned.  Sondheim did approve the changes (as he did with Burton's film of Sweeney Todd)