SHE WALKS LIKE ME
my six-year-old self and I bawl madly through the new Little Mermaid
All right, lest you think I’m a crazed fangirl without critical faculties (a reasonable assumption in certain respects) I’m going to get the imperfections out of the way first. I was right to be suspicious of the casting of Melissa McCarthy as Ursula, because try as she might, the lady cannot embody Sexy OR Evil. She’s trying, she’s trying her damndest, and she’s got the voice down, but her face doesn’t move! She does not claim or embody the character, and since Ursula is the embodiment of shameless-embodiment, that is a damn shame. Her tentacles are incredibly alluring, however. If only McCarthy had let herself go, let herself become Ursula, rather than trying to imitate animated Ursula. Ursula revels in being all that a woman is forbidden to be, so seeing someone palpably hold back while attempting to play her is dispiriting.
Now let’s talk about why I spent so much of this movie convulsed with sobs. Point the first: no film has captured my formative imagination and consciousness like Disney’s The Little Mermaid, which I saw in the theater the day it premiered and which my cousins and I watched over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over ad nauseum. Reentering that world on the big screen made my heart soar. The last time I watched it was in 2010 for grad school, with those same cousins: I was writing a 20-page Jungian analysis of it for my thesis. My musical based on the original Andersen version, Never Having Seen a Bird, dominated years of my life and would never have existed without Disney’s adaptation. This film opens with an Andersen quote! They get major points for that.
But you won’t be surprised to learn if you didn’t already know that my own retelling focuses heavily on a realistic portrayal of the Mermaid’s body when she’s newly human, which is to say, she’s disabled. I did not walk into that theater expecting the creators to recognize this at all, but they did. They actually did. She falls. She trips. She walks with a gait that I never see portrayed in film, and I swear my 6-year-old self was right there in the seat next to me practically shouting into my ear, “She walks like me. She walks like me! SHE WALKS LIKE ME!” Cue uncontrollable crying for seriously probably 20 minutes, much, I assume, to the puzzlement to the sweet woman and her cute little daughter in my row. There’s even a scene where she tries on sexy/pretty high-heeled boots she can’t walk in, just like me, tears tears tears tears tears tears tears.
I’m afraid my six-year-old self is unshakable in the assertion that Halle Bailey is a real mermaid, and so I must state this indisputable fact. Sure, she has legs for premieres and photo shoots and the like, because she’s only got her mermaid tail in water, like in Splash. But every mer-citizen in this film demanded scuba gear of its creators because they had to hold auditions at the bottom of the ocean floor. That’s just the way it is. I don’t make the rules, even if it sounds like I might have had a hand in these rules.
Akwafina as Scuttle is hilarious, but I’m afraid she’s done no favors by Lin-Manuel Miranda’s ego. I was already skeptical of the whole idea of adding songs to the truly magnificent point-perfect rhymes of Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, and I rolled my eyes when Eric sang his boring boring ballad. But the rap song between Scuttle and Sebastian was just stupid. Dude, we get it, you can family-friendly-rap, everybody already knows that, you don’t have to try to bring back the dubious rap-song-in-the-middle-of-a-movie trend of early-90’s Hollywood family faire. I felt insulted, honestly, and it took me out of an otherwise glorious film for its duration.
But! All the things they fixed! First of all, they make a damn good case for Eric and Ariel being an honest-to-goodness beyond-just-looks match, though I really couldn’t blame either of them for running off together based on looks, as both of them are somethin’ else and then some, hotness wise. “Kiss the Girl”’s most problematic lyric, in which the crab Sebastian croons, “Possible she wants you too / there is one way to ask her”, meaning grab her without warning ‘cause that’s how it’s done, is changed to, “Possible she wants you too / use your words, boy, and ask her.” A little forced-sounding, but I applaud the intent. Most satisfyingly, though, and not forced at all, they heal the asshole statement that has been bothering me for almost as long as I’ve been alive. When animated Prince Eric finds out Ariel’s name, he says, “Ariel? Well, that’s…kinda pretty.” Infuriating.
But THIS prince, the really hot one with the dimples and phenomenal ass — I can’t help it, some serious Female Gaze shit goin’ on in this movie — says, “Ariel? Well that’s a beautiful name.”
(There’s a possibility I might have said, “Oh brilliant!” out loud.)
I have nothing intelligent to say about Javier Bardem because he’s just fucking mythically gorgeous and regal and I’m not complaining about the fact that his King Tritonesque chest was covered by sensible armor, it probably would be, so I’m not lamenting that, it’s just a data point, and, and. His relationship with Ariel and the true fatherly sacrifice it is for him to allow her the freedom to live as she wants to is poignantly underscored in this version. I cried again at the end.
I really can’t say how well the whole postcolonial attempt worked. I need someone more knowledgable about trade in the Carribbean than I to confirm that any of the Business Talk back at the castle made one lick of sense, if in fact it did. Prince Eric’s background certainly didn’t: as a child he was orphaned by a shipwreck and rescued by the king and queen (of where? We see him pointing it out to Ariel on an old map but it’s never specified) and he’s raised as a prince to be a king because everybody knows that monarchical protocol goes out the window where there are morals involved. Sigh. Why couldn’t he just be a prince that’s unsatisfied with his lot? Anyway I’ve got a musical for you that I think deals with this better. Though my prince turns out to be gay and in love with his court jester but he only finds this out after he fools around with the disabled mermaid who gets her voice back through her first orgasm.
I digress.
There’s no way I could possibly critique this movie as strictly-an-adult-watching-it-now, so I cannot and will not ever be able to say if I broadly “recommend” it. For me, it was a two-hour profound experience of Jungian integration. I don’t know what it would be for you. But I’d certainly be curious to know, if you do go see it! If you have even a modicom of interest, catch it on the big screen for the mindblowing visuals which are actual ecstasy to behold. Oh, and yes, I also cried at “Part of Your World” and its reprise. Halle Bailey is Ariel. That’s the other thing my six-year-old self kept repeating, getting more and more excited each time: “Look I knew it! She’s real. She’s real! Ariel is real!”
