The Little Mermaid (Rob Marshall, May 26, 2023) Movie • Page 4

This is exactly what happened to us when I tried to take my kids to see the Lion King remake a few years ago. I have no idea what the actual runtime of that movie was, but it felt like three hours. I had to walk my daughter around the theater because I couldn't leave my son alone - he was also bored but he's more of a stubborn completest where he'll mostly always finish watching something and then say that it was boring.

These CGI remakes of cartoons should absolutely shoot for keeping the runtimes pretty much the same.

 

I don't get it. What are they adding to these to pad out the runtime so badly?

 

I honestly don't remember, but I just looked it up and the runtime for the original Lion King was 88 minutes, and the runtime for the 2019 remake was 118 minutes. Beauty and The Beast is 84 min & 129(!) minutes.

I remember the runtimes for the Disney cartoons being around or under the hour-and-a-half mark, which I think is good for kids that age.

 

It could've been at least 15 min shorter without those painful and uninspired Lin-Manuel Miranda songs.

"Wild Uncharted Waters" sounds like he had to turn it in the next day and had an AI write it.

 

Adding runtime is so strange because you'd think they would want a shorter movie. Shorter can mean cheaper and you can show it more times per screen.

 

I always assumed those lean and mean runtimes on the animated movies back in the 90's was at least partially a budget thing.

 

I was looking for that while watching and my oh my is it a strange affair. Yes, they added in like three or four songs that weren’t in the original, however they also took out two original songs so two of those new songs essentially replace the runtime of the others, and one of the new songs plays over a pre-existing montage from the original so it doesn’t really lengthen the film. The only one that really pads the runtime is the superfluous Eric song that absolutely does not need to be there and is completely unmemorable. A day later and I couldn’t even begin to tell you the melody. Just him walking around wailing about thinking about the girl who saved his life or whatever.

So the real padding comes from the original scenes themselves. Every single scene from the animated film has something that makes it slightly longer here. Maybe a few lines, more often than not the dialogue is slowed way the hell down, and the dramatic paaaaauuuuuses between lines oh my god. They really go out of their way in an attempt to give this more narrative and dramatic heft and it’s all in service of a kind of silly attempt to modernize Eric’s character, actually. Because he’s basically a non-personality in the animated film, here they’re taking every opportunity they can to give him motive. It works to a degree, I suppose, in that he’s not just a feckless guy who happens to be there at the right place and right time seemingly every time, but also…uhhh, I dunno, who cares? Lol. They also bother here to add scenes between Ariel and Eric to establish an actual relationship and attraction between them based on their love for exploring other worlds and Ariel’s knowledge of the sea, etc. so I guess that’s all well and good or whatever. It really is just taking the original scenes and draaaaaaagging them out. We had to be like forty, forty-five minutes in and Ariel still hadn’t gotten her legs. That’s when the thought oh my god this is going to be a really long movie fully sunk in.

Javier Bardem was sleepwalking through this thing. Dude felt completely checked out. Melissa McCarthy, however, was fucking incredible. She inhabited the role entirely and seemed to be the only person in the entire cast to really understand what movie she was in. I do think Halle Bailey did a good job though and there were times where she sounded weirdly like Jodi Benson.

 

Oh and also they introduced a “plot device” here that was ultimately pointless? After Ariel gets her legs, the film cuts back to Ursula who tells her eels, Flotsam and Jetsam, that they need not worry about Ariel convincing Eric to fall in love with her because she added a trick into the potion that would cause Ariel to forget entirely that she’s supposed to get Eric to kiss her within three days. So you hear that and think “oh okay so they’re going to do something with this new thing” and then no, they just don’t. They have Sebastian mention it one time when he realizes “oh no, Ursula must have made you forget” because they need someone to remind the audience of this totally irrelevant plot device, and that’s it. It adds nothing else to the plot and goes nowhere, so…why is it in here? It left me feeling later like they’d come up with some new plot twist and then, as they continued writing, they forgot they put it in there, then remembered it later, shrugged, and just went about their business. There were some bizarre little changes here and there like that.

Oh and, yes, I am going to go ahead and agree about Lin Manuel Miranda. It’s with this movie that I have officially reached Lin Manuel Miranda fatigue where every song sounds the same because he’s really good at one thing and so he just keeps doing that one thing and I am ready for Disney to please find someone else.

 

Man this is so boring lol