The Little Mermaid (2023)

Director: Rob Marshall

Cast: Halle Bailey, Jonah Hauer-King, Daveed Diggs, Awkwafina

Have I seen it Before: So, here’s the thing. I saw this in the theater. Twice. Why? Perfectly reasonable question, and we’ll get to that in a minute.

Did I Like It: It may not matter if I like it or not. By and large, I do. Bailey has the perfect combination of charisma and curiosity to effectively sell herself as the youngest princess of the ocean. If you have a problem with her, I’ll have to leave you to quietly contemplate your reasons. I might be urged to say that the amount of computer animation needed to make the ocean come alive and resemble a 35-year-old cartoon doesn’t really make this all that different from the original. The “live-action remake” moniker for some of these Disney films can only go so far, right?

Given that I’ve seen it twice, I have found myself lazily singing or humming several of the film’s songs. I can tell you right now that every one of those songs were also found in the original. Even as I write this, I find the rhythm of my typing occasionally syncs up with “Under the Sea.” If you put a gun to my head, I wouldn’t be able to remember any of the new songs. They aren’t offensive; they merely blend. That is, aside for “Scuttlebutt.” A rap duet with Sebastian (Diggs) and Scuttle (Awkwafina) which seems specifically designed to annoy. Such a total tonal misstep, I’ve been reasonably sure that the guy who directed Cats (2019) had somehow once again been let loose on a big-budget film. I was visibly shocked to learn Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote the new songs and am now forced to believe his intent was to annoy with “Scuttlebutt.”

Lora, the avowed Little Mermaid fan in our house indicated she preferred this film to the original, owing in no small part to the fact that Ariel’s agency—noticeably missing from the animated version—is given narrative weight, with King Triton (Javier Bardem, looking a bit like he might have shot all of his scenes before being properly caffeinated for the day) eventually saying, “You shouldn’t have had to lose your voice to be heard.” It’s a nice thought, and hard to dismiss.

But, yes: How did I come to see this twice? My niece, “still four,” as she would describe herself, wanted to go see it, and as Uncle Weird Little Movie Guy™, I was more than willing to sit through it again to be part of a relative’s first trip to the theater. Now, we can all wrap ourselves in our cynicism about Disney’s crass money grab in repackaging things we’ve already seen. We can look dourly upon the occasionally dodgy CGI (Sebastian’s eyes are fascinating, but often unsettling), and decide that the whole thing looks like the lighting department were out getting Bardem’s coffee. We live in cynical times, especially when it comes to our art. I get that, but when Niece saw the tableau of Ariel’s cave of treasures, she exclaimed “Wow!” with a complete lack of artifice. You can’t argue with that kind of a review.

By the same token, when she came in with the one-two punch in the films last half an hour—after our haul of snacks had run dry—with first a question (“When will this movie be over?”) and then finally a proclamation (“I have been sitting in this chair for so long!”), you can’t argue with that review, either. There was no reason to expand this one from the trim 83 minutes of the original two 135 minutes here. Your audience has spoken, Disney. The audience is here for these live action remakes, but expanding them beyond any normal snack arrangement, or the reasonable attention span of a 4-year-old, you’ve got problems.

Maybe if you had cut out “Scuttlebutt…”

Hamilton (2020)

Director: Thomas Kail*

Cast: Lin-Manuel Miranda, Leslie Odom Jr., Phillipa Soo, Daveed Diggs

Have I Seen it Before: Well that’s a heck of a question in this particular case. I had heard snippets of the soundtrack during its cultural ascension during the far-flung era of 2016. I immediately bought the soundtrack album the day after the cast offered a special announcement of hope when then Vice President-elect Mike Pence attended a show with his daughter. Then President-elect Trump called it—and I’m paraphrasing—the worst thing to happen to a politician in a theater. Which… Well, I’ve read “Our American Cousin,” so the least I could do here was get the album.

Anyway. Loved the soundtrack from that moment. Saw the travelling company production (one of three, if I’m not mistaken) that came through my town.

The Hamilton Mixtape is also in regular rotation on my Apple Music app.

But my wife, she’s the real Hamilfan.

Did I Like It: I would struggle to come up with any piece of art created since the year 2000 that is more of a work of breathtaking brilliance from every angle under which it can be observed. Its simplest, most wide-angle description is a story of two men. One is trying to get the other to be more like him and not throw away his shot. The other is trying to get the first guy to be more like him and wait for it. By the time they’re finally listening to each other, it destroys them.

I could go into each and every song in detail, but they’ve been written about to death. I live for the type-A numbers where Hamilton keeps writing like it’s a psychological defect, for reasons. I’m less into the songs about being a parent, because I’m not one. Every note is brilliant and beautiful, and that’s not even counting each The West Wing reference that Miranda uses to make sure I’m paying attention.

So, there can’t possibly be anything to dislike in this accelerated concert film of several performances in June 2016. You know, before everything happened. You get the original Broadway cast, when that was an astonishingly difficult ticket to procure when they were all still performing the play. There’s a different energy to the performance here, though. At first, I worried that this might have been recorded late in the tenure of this cast, and they were too comfortable with the material. They were rushing it. I thought they may have been trying to get the material into a theatrical running time**, but then realized that the play and the movie are the same length. The intermission is the only thing pared down. Then I realized that this was seeing the real interaction of live theater. This is as close as many of us will get to the Richard Rodgers theater. What more can you expect from what is essentially a concert film.

And yet, there is something missing here. It isn’t the film’s fault; a camera would never be able to fully communicate this aspect of the Hamilton experience. The center of the stage is constantly in motion, a Lazy Susan (ironically enough) of theater. To see it live, it is a mesmerizing display of precision timing and walking backwards. Here, there are several moments that eschew that brilliance in favor of closer shots, and even from the wider shots the choreography doesn’t appear to be the delicate balancing act that it really is.

When it comes right down to it, in order to really experience this thing, you’ll have to go to the theater.

…when theaters are a thing again.

*Pretty much throws the auteur theory into question, doesn’t it? Even though there are a plethora of splendid moving parts in orbit of this piece of theater, is anyone willing to say that Lin-Manuel Miranda is not the author of what we all watched on Disney+? 

**Get this! Typing the phrase “how long” into Google will autofill into “How long is Hamilton?” The internet still can surprise me.