We got invited by Disney to see The Little Mermaid early. I'm gonna tell you right off the bat, I mean it's 100% if you've seen the animated version, it's pretty much versus pretty much the same movie brought to life. There are some differences, so I guess we're going to talk a little bit about that.
I mean there's no point to say that this is a spoiler-free or spoiler because if you saw the Little Mermaid animation, you've seen this movie too. I did because she had to go to her sister's graduation. I like I say it like that because I don't buy it. I'm like whatever, like whatever, but she had--she didn't come with us. But I'm gonna tell you right now, it doesn't matter. I mean, if everything we're about to say right now, I mean it doesn't matter when you've seen it if you've seen The Little Mermaid, you've seen it. You've seen it. There's only like little any little difference. It won't matter, to be honest. It's still a good, good-to-go season.
When they said they changed words, didn't notice. You didn't see the difference. Haley Bailey did a great job portraying Ariel. Melissa McCarthy, as the sea witch, is so over the top of the makeup and everything. That would have been, but Melissa did a fabulous job.
When I was a kid, I thought Ursula was based on a black woman, but they said no, it was based on a drag queen. I mean, a lot of drag queens' mannerisms are blessed are based on black women. Do you remember the eels? Ursula's ills? I like the eels in the cartoon, I like the eels in the cartoon better than I like the eels in the movie. In the movie, okay? I mean, the only reason why is because in the cartoon movie, they had more, they, they had lines, they spoke, and whatnot. In the movie, they don't, they're just there.
Eric, he looks like a cartoon-perfect Eric, but, but that was seen in the movie where he had assault like a solo song for him that is totally original, okay? I totally did not need that to not be an hour and 20 minutes. It didn't work. They didn't want it to be a frame for frame. It did not need to be two hours long. Yes, they could have shaved 20, 30 minutes out of it. It did not need to be.
But here the things that they did add to it were great, like Sebastian and Aquafina. Aquafina plays Scuttle, remember the seagulls? Scuttle was a boy in the animation. First of all, she's amazing. Aquafina was the comic relief in the cartoon, so that makes perfect. When I heard her voice, and I was like, oh, that's Aquafina, I was like, oh, I wonder how this is gonna go. Scuttle was one of the best things about that movie. There's a song called, and I know they released it, but there's a song in the new version called "Scuttlebutt" because it's old-timey slang. Slang, I didn't know that either, but when you hear the song, you get what scuttlebutt means. Okay, so Scuttle sings a song, called "Scuttlebutt" and that was obviously written by Manuel Miranda. Disney seems to love him.
We added in some original things to make it longer, but I was disappointed that we added all this original stuff, and we couldn't keep the dog on French Chef chasing Sebastian. What? That's not it. I love that they announced that some of the things that weren't going to be in this movie. The French Chef was one of the things that was in it, but she didn't see it, but I saw the French chef was there. He had no lines though. He had no. You saw him from behind. He doesn't say. No, there's no--they didn't want to show that scene.
Another thing that's not in the movie, like in the song "Poor Unfortunate Souls", is that song is there, the song is there, but there's a part of the song that's not included. "Your pretty face and don't forget the influence of body language", that was cut out. Oh, and because it's very sexual. It sent an image that you as a minor would have used your sexuality to get this guy to kiss you, so they took that out.
I can get behind this, and when I watched the movie, I didn't notice it. I was like, oh, it did? Okay. I was like I didn't think of it until after I already saw it, but so it didn't matter that that was taken out. It's only a subtle difference. Her friends were there to help her get her kiss, and they still lost. 'Kiss the girl' still happened. It's just there but the whole concept, remember, is to keep telling her, you're supposed to be getting kissed. So it keeps forgetting the thing that I think is interesting, though, because, in the cartoon, kind of one of the arguments for like the consensual aspect of Eric just 'kiss the girl' was that Ariel wanted it. She knew that she needed to have a kiss from Eric.
So she was trying in the animation, but so that it was consensual, but if now she doesn't know she's wanting to kiss, and now there's this "just kiss the girl" concept. Well, they specifically say because it's supposed to be that Eric obviously can't understand the animals them speaking. It's supposed to be that it's, you know, we're using nature just like before, but they specifically say we don't want Ariel to be able to hear what we're doing.
But they did a very good job casting Vanessa, the evil, the form that Ursula took to pretend to be the girl that saved Eric, Vanessa. They picked a very good Vanessa. She looked exactly like the cartoon version, really, because in the cartoon version, she looked like Ariel a little bit, but she looked like a version.
I called Prince Eric's Kingdom, the kingdom of diversity. It was like France, Louisiana, and French Creole. That's a mix between Jamaica. It felt like that because, in the movie, they said that his kingdom was an island. It was an island normalcy. 99% of what happened in the movie happened in the cartoon. There were some subtle differences. I'm not gonna tell, I'm not gonna tell you what happened, but there was a change that I appreciated. I liked it better in the live-action than I liked in the movie.
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