The little Mermaid (PG, 135 minutes)
Verdict: Book now for half term
While most of Disney’s live-action remakes have sunk without a hitch (some haven’t even hit theaters), the lavish new take on the cartoon classic The Little Mermaid has already made a huge splash.
Flippers were gushing about Disney’s decision to cast mixed-race pop star Halle Bailey as their originally white mermaid. That decision is more than justified – for all the best reasons. Bailey is absolutely sensational as Ariel. A star is born.
The story is the same – a watered-down retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s cruel fairy tale. In defiance of her father, King Triton (Javier Bardem), Ariel forms a forbidden fascination with all things human. This reaches new heights when she saves the human prince Eric (Jonah Hauer-King) from a shipwreck and, in time-honored tradition, succumbs to a star-crossed love at first sight.
Make a Faustian pact with her evil Aunt Ursula (Melissa McCarthy) in which Ariel agrees to trade her voice and “siren song” for three days ashore. If Prince Eric doesn’t deliver a true love’s kiss in that time, Ariel is doomed.
It goes without saying that Disney’s animation is amazing. You see every penny of that reported $250 million budget (more than Titanic’s) on screen.
While most of Disney’s live-action remakes have sunk without a hitch (some haven’t even hit theaters), the lavish new take on the cartoon classic The Little Mermaid has already made a huge splash.
The story is the same – a watered-down retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s cruel fairy tale
You’ll have to pinch yourself to remember that the cast isn’t actually swimming around underwater.
Plus, director Rob Marshall (Chicago) knows his way around a big musical number – the Busby Berkeley-inspired Under The Sea is Disney’s best live-action set piece since Beauty And The Beast’s Be Our Guest, in 2017.
And yet . . . if you watch the original 2D cartoon again you will find the real Disney magic. The 1989 hit was the last Disney feature to be drawn entirely by hand, but that technologically more basic style generated an inspiring flexibility of imagination and artistry. Compare Sebastian the Crab’s wonderfully fluid expressions in that movie to the new, super-high-definition computer-generated Sebastian (voiced by Daveed Diggs).
The latter feels cornered by the urge to make it as authentically crab-like as possible, but to what end? Does Disney think we’re flocking to these movies because we want to see some extremely photorealistic fish? No, it’s to have our clams warmed up by characters we care about.
Thankfully, the voice cast, including Awkwafina (as Scuttle the gannet) and Jacob Tremblay (as Flounder, the no-longer-cute yellow fish), bring these somewhat chilly computer shields to life.
Melissa McCarthy’s screenhugging Ursula, half witch, half octopus, might have you squirming with delight
However, and perhaps fitting for a live-action movie, it’s the people who steal the show.
Melissa McCarthy’s screenhugging Ursula, half witch, half octopus, might have you squirming with delight. British stage star Noma Dumezweni brings gravitas and a bit of mature acting to the new role of Prince Eric’s adoptive mother.
And Javier Bardem could squeeze a furtive man’s tear from the heart of the most stony male viewer, as his king teaches Triton to let go of his youngest daughter.
Yet the film is Bailey’s, which combines an irresistible, natural star presence with a sublimely strong pipe. Her spine-chilling song Part Of Your World drew spontaneous applause at the film’s UK premiere, while Prince Eric’s new song, Wild Uncharted Waters, provided a much-needed toilet break. A square-jawed Hauer-King may look good, but he’s as floppy as his (often wet) white shirt.
The new Little Mermaid is not a classic, but it is a reliable snack. . . or rather party, given that it’s nearly an hour longer than the original.
Surely no child or adult really wants an inflated 135 minutes when a zingy 83 minutes would suffice?
My name is happy (15, 82 min)
Judgment: A story of remarkable resilience
Judgement: ***
Many little girls dream of becoming a pop star. For 19-year-old Mutlu Kaya, her reality TV fairytale turned into a nightmare. Plucked from her traditional Kurdish community, she reached the finals of the equivalent of Turkey’s Got Talent only to be shot in the head by a man whose marriage proposal she had rejected.
That tragic event is strongly foreshadowed in this special documentary that shows how femicide is so shockingly common in Turkey (last year 392 women were murdered) that Mutlu’s own sister was also subsequently shot and killed by a jealous ex-boyfriend – an army. officer.
However, Mutlu survived – albeit with a bullet to her brain and years of painful rehabilitation ahead of her.
Plus, she’s (partially and poignantly) regained her voice and is using it to fight for justice. Her name, ‘Mutlu’, means ‘happy’ in Turkish – an irony she is well aware of.
There’s no denying it’s a tough, intimate, and painful watch. Like Mutlu’s own father, who confesses that he can hardly bear to visit his handicapped daughter, the temptation is great to look away.
But filmmakers Nick Read and Ayse Toprak make sure it’s also inspiring and patiently powerful.
Not quite fleshed out as it could be, but Mutlu’s resilience is remarkable. Its recent reinvention as an online sensation with over 2 million followers makes you feel like TikTok is at least good for something.
Sigourney’s garden troubles
Master Gardener (15, 111 min, rating: **) stars Sigourney Weaver as the imperious chatelaine of a beautiful colonial garden. I wish the movie was more closely tied to her character’s story on the sidelines.
Instead, we get a gruff, flawed, and oddly mannered parable of male redemption from Taxi Driver screenwriter Paul Schrader.
Joel Edgerton delivers an intensely studied turn as the emotionally stunted head gardener in the Deep South, whose white supremacist past surfaces when he forms an (entirely unconvincing) attachment to a new, mixed-race young apprentice (Quintessa Swindell).
The atmosphere is enticing at first, but as the violence sets in, this doesn’t become the movie you naturally expect or desire – a stiff, stilted drama.
You may think you fell asleep and woke up in the early noughties watching Hypnotic (15, 94 min, **), a ridiculously contrived sci-fi thriller that, to quote Blackadder, squirms like a twisty thing. Ben Affleck is the cop on the hunt for his little girl’s kidnapper, William Fichtner is his ghostly suspect, and Alice Braga is a sultry tarot reader who offers cryptic insights.
No spoilers for what lies ahead in this Inception-lite mind-bender, except to say that the fun of Robert Rodriguez’s smart-boot caper lies in the increasingly tiresome goose chase, not the destination.
Who would have thought that the best of the rest this week would be Sisu (15.88 min, ****)? This tight, gory, English-language film is set in the last days of the Second World War. As the Nazis strike a scorched-earth retreat from Finland, they encounter a legendary ex-Commando stubbornly trudging (with his dog) in the opposite direction.
To say a lot of bloody action ensues would be a wild understatement. Picture John Wick in a gunfight in a ketchup factory.
However, as Jorma Tommila’s veteran dispatches legions of Nazis single-handedly, the absurd splatter is realized with such inventive vibrancy that the experience is almost cathartic.
4 crackers from Cannes Brian Viner
The 76th Cannes Film Festival produced a lot of goodies. I loved Firebrand (***), an intense drama about a sick, choleric Henry VIII (Jude Law) and his sixth wife, the pious young Catherine Parr (Alicia Vikander). Tudor scholars will choke on their mead at some brutal moments of historical revisionism, but it’s daring material from Brazilian director Karim Ainouz.
Another age-gap marriage appears in the excellent May December (****), between Gracie (Julianne Moore) and the much younger Joe (Charles Melton). They caused an almighty scandal after they fell in love when he was just 13 and she was 36, after which she was imprisoned as a pedophile.
Based on a real-life case, director Todd Haynes cleverly studies the pair, years after the scandal, through the eyes of an actress (Natalie Portman) who arrives to see what makes Gracie tick before playing her in a movie. . It’s very nicely done.
Anatomy Of A Fall (****) is a great thriller that ends up being the best Crown Court episode you’ve ever seen. Mostly in English, it is about a German writer (the brilliant Sandra Huller) who is accused of murdering her French husband, with their blind son as key witness.
Huller also stars in the best film I saw, the German-language The Zone Of Interest (*****), about the domestic life of the Auschwitz commander. Loosely based on a novel by Martin Amis, and although news of his death broke just after the screening, it won’t be sentimental if this brilliant, chilling film, from British director Jonathan Glazer, wins the coveted Palme d’Or wins. .