It's another live-action Disney remake (spoilers below for a 34 year old movie and some minor tweaks to the same).

I have Opinions about those. In many cases, the attempts at a degree of photorealism with the animated characters utterly fails, as the expressiveness and animation of the original format is lost, without any apparent benefit of realism, merely bringing them closer to the uncanny valley. The musical numbers are dull and joyless, as is the cinematography (if I am using that term right - what I mean is the picture you are looking at is less colorful and less bright and engaging). Attempts to make the film conform to current socio-political fashion often result in superfluous changes that disrupt the characterization or the verisimilitude of the story, or immersion-breaking casting choices.

The Little Mermaid, is, to a degree, guilty of all of the above.

But...

It's not bad.

I am grading on a curve here, but my initial takeaway is that it falls only short of The Jungle Book next to the other Disney live-action remakes I have watched (Beauty and the Beast, Maleficent, Aladdin, Lion King). I didn't sit there hating it, or wishing I was elsewhere the whole time. I rolled my eyes, but did not feel any contempt at whomever I heard clapping when the Sea Witch is killed. Maybe it's just that the messaging they are attempting to insert is not so offensive or moralistic (or perhaps the ineptitude of the effort dulls the impact). Or hell, maybe I have just become numb to the unoriginality of modern cinema. I did watch the latest Transformers right before this one, and if ever there is a cinematic equivalent of Three Stooges style anesthesia (i.e. a mallet to the skull), it would be that film. The most racist, preferring-to-look-at-white-people, viewer on the planet could not help finding Halle Bailey's features a delight after spending two hours looking at the ill-formed visages of the (as always, excessively featured) human leads of "Rise of the Beasts".

That said, there are Problems with the Little Mermaid.
First of all, the run time is a bit longer than the cartoon, and it's generally all useless filler. We saw the cartoon, we know the story. We know they didn't need the crap they added. Some of it was well-intentioned, such as attempting to draw more parallels between Ariel & Eric, but the execution is spotty. Does it really contribute much to our understanding of the characters to learn that Eric has his own room full of junk he has collected as part of his interest in far-off places that his surviving parent disapproves of? Does having them bond over their mutual interest in exploration make their falling in love over the course of two days more plausible? Of course not. Either you will roll your eyes and go with it, or you will agree that silence is, in fact, a trait to be prized in women above all others, so no wonder Eric falls so fast, so that new stuff is superfluous. They try to do some world-building, but for the most part, stick to the exact same story, which means those efforts either amount to nothing, or else raise new questions.

One example is the whole conflict between the undersea and human worlds. In the original, Triton just didn't know or trust the humans. His characterization of them as "spineless, savage, harpooning, fish-eaters" is basically just generalizations. But the first humans we see in this version are throwing harpoons at dolphins, because they think they are mermaids. Eric stops them, but by pointing out that their targets are only dolphins, which implies that he might have considered a mermaid a valid target. Meanwhile, the Queen, his mother, is absolutely opposed to maritime activity, including even overseas trade (and as an island nation, that means all foreign trade), because she believes that the powers that be of the ocean are out to get them and actively destroying their ships and eroding their land out from under them. And Ariel's mother, it turns out, was actually killed by humans, though we don't learn the circumstances. This is like, the basis for actual enmity. Triton is not just parochial or over-protective, he is reacting to a genuine threat!

Meanwhile, the Queen fussing over Eric going on sea voyages makes little sense for the reasons given, when there are much better reasons, like, having actual duties he can do in the government, instead of sailing a ship like dozens or more other people can do. Like, we learned in third grade about Prince Enrique of Portugal, aka Henry the Navigator, who never captained a ship in his life, but made major contributions to his country's naval power and explorations. This should not be a difficult case to make to Eric without what sounds like superstitious twaddle.

As far as the racial stuff goes... as with Wheel of Time, the problem is not that they cast a black actor in the lead role, it is the comparative lack of other black actors. Triton is played by a literal European, yet among his daughters are a pair of black girls, and two or three Asians of various flavors, and at least two blondes. Why not just have Djimon Hounsou reprise his role from Aquaman? The sisters have lines in two scenes, and while we get names for all of them, their lack of relevance to the story, in addition to explaining why we didn't get their names in the cartoon, means we forget those names five minutes after they are off the screen. Eric's mother, the Queen, is also black, while Eric is white. They mention he was adopted, but why? Why not cast a white actor for the Queen, or a black actor for Eric? Why did we even need the queen, when the cartoon did fine without her? Royal princes often had their own homes and households, even as juveniles. You don't need to see his parent. The idea of a Caribbean nation where the settlers from Africa and from Europe have achieved a level of harmony and equality (almost certainly at the expense of the Indians ) as implied in Eric's kingdom, is actually interesting, but nothing comes of it. The queen and what we see of her kingdom is basically filler that turns out not to be necessary. Speaking of racial casting with regard to atrocious fantasy Amazon adaptations, I can't help but think that, as with Arondir and Bronwyn in "Rings of Power", Ariel and Eric were deliberately cast as an interracial couple to conflate the opposition to interspecies relationships with the bigotry against interracial pairings. Once again, the problem with opposition to dating/marrying/boinking other races is that they are still human and there is no substantial differences between them. You can't say the same thing when one party has legs or the Gift of Death and the other does not.

That all being said, Bailey is perfectly adequate as an actor, and unlike the CGI characters or her most common male scene partners, she moves her face almost enough to match her animated self. She also seems to be a good singer, with the caveat that at times during "Part of Your World" the singing seems to aim more at showing her vocal power than in making music, which is a particular pet peeve of mine. Another amusing bit is when she is singing the coda while watching Eric being rescued by his fellow humans, her facial expression and movement have a definite predatory vibe that would make it easy to recut the footage as that of a stalker or horror movie villain.

The original music is rather forgettable and extraneous. There is a song by Eric about how much he wants to find the girl who saved him, which he performs with a kind of manic energy that is distracting. Ariel has a song about acclimating to life on land that doesn't really add much, and both only serve to pad the run time. Scuttle also delivers the news of Eric's engagement in a horrible rap.

As far as the songs returning from the cartoon, except for the overdoing some parts, Bailey nails "Part of Your World" and where the song is reprised, it's not bad either. "Under the Sea" is generally good, but feels a bit lifeless compared to the cartoon. One interesting thing is to have Ariel doing the backing vocals, but they got rid of the instrumental effects and a lot of the humorous visual easter eggs are omitted. During the instrumental portion, where in the cartoon, Flounder approaches Ariel to draw her off to see the statue he retrieved, instead we get an extended sort-of dance sequence featuring sea creatures too realistic to be amusing, but acting too choreographed to look real, where the music suddenly has a Latin flavor, instead of its normal Creole feel. Melissa McCarthy does fine with Ursula's song, "Le Poisson" sung by a chef as he violently prepares an array of sea food to the horror and disgust of the observing Sebastian, is omitted, and "Kiss the Girl" has minor changes to the lyrics and the intermediary dialogue, and Sebastian is backed by Scuttle and Flounder instead of a chorus.

Which brings me to another thing. The makers of this movie seems to have taken seriously all the snark about consent issues over the years. That's the only explanation for a number of otherwise pointless changes. Most obviously is in the lyrics to "Kiss the Girl". Instead of "there is one way to ask her..." they are now "use your words, boy, and ask her..." Ursula also makes Ariel forget about the time limit and the condition of the kiss, and when she is setting the terms of their bargain, phrases the loss of her voice differently. On its own, it's something of an improvement, as, rather than making it seem like the voice is something she is charging just to be a dick, Ursula includes it as a consequence of the transformation to a human, stating that she will lose all the special properties of a mermaid, including her voice along with her tail and ability to breathe underwater. She also says, regarding the need to win Eric's affections that it would not be fair with the voice. This, and other dialogue elsewhere, makes it explicit that Ariel is not simply a talented vocalist, but that her voice has magical powers!

The implication of how the loss of Ariel's voice is presented plus the lyrics regarding consent, despite the seeming intention to make everything aboveboard and consensual, only serves to highlight the implication that Eric is actually under a compulsion from hearing her voice when she rescued him from the shipwreck! It also suggests that Ariel is made to forget Ursula's conditions for the Watsonian purpose of making Ursula's win easier, but for the Doylist purpose of removing the implication that ARIEL is the victim of consent issues, that her pursuit of Eric in the original was not fully consenting, because of the Sea Witch imposing a deadline and penalties for not kissing him. It's a fairy tale about a teenager with a crush, who needs to get to first base, with no tongue required. No matter how you slice it, there is no rape in the final version of the 1989 film and no need to adjust this one to head off a set of bad faith criticisms.

Also, during the song, instead of Sebastian subliminally inducing Eric to guess Ariel's real name for her to confirm, Ariel is the one to tell him through a highly contrived method (of pointing to the constellation Eric has already named as "Aries" and then violating his bodily autonomy to touch his mouth without permission and interfere with his pronunciation of Aries until it sounds something vaguely approximating "Ariel" ). In the original version, this reinforced Sebastian's ability to subliminally conveny ideas to Eric in this moment, making the whole "kiss the girl" gambit possible. In this, removing Sebastian's part undermines that, but that just might be the intention, vis a vis the film's obsession with consent.

A final issue with political correctness or SJW issues is that while Ursual dies in the same manner, the actor is different, as Ariel slithers onto a ship and jerks the wheel so it impales the Sea Witch much less visibly than in the cartoon. No real reason, and much less plausibly, that Ariel has figured out how to precisely aim a ship the first time she touches a tiller after observing it done once before. In the original cartoon, having Eric steer the ship into Ursula was the payoff of his established nautical prowess, redeeming his people in the eyes of Triton and rewarding Ariel's saving of his life earlier in the story. In this one, it appears to be in service to the delusion that Ariel is somehow weakened by Eric doing it. Speaking of his nautical prowess, in both versions, Eric is shown working side by side with the sailors on his ship in the opening. In the cartoon, one of them compliments Eric's skills, by expressing surprise he has never heard of King Triton, "I thought every good sailor knew about him." Eric has been doing a good enough job that to an experienced seaman, he passes for one of the guys. Boom, done. In the live action version, there is much more footage and an over-long argument with Grimsby about his activities, which are in service to Eric being a different kind of leader, instead of one who remains aloof from his subordinates. This is A. pointless, as centuries of practical experience through tradition suggests that aloofness is the better way to maintain discipline and responsive command in high-danger situations and B. turns Eric from being a natural sailor who does it for love and talent for the job, to a posturing dilettante affecting a working man's activities for the moral high ground in a political argument. This is the problem with most script changes to these things, and with most modern adaptations in general - they don't change enough that it matters, and all it does is undermine the picture painted by the original version. And that really sums up the problems with The Little Mermaid.

Basically, the cartoon is not as long, is more fun and makes more sense, despite the active efforts of the live-action version to exceed the cartoon in the latter category. And you don't have to put the kids in the car or herd them past the candy counter if you're going to watch the cartoon. But if you have to watch a live action remake, and you can't get "The Jungle Book", "The Little Mermaid" is your best bet, being more bland and dumb than toxic and malicious.