Little Mermaid makes a $95.5m box office splash

This image released by Disney shows Jonah Hauer-King as Prince Eric, left, and Halle Bailey as Ariel in "The Little Mermaid." (Disney via AP)

The Little Mermaid made US moviegoers want to be under the sea on Memorial Day weekend.

Disney’s live-action remake of its 1989 animated classic The Little Mermaid easily outswam the competition, bringing in $95.5 million on 4320 screens in North America, according to studio estimates on Sunday.

Audiences have flocked to The Little Mermaid in spite of a few sad reviews.

Halle Bailey might be a lovely presence and possess a superb voice, but photorealistic fins, animals and environments do not make Disney fairy tales more enchanting on their own.

The problem is that the live-action films have prioritised nostalgia and familiarity over compelling visual storytelling. They try to recreate beats and shots from their animated predecessors, defiantly ignoring the possibility that certain musical sequences and choices were enchanting and vibrant because they were animated, not in spite of it.

There was, in the 1989 film, a sparkling awe to everything — the underwater castle, the mermaids, Eric’s ship, even Ariel’s bright red hair. Combined with the wonderful songs and lyrics by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, it’s not hard to understand why it helped fuel a Disney Animation renaissance.

Anyone who has gone through the recent Disney’s live-action library would be right to approach The Little Mermaid with caution. Still, there’s excitement as the camera takes us underwater to give us our first glimpse of the mermaids — even after a somewhat ominous quote from Hans Christian Anderson that begins the movie (“But a mermaid has no tears, and therefore she suffers much more”). You can’t help but be hopeful.

But the first mermaid that comes into focus doesn’t so much evoke wonder as it does a flashback of Ben Stiller’s merman in “Zoolander”.

The technology is better, sure, but the result is about the same. Worse, as we spend more time with them, following Ariel’s sisters as they gather around their father King Triton (Javier Bardem), it’s hard to shake a distinctly uncanny valley feeling. It’s like gazing in on a roundtable of AI supermodels with fins.

For all its pizazz, everything about this Little Mermaid is just more muted. Miranda’s new songs are odd, too, and don’t seem to fit.

Visibility is a problem too. Sometimes The Little Mermaid’s underwater sequences just look too underwater.

Things are cloudy and dull and hard to see, once again probably in the name of authenticity, but straining to see what Marshall and the scores of VFX teams have laboured on for years is not a pleasant experience.

This could be a projection issue — I wasn’t in an especially high-tech theatre with colour enhancing upgrades. But that also means anyone without access to things like Dolby Vision around the world will have this issue, too.

When Sebastian brings out the most colourful fish he can find for the Under the Sea number, you even start to empathise with Ariel a little bit. It is the exact opposite of the Avatar: The Way of Water experience.

The Little Mermaid, a Walt Disney Co release, is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association for “action/peril and some scary images”.

Running time: 135 minutes. Two stars out of four. Parental guidance suggested. — AP