Disney fans this review has been long in the making and when I say long I mean i've waited since November 6th to watch this special as I don't live in America. Well i've finally seen it and I have alot of thoughts about it and please note this is also my first review of a play of any kind so this is new ground for me and so here is my review of The Little Mermaid Live! aka The Wonderful World of Disney Presents The Little Mermaid Live!.
Do I even need to describe what the plot of The Little Mermaid Live! is it's the exact same plot as the movie. I will give you my thoughts on the plot tho which are honestly it's not a bad story and it is one that does lend it self well enough to a live show and trust me i'll get more into that live element soon enough the issue is where as the film took the time to develop the relationship between the Ariel and Eric this special just feels like it's on fast forward and so there relationship doesn't feel believable and because of the special being on fast forward alot of key plot points just don't have the same effect as they did in the film.
Doing the singing for this special (this will make sense later in the review) is Auliʻi Cravalho as Ariel , Graham Phillips as Prince Eric , Queen Latifah as Ursula , Shaggy as Sebastian , John Stamos as Chef Louis , Amber Riley as Emcee , Dominique Kelley as Grimsby and Bagel as Max. The special does include a special introduction by the original and to date only voice of Ariel Jodi Benson which was honestly really cool to see.
Now the reason why I said singing instead of acting is because the special features footage from the animated film with all of the acting being done by the stars of the animated film and they only went live to do the musical numbers which is something I will be touching on again. As for what I thought of the I guess singing cast they were alright almost everyone in this live cast can hold a tune with perhaps the most surprising singer for me being Auliʻi Cravalho who if she wanted to could have a singing career she's that good.
Now going into this special I thought that either John Stamos or Shaggy would be the actor having the most fun. Boy was I wrong because the actor having the most fun is clearly Queen Latifah who is so clearly having a blast in this special she's honestly so much fun playing this character it honestly made me excited to see her next performance because I knew that she was going to be entertaining as all hell.
This special got a lot of mixed reviews ranging from negative to just OK and to be honest I can see where those people because the the freaking poster and the title is a lie. Since they have pre-recorded segments in this special which means it's not live at all so the title and the poster is a freaking lie and trust me i'm going to be getting more into this thing as the review goes on because I have a lot to say about it.
For some really strange reason they chose to have the vast majority of this live special be the animated movie. That there for means that the whole thing is a freaking lie because when you here the name The Little Mermaid Live you expect the whole of The Little Mermaid to be performed live not just the songs and it's a shame as well because the actors they did get are honestly really good actors.
It would be like if it was announced that there doing a live special based on James Cameron's Avatar and then all of it is just the movie except for a few scenes. You'd feel cheated right well that's how and apparently many others felt as well even more so when they have pre-recorded segments for a few songs and what's worse is they actually could have done the whole thing live if they wanted to because they actually have done a Little Mermaid musical so people know that they can do it.
Now to the specials credit it does get alot more things right then it does wrong but that makes it hurt all the more when it does something wrong. I will admit that I did like the live sets they looked just like the animated movie it was uncanny and the same thing goes for the costumes yes they weren't as detailed or as high a quality as they would in a feature film but for a live special the costumes looked really good.
Also being really good was the choreography which was done by Nick Florez and RJ Durell and i;m guessing that they didn't have alot of time since alot of the songs aren't that long. However given the time that they do have they craft something that is truly magical like in the "Part of Your World" segment they have Auliʻi Cravalho sore through the air effortlessly I honestly hope that these two are given more work in the future and more time to actually show of what they can really do.
Is there any point in my saying who wrote the songs because there just using the songs from the movie and the musical. Yeah i'm not kidding "Her Voice" and "If Only" were songs added to the musical so we know that the producers of this have at least payed attention to the musical and so again I have to wonder why didn't they make this thing fully live. As for the songs themselves these versions aren't sung that bad altho John Stamos can't sing and that's all I can really say about the songs because of the fact they are the same songs from the movie.
Overall this is a special that is a mixed bag for me since while there are some talented singers and the sets are indeed impressive. There's also some pretty bad singers and the whole idea of doing this thing half animated as well as what they did to Flounder in the live segments are more then enough to put anyone of re-watching this special myself included and so the special gets a 5 out of 10 from me and yeah you can find this now on Disney+ for some reason.