“The Little Mermaid Live!” Review

“The Little Mermaid Live!” premiered on ABC on Tuesday, November 5th, to mixed reviews and less than lived to expectations.

In “The Little Mermaid Live!”, it follows the main story but follows more to the musical aspect in the original film — now a main focus, blending with the original Disney classic with the Broadway musical including such songs as “If Only”.

However, in spite of the additional songs, the story fell to lackluster at best, as they relied on the original movie’s animation far too much and only briefly cut to the performing actors when it came for the singing portion. To add further disappointment many of the actors struggled with their notes, leaving the songs as poor unfortunate souls themselves.

The Sebastian costume especially among all other designs was poor, so far off from the original that you couldn’t even tell who Shaggy played.

Fortunately, the stage design, choreography, and effects were both steady and stellar. Queen Latifah, too, did wonderful with the her too few appearances. Yet otherwise, this musical was not very good; it definitely didn’t live up to the expectations, but wasn’t a painful eyesore either. Personally, I wouldn’t recommend giving this musical a watch, but if you go in with low expectations, you’ll more than likely still manage to find a couple silver linings.