The Little Mermaid

While neither as desperate nor as tragic as Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale source, Rob Marshall's live action The Little Mermaid does manage to capture a similar sense of longing - one that echoes beyond the confines of the frustrated, courtly love story that sits at the centre of the film. Marshall's remake, written by David Magee, tips its hand with its photorealistic menageries and gargantuan length (135 minutes to the 1989 animated film's 83): this is a feature designed to appeal to the parents who sat through John Musker and Ron Clements' original Disney princess pitch, and want to impart it to their own children. The House of Mouse used to accomplish this self-perpetuating hold on preadolescent imagination by periodically releasing their vaulted classics to cinemas, allowing a new audience to be swept up in the heavily merchandised stories of America's deathless mass media conglomerate. So while streaming (and home video before it) has effectively rendered this strategy obsolete, it has also allowed the Walt Disney Company to pump hundreds of millions of dollars into the blockbuster re-imaginings that might tempt an audience back into theatres for an unburnished, first-run haul.

Whatever riches The Little Mermaid ends up claiming for its own subaqueous grotto, the film itself is a significant step-up from recent regurgitations of the Disney Renaissance. Unlike Guy Ritchie's pantomime Aladdin or Bill Condon's karaoke Beauty and the Beast, Mermaid has, in Halle Bailey, an actress and performer skilled enough to transition from playing a moment to singing about it. A feat accomplished - if behind the scenes clips are to be believed - whilst perched on top of human beings clad in blue screen suits acting as stones. It helps Bailey that her mermaid, Ariel, is unusually forthright for a Disney princess. She chases after her wants, making ill-advised and potentially ruinous sacrifices rather than just letting everything happen around her. Ariel doesn't just participate in her story then, she continuously generates it. The character consistently making risky decisions based on desire and, thanks to tweaks made to the previous telling, physically striking back at her slinking tormentor. So where does longing play a part in this obviously triumphant film? Rather than have our thwarted heroine melt away into sea spume, it is her father, Javier Bardem's King Triton, who must contend with heart break. His youngest child grows up and moves away, leaving his world behind. The solace for this weeping monarch, and the blubbering parents in the audience, is that they have seen Ariel, the daughter, tested and transformed from a scheming teenager into a young woman radiant enough to win the adulation of strangers.