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*UPDATE* It is our usual practice to include our “Children Suitability” and “Parent Appeal” ratings for children and family films. However, there’s been a lot of happenings behind the scenes here at Worth it or Woke this week and I (James) dropped the ball on this one. I’ve now added it to our review of The Little Mermaid.

The Little Mermaid

Starring Halle Bailey, who is best known for her role in the Black-ish spin-off series, Grown-ish, The Little Mermaid peaks in the opening sequence of a tumultuous sea. From there, the movie slowly (and I mean slowly) swirls around a sinkhole of graphics as soulless as the computers in which they were generated as well as identity politics posing as creativity.

At this point, most of us have accepted that these live-action remakes are blatant money-grabbing nostalgia bait. What is impossible to understand is then, why does it seem like every change made, big or small, is the wrong choice? Will Smith as the Genie? Garbage. Photo-realistic lion king? Emotionally spayed and neutered. Everything about Peter Pan & Wendy? The slime oozing out from the bottom of an August garbage heap. So it is with 2023’s live-action remake of The Little Mermaid.

Remember the character and charm of Sebastian, Flounder, and Scuttle from the original? Well, they’ve been sacrificed to “photo-realism” and second-rate vocal performances, and they’re in good company because every cherished and tried comedic beat or emotionally impactful scene that you remember from the original has either had its head held under the water until the bubbles stopped or were axed completely, only to be replaced by sudden jarring bursts of sound and color so clearly staged on a set that you can practically see the matte painted backgrounds. Flotsam and Jestsom? Silent afterthoughts.The dinner scene that pits Sebastion against the cartoonishly sadistic French chef? It’s been replaced by a Caribbean-inspired marketplace filled with a mix of inexplicably white Americans and black Caribbeans, with just a smattering of Asians thrown in for good measure.

From the color palette and pale blue dress that Ariel wears to Melissa McCarthy’s bland and wooden-by-comparison digital cosplay of Pat Carroll’s iconic Ursula, everything about this shipwreck is a waterlogged and enervated simulacrum of the original. Even the destruction of Ariel’s cave is underwhelming and completely lacks the emotional impact of the original. It’s no small irony that the only actor who has anything resembling a standout emotional moment that connects on any level is Jessica Alexander, a relative unknown with a smattering of mostly one-off TV episodes to her credit, who briefly plays Ursula’s human alter-ego, Vanessa.

Veteran actor and Academy Award-winning Javier Bardem, who plays King Triton, definitively proves that he needs to stick to quietly menacing characters and that his out-of-place turn as Hector Valenti in last year’s Lyle Lyle Crocodile was not a one-time aberration. Not to be undone, Halle Bailey, who plays Ariel, is so far out of her depth that she might as well be treading water over the Mariana Trench.

With the lightest peppering of exceptions, Bailey’s performance consists of her doing her best (and failing) to either look innocent and naive or innocent and lost. The seasoned casting directors, Tiffany Little Canfield and Bernard Telsey must have been hungover the day that they decided to cast someone with all of the charisma of a sea cucumber in a role that requires the actress to silently emote for nearly half of the film.

Bardem, Bailey, and McCarthy aren’t alone. With the exception of the aforementioned Jessica Alexander, every performance from actors both seasoned and green feels on the level of a Disney theme park stage show featuring second-rate college theater majors in their first “big” summer stock role. This is undoubtedly due to a mixture of incompetence from director Rob Marshall and a whole lot of underwhelming and creatively dead animation from a staff with otherwise good credentials.

Seriously, the animation team from Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania must be sighing in relief to no longer be responsible for the year’s worst example of CGI in film. The underwater sequences are less than underwhelming, largely looking like a muted Windows screensaver almost brought to life, but not quite. The merpeople never look as though they are really underwater, and their movements (unless speedily swimming) appear as unnatural and poorly conceived as their performances.  Moreover, their overall design looks like it was based on a Barbie cartoon which is in jarring contrast to the underwater backdrop, which is bland, muted, and boring.

According to his IMDB page, this is screenwriter David Magee’s first solo outing, and it’s easy to see why. As each scene inexpertly slogs its way from obvious stage set to atrocious computer-generated trash, the audience is also treated to The Great Pacific Garbage Patch of unnatural-sounding dialogue and forced exposition dumps. Because there’s nothing that audiences want more in a reported $200 million spectacle than to watch two people, or merpeople, sit or float and puke up exposition all over them.

Furthermore, Magee completely drained the story of the original’s most powerful emotional hook, the 3-day time limit to get Eric to kiss Ariel. While the time limit is still there, for some inexplicable reason, Magee chose to magically MacGuffin it out of Ariel’s memory or ability to register its existence via an addendum to Ursula’s enchantment. This most horrible choice among horrible choices serves to put the emotional weight of the deadline squarely on the digital shoulders of her three animal sidekicks, none of which have the ability to emotionally engage the audience thanks to the attempted photo-realism of their design. As a result,  Ariel is relegated to being a secondary character who is only along for the ride, thinking that she has all of the time in the world.

Finally, we’ve come to the musical part of the review. For if there is something in this film that has a chance of being even remotely good if only by way of nostalgia, it has to be the iconic music. Wrong! No clam chowder for you! Not only are the songs that we all know and love performed with the same incompetence and lack of energy as the rest of this mess, but the new songs are bland and lack any sense of cohesion to the original score.

When the silt settles and the baked salmon cools, the 2023 live-action remake of The Little Mermaid is a seafood salad of poor performances, worse pacing, and creative bankruptcy that is better left on the sea floor. Do yourself a favor and rent a projector, a small sound system, and an inflatable projection screen and introduce your kids to the magic and wonder of the 1989 original.

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INAPPROPRIATE ELEMENTS FOR CHILDREN IN THE LITTLE MERMAID

• Ariel spends most of the movie in a fish scale sports bra. However, it’s fairly broad and by a mixture of God’s design and the costumers, it doesn’t reveal any cleavage.
• While the lyrics concerning women communicating via body language have been cut from Ursula’s “Poor Unfortunate Souls,” Melissa McCarthy still takes a moment to suggestively adjust her bosom in the scene.
• There are one or two moments (the shark chase scene in the opening and giant Ursula at the end) that the most sensitive of children might find to be too much
• Depending on your child’s age, they might be able to put together that none of King Triton’s daughters have the same mother.

WOKE ELEMENTS

• Let’s get the elephant seal out of the room. Of course, Ariel being race swapped could easily be assumed to be purely due to Disney’s self-imposed intersectional quota but, on the other hand,  it totally is. The fact that they spent $200 million just on production alone (not counting probably over $100 million in marketing efforts), but couldn’t find an actress who could act is a testament to their choice to put representation over quality.
• In the opening scene, the humans on the ship, instead of being lovable ruffians like in the cartoon, are aggressive and superstitious. Their first act is to try and harpoon an innocent merperson who ends up being an even more innocent dolphin.
  • This only sets the tone of the constant refrain from the merpeople, that humans are barbarians, and Eric, that his people are small-minded.
    • Even though, the superstitious rabble is absolutely correct about the existence of the Sea King and his power over the realm.
• King Triton is a manwhore who has seven children to seven different merwomen, all of whom naturally represent the most stereotypical physical features of the populations that the West most closely associates with the sea that they inhabit, making sure that diversity for the sake of diversity is even more artificially on display than the crap digital effects.
• Scuttle is a girl, because why not?
• Prince Eric is adopted. While this is not at all woke, the fact that he’s only adopted so that he can remain a white character yet have black parents and be based on an island predominantly populated by black people is. It manages to be both pandering and woke at the same time. Furthermore:
  • The kingdom has been changed from a European one to a more Caribbean one for the sole purpose of representation. However, it’s a complete mess because
    • A. the palace and royal garb are distinctly Eurocentric, as is the royal accent but the populous at large is ripped out of a bad Caribbean theme restaurant.
    • B. In a film that chooses to have photo-realistic talking fish and birds, it has no problem oddly including white people with a decidedly modern American accent on the island, as well as those of Asian descent, even though it repeatedly reminds us that the island is largely an isolationist country. More pandering nonsense. Either go for it or not. The juxtaposition is jarring and distracting.
• The human king is dead for two reasons:
  • As an excuse to put a woman/queen in charge, because patriarchy bad.
  • Because the patriarchy was literally bad. Apparently, the king is the one who shut the island off from the outside world and was against fraternizing with outsiders, and since we couldn’t possibly have a male ruler learn the error of his ways, he’s got to be dead.
• “I’m trying to reach out to other cultures so that we don’t get left behind.” The virtues of diversity are literally preached by Eric on more than one occasion. In fact, it turns out that diversity is the only thing that can save the flagging country.
• “They have no respect for the balance of the oceans.” Environmentalism is a regularly employed woke cudgel wielded against the audience.
  • In one scene, the king and his daughters can be seen sifting through the wreckage of a freshly wrecked ship and they complain about how damaging humans are to the coral reefs.
    • As a side note, here’s an article about how, despite the environmental alarmism that we had to put up with for years about the death of The Great Coral Reef, it’s actually thriving and, in areas in which it is still recovering, it is largely due to starfish eating the coral and not “global warming.”
• In two of the more ridiculous instances of wokeness over quality,
  • From the same group of people who celebrate WAP as “empowering,” “Kiss the Girl” has been changed from
    • “Yes, you want her / Look at her, you know you do / Possible she want you too, there is one way to ask her / It don’t take a word, not a single word / Go on and kiss the girl.” to
    • “Use your words, boy, and ask her / If the time is right and the time is tonight / Go on and kiss the girl.”
  • Ursula’s “Poor Unfortunate Souls” has had the section about men not wanting to listen to women and women using body language to get what they want removed. Never mind that Ursula is the obvious bad guy whose advice and recommendations are clearly not good ones. Which was the whole point of the original song.
    • And it wasn’t removed because it was too sexual, as is evidenced by the fact that McCartney suggestively adjusts her breasts in the scene.
• They made sure that Ursula’s human incarnation remained white and practically ripped the costume, hair, and overall look right out of the 1989 version.
• In this version, Eric is saved by Ariel ramming the ship into Ursula instead of the other way around, because you can’t have a man saving a strong independent woman in her own movie.

The post The Little Mermaid (2023) first appeared on Worth it or Woke.

Disclaimer: I recognize that some of my fellow conservatives continue to pay for Disney+ so that they have easy access to classic Disney content as well as a few other choice offerings, while others have sworn off Disney altogether. Were it not for the fact that I review movies and TV programs, I would not put any more money into the Disney coffers. For those of you who are still on the fence, allow me to provide the following link as evidence that you should cancel it immediately and hop on eBay to buy used copies of the classic stuff (that way Disney doesn’t make another dollar off of you). Here is Disney’s new Satanic program offering.

Peter Pan & Wendy

What if Wendy Darling was a selfish and disrespectful young lady who was great at everything, Peter Pan was a selfish jerk and borderline psychopath who regularly needed rescuing, and Tiger Lilly was a magic ninja? These are the questions (though I’m sure couched in woke-friendly language) that the writers and filmmakers must have asked themselves before storyboarding Wendy & almost no Peter Pan…I mean Peter Pan & Wendy.

In Peter Pan & Wendy, the usually brilliant Jude Law is dulled to tarnished copper-green, giving James T. Hook all of the charisma of the old angry guy in the checkout line at the grocery store. Whether it’s due to the inept direction of David Lowery or the weight of mediocre dialogue (also provided by Lowery), Law’s usual magnetism has been wiped away. Instead, he is unwilling or unable to commit to being either a genuinely sinister villain or an over-the-top one, and the result is a Captain Hook that mostly comes across as bored or mildly irritated.

He’s not helped by the humor vampire that is Jim Gaffigan’s Mr. Shmee. I love jokes about Subway and Hotpockets as much as the next guy, but who thought that this film needed a low-T albino mumbling third-rate dialogue with a 16th-rate English accent? There hasn’t been a worse accent performed on screen since Harrison Ford grumbled his way through K-19: The Widowmaker.

Gaffigan’s poor accent is only matched by his ineptitude as a performer. Everything from his bearing to his facial expressions screams (probably in his trademarked comedic whisper), “What am I doing here?” His performance is so bad that, without exaggeration, every moment that he is on screen, the viewer is jettisoned out of the film’s reality and slammed back into their own. If he doesn’t win the Razzie for Worst Supporting Actor this year, there is no justice in the world.

Another Disclaimer: For the next lambasting, please be reminded that Alexander Molony is a 16-year-old and not the little boy that he appears to be. Also, it gives me no pleasure to rip his performance to tatters. Finally, for those who would choose to excuse his performance due to his age, consider the fact that the actress who plays Wendy is a year younger and is the only performer worth a d@mn in the entire movie.

Not to be undone by Gaffigan’s clumsy performance, Alexander Molony’s portrayal of the titular swashbuckling adventurer, Peter Pan has all the dimension and charisma of a biannual tooth cleaning. No amount of clapping could bring his dead performance to life. This is just fine because his Peter Pan isn’t worth the effort.

This brings us to Ever Anderson’s Wendy Darling. While I hated the character, Anderson is seemingly the only performer in this film who is willing and capable of committing herself to her character. She is always present, and her instincts are pitch-perfect, elevating the south-of-mediocre material that she’s working with. This young lady has a bright future ahead of herself.

The rest of the performances range from tolerable to wooden, with no one given enough time to stand out one way or the other. The only exception would be Tiger Lilly’s Alyssa Wapanatâhk. She’s given just enough time to prove that, if middling filmmakers feel strongly enough about representation, they have no problem casting a block of wood in a role.

So what about the story? Peter Pan is a timeless classic, after all. Surely, there’s merit there. Not so much. The basic elements are all there: The Darlings live in turn-of-the-century London, Wendy doesn’t want to grow up, Neverland, etc. However, it’s all burdened by filmmakers who substitute creativity for diverse casting and modern Leftist talking points.

In Peter Pan & Wendy, Peter is a distant and lonely little boy who only cares about himself, barely noticing if someone under his charge has died or not. In fact, the Lost (not just) Boys are afraid of Peter, not daring to bring up topics that displease him. Much like those responsible for this dull and plodding film, Peter is a one-trick pony whose child-like creativity is limited to clashing swords with Captain Hook. It was even Peter’s selfishness that created Captain Hook (that’s not hyperbole or supposition), it’s canon in this film.

Peter is not alone in his unlikability, Wendy is a disrespectful and willful child who is nearly as selfish as Peter. In one of the opening scenes, she engages in childish behavior that is directly responsible for the destruction of a valuable piece of furniture. When her parents confront her about it, she blames her little brothers and then, full of attitude, she tells John and Michael that it is “every man for himself” as an explanation as to why.

This alone does not a selfish child make, however, the moment that she reaches Neverland, her much younger brothers are all but an afterthought to her. In one scene, we clearly hear them calling for her to “wait up” for them as she takes off flying. She hears them but flies even faster, increasing the distance between them. It’s only when the two are in mortal danger that she remembers that they exist.

In general, Peter Pan & Wendy is given no sense of scope. We never see what Peter’s life is like, or why anyone would possibly consider wanting to live in Neverland. The Lost (not just) Boys live in ruins and look malnourished, and, with the exception of Tinkerbell and her pixie dust MacGuffins, and the children’s first flight, there’s no magic or wonder in Neverland.

Sure, we’re told several times that Peter has had wonderful adventures and plays all of the time, but we’re never shown it once. It’s as though the movie was made by people who only read about childhood in books but never experienced one for themselves.

Unfortunately, there are only two positive things that I have to say about the film. The first is that, in the only thing approaching creativity exhibited by them, the writers added an intriguing dimension to Captain Hook’s backstory. It’s too bad that it was handled with skill equal to Joe Biden beatboxing.

The only other good thing about Peter Pan & Wendy is that the sets are unbelievably beautiful. The designers and dressers created such wonderfully detailed locales for this less-than-mediocre film, that it’s an absolute travesty. No detail was overlooked. Even Captain Hook’s plank was worn and used-looking. It is such a shame that such talent was wasted on such bilgewater.

INAPPROPRIATE ELEMENTS FOR CHILDREN IN PETER PAN & WENDY

Peter Pan & Wendy is rated PG, and it’s earned it.

• The prodigious violence is treated seriously, though without actual bloodshed, and the stakes often feel as though they are truly life or death.
• The scene with the crocodile is particularly harrowing and could easily frighten small children. There’s very little that is cartoonish about it. In fact, one of the pirates is eaten during the scene.

WOKE ELEMENTS

• The diversity casting is ridiculous and obvious. Every lost boy who is “diverse” is also distractingly bad, and that goes for Peter Pan.
  • Disney spent upwards of $200 million on this movie so don’t tell me that these children were the best that they could afford. They checked the right intersectional quota boxes, and that’s it. One of the Lost Boys was completely unintelligible. You can’t tell me that there was no one better.
    • On a bright note, they cast a boy with Down’s Syndrome as a Lost Boy which, in a better movie, could have been a really beautiful thing with interesting sociopolitical subtext.
      • Instead, in this film his character exists so that the filmmakers can pat themselves on the back.
• Feminism for the sake of feminism over narrative. This is really the film’s greatest weakness and it’s from this that most of the film falls apart.
  • Several of The Lost Boys are Lost Girls. It adds absolutely nothing to the narrative and is one of the many examples of diversity in lieu of creativity exhibited by this travesty’s filmmakers.
  • The film is set circa 1904, and Wendy has no maternal instincts but loves fighting with swords, and her “happy thought” is of having a career and dying alone and childless. You know, just like all them upper-class gals from 1900s England.
  • Wendy utters the line, “I don’t even know if I want to be a mother.” It’s so artificially inserted into the dialogue that it is clearly the writers’ words, not the character’s.
  • Tiger Lilly’s character is artificially shoehorned in with the obvious agenda of “rectifying” how she was portrayed in the original.
    • There’s no great chief. Instead, her grandmother runs the tribe…for reasons.
  • Every man in the film is either an evil pirate, a helpless child who needs to be rescued by Wendy or Tiger Lilly, or a father who isn’t much more than a grudging afterthought.
  • Wendy, Tiger Lilly, and Tinkerbell are the only heroes in the film. They each even save Peter.
    • The one time that Peter saves someone it is actually him just having some fun with the pirates. He never thinks once about actually saving those in danger. That’s left to Wendy and Tinkerbell.
  • Wendy is smart and capable in every way. She goes so far as to be able to successfully swordfight against two experienced pirates both twice her size at the same time and in close quarters.
  • Tiger Lilly has the ability to use magic and herbs to heal deadly wounds and she can also fight with two different types of melee weapons, one in each hand, like she’s Jackie Chan.
    • In contrast, Peter (who has spent several lifetimes sword fighting) is regularly disarmed and would have been defeated several times by a single man with a sword were it not for outside intervention. He’s also saved by Wendy during these moments.
  • Wendy discovers how great she is in order to move on to her next level of personal development while Peter has to humble himself and apologize for everything being his fault.
  • Peter barely notices that Tinkerbell is alive. Wendy points out their co-dependent relationship and Tinkerbell, instead of being the jealous sprite from every other iteration of the character, thanks Wendy for noticing that she’s a person.

FINAL THOUGHTS ABOUT PETER PAN & WENDY

When the pixie dust settles and the pirate ship’s anchor is secured, Peter Pan & Wendy will go on to be a footnote in the classic mythos. It’s weighed down with terrible performances, mediocre dialogue, and a story that has been butchered in the name of wokeness. If you want to watch something new that will entertain both young and old while not treating every male character like complete trash, check out The Super Mario Bros. Movie. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than this.

The post Peter Pan & Wendy first appeared on Worth it or Woke.

Stardust

The film follows the journey of Tristain Thorn, played by Charlie Cox, who must brave a series of challenges and dangers in order to win the heart of his true love, played by Danes. Along the way, he encounters a host of colorful and memorable characters, including a scheming sorceress, a fierce warrior, and a mysterious and powerful star.

One of the standout elements of Stardust is its production design and costumes, which are lavish and breathtaking. The film’s art direction and costume design truly bring the fantastical world of Stardust to life, immersing viewers in a fully realized and magical environment. The special effects are also top-notch, further enhancing the film’s immersive quality and adding to the overall sense of wonder and wonderment.

In addition to its action and adventure, Stardust also explores themes of love, loyalty, and self-discovery with depth and nuance. These themes are woven throughout the story, adding depth and emotional resonance to the film. The characters are well-developed and their relationships are depicted with care and authenticity, making it easy for viewers to become invested in their journey and root for them to succeed.

Overall, Stardust is a delightful and enchanting film that is sure to delight audiences of all ages. Whether you’re a fan of adventure or heartfelt romance, this film has something for men and women alike. The film’s stunning visuals and magical atmosphere make it a truly immersive and enjoyable cinematic experience, and its themes of love and self-discovery give it added depth and meaning. If you’re looking for a film that will transport you to another world and leave you feeling enchanted and uplifted, Stardust is definitely worth checking out.

WOKE ELEMENTS

There is a homosexual character shoehorned into the film. However, since it seems to be done out of a sense of comic relief, rather than, a Disney-like “not so secret” gay agenda, I only dinged the score a tiny bit. It’s also very brief…and very funny.

The post Stardust first appeared on Worth it or Woke.

Legend

Tim Curry and his make-up team turn in a genre-defining performance as Darkness, a classically styled devil or demon who wants to kill the embodiment of love and Light, a pair of mated unicorns, thereby giving himself dominion over the world. Unfortunately for him, the unicorns will only show themselves to those pure of heart, enter Cruise’s Jack and Sara’s Lili. Jack is a young forest-dwelling hermit, and Lili is a princess fascinated with him. In the name of true love, Jack (being pure of heart) decides to show Lili the unicorns.

Unbeknownst to Jack, Darkness has been waiting for just such an opportunity. A trap is set, tragedy ensues, and Jack must begin a quest to save the world and Lili from Darkness.

Filmed at the world’s second-largest soundstage, the 007 Soundstage in Buckinghamshire, England, Legend is rich with fantastic and magical visuals. There’s not a moment of screen time that isn’t full of captivating or beautiful imagery, and often both. Rob Bottin (The Thing, Twilight Zone: The Movie, Robocop, Total Recall, Game of Thrones) and his special make-up effects studio bring Darkness and the other creatures of Legend to life in a way not equaled until 15 years later when Weta Digital and Andy Serkis would delight audiences with 2001’s The Lord of The Rings, and its subsequent sequels.

Cruise puts forth, what is now known to be, his typically solid performance, but the real standouts in this film are Mia Sara and Tim Curry. I’ve always found Curry to be an interesting performer. For a diminutive guy (5′ 9″), he has a large and commanding presence. Left unchecked by lesser directors, he can easily be allowed to go too big and come across as melodramatic, but when underneath who knows how many pounds of Darkness makeup, this grand presence was precisely perfect for Legend. Between the exquisite prosthetics and Curry’s sensuality, he is absolutely entrancing in every scene.

You would never know that Legend was Mia’s film debut. She outshines Cruise, who already had movies like Taps and Risky Business under his belt, and easily stands toe to cloven hoof with Curry. After Legend and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Sara did some sporadic TV work and not much else. While it seems like she might have retired from acting in order to raise a family, and that is most definitely the right decision when possible, the buttery popcorn munchers of the world were most certainly robbed of some potential box office magic for it.

Woke Elements

None. The only agenda that the movie has is to tell an engaging story.

The post Legend first appeared on Worth it or Woke.