Plot: a teenage girl develops an obsession with the group of people who murdered her mother, to the point where she falls in love with one of them after seeing him be kind to his dog. Behold the danger of improving your source material by adding backstories. The girl’s father hates those people for what they did, but it’s not like Mom was his one true one: to judge by his family reunions, he’s got six other daughters with six other mothers. Behold the danger of improving your source material by adding diversity for its own sake. The teenager’s beloved is a good bit older, but not terribly mature: he’s so addled by FOMO that he’s terrified of his island kingdom getting left behind in isolation, despite that island’s marketplace boasting a wildly multicultural array of people and products. Behold the danger of improving your source material by adding motivations from your studio’s last hit about an island people. (The wanderlust didn’t make much sense in Moana, either, since there was no need to go exploring once the sea blight had been cured, but never mind.) Once she gains access to her beloved’s world, our Little Mermaid sees a painting of fish on hooks, wonders if her kind are “only food for slaughter,” then rhymes that with, “But you were lonely underwater!” Behold the danger of improving your source material with new music. Her goal is to get her beloved to give her the kiss of true love without ever saying a word, but in order to dodge any possible criticism about such an arrangement, she is bewitched into forgetting her goal. Some may find this a satisfactory solution, others may say the dramatic takeback just points to the danger of trying to make a rom-com out of a fairy tale. But really, all this is quibbling: the real problem here is that the film looks and sounds terrible, at least in the screening I attended. The sunlight under the sea is less dim and watery than the sunlight above. The sound under the sea is weirdly echo-y, at least when people are singing — it's nice and clear when paper book pages rustle underwater. The famous wave crash behind Ariel as she hits her big note cuts to a shot revealing she is surrounded by calm waters. Her hair switches from free-flowing strands to thick dreadlocks, depending on whether or not the underwater CG animators are working on it. The list goes on, overwhelming star Halley Bailey’s winning performance. Part of that world of lazy remakes, alas. At least Sebastian the crab is still fun. (2023) — Matthew Lickona