www.broadwayworld.com: Last night, November 5 , The Wonderful World of Disney presented The Little Mermaid Live! The production honored the 30th anniversary of the beloved animated classic with a never-before-seen hybrid format that will take viewers on a magical adventure under the sea as live musical performances by a star-studded cast are interwoven into the broadcast of the original feature film.
6 comments:
The day this show aired was the first time I saw any of the promotional material. When I saw it, I literally thought it had to be a joke. I was really unsurpassed about how cheesy it ended up looking, This article seems to think that the only relatively valid part of the entire show, which I'm sure is true. I feel like most of these live musical performances are no successful, however I think it's a valiant effort. It's interesting to me that they tried to interweave the film scenes into the live performance, but I guess it might've been cool. I think that the lack of promotional material made what seemed an insignificant performance even more insignificant. I think it is a lot like Sound of Music and Peter Pan Live felt, which was honestly just cheap. In general, the only one of these live musicals I enjoyed was Grease Live. That being said, I think these are important because they make it so that more of the general public sees musicals.
This was certainly an ambitious project, in that live musicals are quite challenging to make good. Like what Sierra said above, when I saw the promotional materials, I did not think Disney was being serious. I don’t believe a lot of people knew about this performance because no one was or is talking about it. I saw a little video clip of the performance and it looked kind of cheesy to be honest. Some of the costumes...like Sebastian’s… seems like they didn’t even try. However, I have heard a lot of praise being given to Queen Latifah’s portrayal of Ursula as the article said. Despite my critical opinion of this show, I do believe that little kids would’ve really enjoyed the performance and it sounds like they might be Disney’s main audience. Again agreeing with the comment above, I think that the concept of live musicals are really important because they make shows more accessible.
I feel like TV stations still don’t know what these made- for- TV musicals are. Every time, they do a lackluster job of advertising, and inevitably, the program gets lukewarm reviews at best from the critics. Out of the snippets of reviews featured in the article, it was interesting that Auliʻi Cravalho was only mentioned in passing, and never as a main point. One critic mentioned that the production stayed within a comfort zone, not exceptional but not worth of “hate watching.” Again, that lukewarm state of mediocrity seems to be a theme across the wave of made- for- TV musicals, along with making unnecessary changes to the story or characters. Intertwining clips from the animated movie is an interesting idea, but many of the critics deemed it choppy to the story being told in live action. I didn’t watch the broadcast and am unlikely to, but I do think that these musical broadcasts have a place in bringing theatre to a wide general audience. I just wish they would do a better and less commericialjob.
I have heard quite a bit of negative comments about this special. These sorts of things are very tricky. For starters, people aren't very open-minded with things of this sort. They start watching with all intent to criticize every little thing, so it's a bit of a set up for failure. Also, these specials are very much so for the fans of the original movie. It's tricky because those fans love the original movie and are not willing to see any changes. They will also be very upset if it doesn't live up to the standard of the original- which it probably won't, because the original is their version of perfection and anything different is below perfection. You can have someone new play Ariel and they can hit every note much better than the original Ariel, but even then it's still not good enough because it is not like the original which they love. I understand why they create these "remakes," I just hope they are made with the understanding that they will face a lot of criticism.
I had literally no idea that this was happening. It’s strange because usually these live shows are so heavily promoted and discussed that you know they happening months in advance, but for the Little Mermaid it’s been silence. I can’t say I’m bent out of shape about it because I have no interest in the TV live musicals. It is nice to hear that the actors did a good job with the material, Queen Latifah getting a lot of praise specifically. Overall though, it didn’t seem to impress anybody really. The issue with the live TV shows is that they don’t feel special. That’s what theatre is for. This one is free so there is an appeal there but they feel cheap and only in it for the ratings. They get big names to perform to get more viewers and that’s about it. I do feel they are fading out and this case is especially obvious since I’ve heard absolutely no one talk about it.
I didn’t get a chance to watch this live as I was working on other projects. I did however get a chance to watch some of the videos provided after the fact of some of the numbers. I did not like this at all, well except for Queen Latifah as Ursula, but that is for another post. I was confused by the blending of the animated movie with the live action happening in front of the screen. I thought this was supposed to be a live action Little Mermaid, not a sing-a-long in the style of The Rocky Horror Show. Some of the performances were great (again see Queen Latifah) and some were, well, just blah (see John Stamos as the Chef). The costumes and puppets also threw me off in some instances. Where were the crab claws on Sebastian’s costume? And what is up with some of those creepy looking puppets? The main takeaway that really made this hard to watch was the audience. It felt more like a concert than a live stage performance. I don’t want to see the audience, I don’t want to see backstage. The audience also drowned out some of the singing and their participation in the event made it feel weird. Disney really dropped the ball on this and made it something that it should have never become, a flop. Instead of this being a part of my world, it floundered.
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