"Disenchantment," Year Five

Minor spoilers ahead.

I lost track of most of the storylines and many of the characters in "Disenchantment" by the time the final season rolled around, even though I've watched every episode.  Compared to the other Matt Groening shows, I've found it difficult to connect to "Disenchantment" for many different reasons.  I don't think the writers ever figured out how to crack the serialized storytelling, and the binge model of release didn't help matters.  I've never rewatched "Disenchantment" the way I've rewatched "The Simpsons" and "Futurama," and I've never gotten remotely as attached to the characters.  Still, having stuck with the show through multiple seasons, I decided I still wanted to see how everything was going to play out. 

After all, multiple cancellations of "Futurama" have proven that Groening and crew know how to deliver a good ending.  I was perfectly satisfied with the "Disenchantment" finale, where every character reaches a happy ending.  There are loose ends everywhere you look, and all kinds of lore left unexplained and unexplored, but this feels like the right place to stop.  Most of this season is spent reuniting everybody and mopping up the fallout from past storylines.  A couple of minor characters become much more important, mostly because they get romantically entangled with our leads - Ursula (Jeny Batten) is Zog's true love, Mop Girl (Lauren Tom) gives Elfo a distraction from Bean, and the Devil (Rich Fulcher) almost immediately becomes a henpecked husband when he gets too close to Dagmar.  There are a couple of interesting reveals that happen, but don't have much impact because the show's storytelling has been so chaotic.  Sure, it's a fun idea that a minor background character ends up being so important to the endgame of the series, but it also ends up feeling a little hollow, because we don't have much time to get to know the Macguffin in question.

  

I don't think that all the storylines were planned out from the beginning, or at least there have been some serious changes along the way.  For one thing, our central trio of Bean, Elfo, and Luci barely interact in the end, despite their friendship being such a big part of the show.  Luci has to hang out in heaven with God (Phil LaMarr) for a good chunk of the season, while Bean is obsessed with taking down Dagmar, and Elfo spends most of his time with Mop Girl.  The old dynamic's just not there anymore, and if this is the point of the story, it's not made very clear.  Instead, love seems to conquer all, rendering every other concern moot, resulting in abrupt endings for several different characters.  The deep bench of minor players enjoyed by "The Simpsons" and "Futurama" feels like it's still a work in progress on "Disenchantment."  Bean and Zog have accumulated a lot of friends and enemies on their travels, but the majority are very one-note and get little development.  Background details for side characters like Vip and Vap are often dropped on the audience out of the blue, while characters  who I thought were pretty major, like Oona and Derek, have been relegated to bit parts since around year three.  

The storyline that wound up working best was Bean's grudge with Dagmar.  Oona is still my favorite "Disenchantment" character, but Dagmar is the year's MVP for being a villain worth rooting against.  She turned out to be an incredibly funny caricature of the oversexed evil sorceress trope, and I loved all her digs at Bean and the Devil.  Bean and Dagmar's troubled relationship has been a major throughline for the show since the first season, and it was very satisfying to see Dagmar finally get her comeuppance.  Zog and Elfo, by contrast, felt a little underserved.  Both of them have earned their happy endings, but at the same time their stories  felt manipulated to have the best outcomes possible.  Luci didn't get to do a lot, but at least his role didn't feel extraneous for once.  

In the end I didn't love "Disenchantment," but I respect it a ton for trying to do something different.  So much effort was put into pulling off ambitious ideas and concepts.  I was constantly hitting the pause button to read the punny signs, and marveling over the interesting bits of worldbuilding.  One example is Bean having to spend so much time carrying Mora the mermaid around on land.  There's no joke or plot reason involved - just a reality of this world that Bean has to deal with, and we have to tough it out with her.  This level of mundanity is odd to see included in an animated show, and I can't say it adds much entertainment value, but at the same time I truly admire the level of commitment.

 

---

A Short History of Disney Remakes

I've been seeing this idea that Disney is running out of films to remake since it's remade pretty much all of its Renaissance era animated films.  I thought it would be fun to take a look at Disney's history of remaking their own IP, especially since the research involved digging through a lot of old, forgotten Disney obscurities.

Disney has been in the remake game for decades, and there are a lot more Disney remakes out there than you think there are.  Here are some of the highlights:

1982 - Disney attempted to turn some of their popular live action movies from the '60s and '70s into television series for CBS in the early '80s.  The only one that made it to air was "Herbie the Love Bug," a sequel series to "The Love Bug," (1968) which ran for five episodes in 1982.  Two other pilots aired as episodes of the "Walt Disney" anthology program that year - "Beyond Witch Mountain," which functioned as the third movie in the "Witch Mountain" franchise, and "The Adventures of Pollyanna," which has the dubious honor of being the first feature length Disney remake that I could identify, retelling the story of "Pollyanna" (1960) with a wholly new cast.   

1988-1989 - NBC took over airing the Disney anthology series, retitled "The Magical World of Disney" in 1988.  They commissioned a new set of "Davy Crockett" adventures, based on the popular miniseries that aired as part of "Disneyland" in the '50s.  They also remade "The Absent-Minded Professor" (1961) as a TV movie starring Harry Anderson from "Night Court," and Keisha-Knight Pulliam from "The Cosby Show" played the title role in "Polly," another remake of "Pollyanna" with an African-American cast.   This means that the first race-swapped Disney heroine wasn't Ariel, but Pollyanna.  Both TV movies did well enough that they got sequels the following year.

1993 - "Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey" is the first theatrically released Disney remake, based on "The Incredible Journey" (1963).  The vast majority of Disney's early remakes were of their live action films.  While Disney was known for their animated films, their catalog was also dominated by wholesome live-action adventure and fantasy films aimed at families.  Many featured animal leads, and it makes perfect sense that an update of "The Incredible Journey" was one of their first major remakes.  

1994 - The first Disney remake based on one of their animated films only technically qualifies.  "Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book" starring Jason Scott Lee was largely based on the Rudyard Kipling "Jungle Book" stories, and only counts as a remake of Disney's "Jungle Book" (1967) because it includes some Disney characters like King Louie.  In this version, Mowgi is an adult, the animals don't talk, there are a pack of British villains to contend with, and the story plays more like "Indiana Jones" than Kipling or Disney.  A direct-to-video prequel, "The Jungle Book: Mowgli's Story" (1998) was actually closer to the original.

1994-1995 - Meanwhile, over in the television division, Disney struck a deal with ABC to remake a slew of their live action family films as "ABC Family Movies."  This resulted in TV movie remakes of "The Shaggy Dog" (1959), "The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes" (1969), "Escape to Witch Mountain" (1975), and "Freaky Friday" (1976), which all aired in 1994 and 1995.  A remake/legasequel for "The Love Bug" came in 1997 starring Bruce Campbell, and introducing Herbie's mortal enemy, Horace the Hate Bug.  The Disney Channel also got a remake of "The Barefoot Executive" (1971) in 1995.

 

1996 - The remake of "101 Dalmatians" (1961) feels like the first real attempt to adapt an animated Disney film into a live action one.  And they picked the right one to start with, since all the characters are either human or animals, and Disney has a long history of animal movies.  This was the era where Disney was actually remaking a lot of cartoons into live action, though it was other studios' cartoons like "George of the Jungle," "Dudley Do-Right," and "Inspector Gadget."  And the whole trend was actually kicked off by Amblin's "The Flintstones," which made large amounts of money in 1994.

1997 - 2009 - The majority of the theatrical Disney remakes going into the 2000s were still of live action films.  1997 saw a new "The Absent-Minded Professor" remake starring Robin Williams titled "Flubber," and Christina Ricci in an updated "That Darn Cat!" (1965).  Then came Lindsay Lohan, who would star in "The Parent Trap" in 1998 , "Freaky Friday," in 2003, and "Herbie Fully Loaded" in 2005.  "The Shaggy Dog" became a Tim Allen vehicle in 2006, and "Race to Witch Mountain" rebooted the "Witch Mountain" franchise in 2009 with Dwayne Johnson.  And to date, that's the last of Disney's theatrical remakes of their live action catalog. Aside from a musical version of "Freaky Friday" in 2018 that premiered as a Disney Channel Original, all the Disney remakes going forward would be of their animated films, starting with…

2010 - Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" really doesn't have much connection with the 1951 animated  "Alice in Wonderland."  The new "Alice" functions more like a sequel, and it takes most of its visual cues from Burton and illustrator John Tenniel.  However, between the popularity of Johnny Depp  and the premium on newly repopularized 3D event films, "Alice" made a billion dollars at the box office in an era where that didn't often happen.  As a result, Disney would end up following the "Alice" template of CGI-heavy spectacle to some very bitter ends.  

2010 - I just want to acknowledge that "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," based on the Mickey Mouse segment of "Fantasia" (1940), somehow transmogrified into a YA adventure film starring Nicolas Cage and Jay Baruchel, exists.  I don't understand why, but it exists.  

2014 - "Maleficent" wasn't actually the first Disney film to do the whole, "let's retell this familiar fairy tale from a supporting character's point of view," thing.  That honor goes to the "Gepetto" TV movie starring Drew Carrey, created for the ABC version of "The Wonderful World of Disney" in 2000.  I'm not sure if these should be counted as remakes, but some of the other Disney remakes have about as much in common with their original films as "Maleficent" does with "Sleeping Beauty," so it doesn't feel right to leave them off.  "Maleficent" takes a few familiar images from the 1959 cartoon and recreates one pivotal scene, but mostly tells an original story, repositioning an iconic villain as a heroine.  The  2018 "Christopher Robin" movie and the 2021 "Cruella" movie mostly follow the same pattern.   

2015-2016 - The remakes of "Cinderella" (1950), "The Jungle Book" (1967), and "Pete's Dragon" (1977) seem to be the best regarded Disney remakes of their animated (and partially animated) films.  It's no secret why.  These are director-driven, thoughtfully made films that use the animated classics as a jumping off point, but don't resemble them much.  "The Jungle Book" is the closest, but has an entirely different ending, and largely cut the songs.  If the remakes had continued in this vein, we'd probably all have been much better off.  Unfortunately… 

2017-2019 - Here's where we went off the rails.  Once Disney started remaking its Renaissance era animated films, the remakes became almost carbon copies of the originals.  Any original material was shoehorned around recreations of existing set pieces and musical numbers.  And Disney was well rewarded for this approach.  Remakes of "Beauty and the Beast" (1991), "Aladdin" (1992), and "The Lion King" (1994) each made over a billion dollars at the box office, and "Aladdin" and "The Lion King" were released less than three months apart.  The success of "The Jungle Book" and improvements in CGI seem to have particularly emboldened filmmakers to start tackling more difficult fantasy concepts.

That brings us to now, where a pile of lackluster titles over the past few years remaking "Dumbo" (1941), "Lady and the Tramp" (1955), "Mulan" (1998), and "Pinocchio" (1940) have pretty well wrecked the public's appetite for more Disney remakes.  I honestly like both of this year's attempts - remakes of "The Little Mermaid" (1989) and "Peter Pan" (1953) - but I understand why many others don't.  There are a lot more of these films coming up, and frankly I've stopped being upset about them.  Disney has habitually gone back to its existing IP over and over again for decades, and they're not going to stop.

And they're not going to run out of titles to remake.  Yes, they've burned through the more popular titles, but there are a ton left.  There are vast sections of the Disney catalog that haven't been touched yet, like their dark '80s fantasy films and the early 2000s Disney Channel Originals.  And if Disney somehow manages to remake every single film of theirs that ever made any money, they'll just remake them again with a different twist or in a different style, the way they did with "Freaky Friday" and "Pollyanna."  I expect we'll see "Ursula" at some point.  "Straight to streaming" has replaced TV movies, but everyone is still as susceptible to nostalgia as they ever were.

So, buckle up for Questlove's "The Aristocats" and Sarah Polley's "Bambi."  We're going around again.

---

The Twilight of "Indiana Jones"

Minor spoilers ahead.

There's something rather lovely about Harrison Ford being in eighties, and still being able to make an "Indiana Jones" movie.  Ford is still a charismatic performer, and it's wonderful to have him back on our screens as often as he wants to be there.  At the same time, there's something undeniably ghoulish about this too.  Ford is in great shape, but clearly not able to participate in the kind of action scenes we expect from an "Indiana Jones" movie.  Most of "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" takes place in 1969, where Indy is retiring from teaching, and very much the picture of a grumpy old man.   

To counter this, Indy is joined on the adventure by his adult goddaughter Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller Bridge), an archaeologist herself who is following in the footsteps of her father Basil (Toby Jones), one of Indy's old friends.  She has her own kid sidekick, Teddy (Ethann Isidore), a Moroccan thief we meet in Tangiers.  John Rhys-Davies is also back as Sallah, who has immigrated to New York with his family in tow.  They're up against a Nazi scientist named Dr. Schmidt (Mads Mikkelson), who is searching for the Archimedes Dial - an ancient mechanical marvel rumored to actually be a time travel device.  

However, the film also tries to give us the Indiana Jones we remember from the '80s by using digital doubles and deepfakes to open the film with an extended flashback to 1944, where Indy and Basil fight Nazi treasure hunters to recover looted relics.  This isn't just a few shots, but a full twenty minute opening act where the digital Indy is our main character, with plenty of dialogue and closeups and interactions with other actors.  The end result looks very expensive - better than "The Irishman," but not quite as good as some of the best digital doubles that we've seen in other films.  There are still a few Uncanny Valley shots, and I was always very aware that I was watching a deepfake and not the real thing. Something about the voice is very off.   

Fortunately, the rest of the film doesn't feel like a soulless copy trying to imitate the genuine article.  James Mangold takes over directing duties from Steven Spielberg, and puts together a lot of very energetic, very Spielberg-esque chase and adventuring sequences.  The characters are solid, and well cast.  I love seeing Boyd Holbrook and Olivier Richters playing Dr. Schmidt's henchman as old school, slapstick villains.  Phoebe Waller-Bridge gets to be both the plucky heroine and the femme fatale rolled into one - which shouldn't work but mostly does.  Mads Mikkelson playing a proper Nazi baddie (at last!) is very satisfying on every level.

The scripting is messy and full of callbacks, but I honestly don't mind so much.  Between the ages of the actors and the sad state of the box office, this is very likely the last time we're going to be seeing these characters onscreen, and the only reason why I bothered to watch the film was for the nostalgia.  I like that "Dial of Destiny" acknowledges Indy's age and his regrets in a way that "Crystal Skull" didn't.  The whole film is built around a time travel device as the big MacGuffin, with some great thematic touches.  There's a third act sequence involving Indy making discoveries at the ancient city of Syracuse that is legitimately one of the highlights of the entire "Indiana Jones" franchise.  

Sadly, "Dial of Destiny" can't get away from feeling totally unnecessary.  I can't imagine anyone was all that excited about another "Indiana Jones" movie after the lukewarm reception to "Crystal Skull."  I'm glad that "Dial of Destiny" resisted the urge to be a legasequel, and there are apparently no plans at this time to recast Indy, but it's hard to ignore that the franchise has run its course.  Everything about "Dial of Destiny" feels like a comfortable throwback, and I can understand why its appeal turned out to be so limited.  Like "Terminator: Dark Fate" and "Ghostbusters: Afterlife," it's yet another film where the nostalgia comes with the sad truth that my childhood movie heroes have gotten old and creaky.

"Dial of Destiny" cost so much money and lost so much money, it'll inevitably be remembered as a giant misstep for Disney.  I prefer to look on the bright side and treat it as a last hurrah for a character I've always enjoyed.  It wasn't great, but if this was the last "Indiana Jones" movie, it was a perfectly fine way to go out.    

---

"Elemental" Nails the Fundamentals

I found myself spending a good chunk of the new PIXAR film "Elemental" staring at Wade Ripple's hair.  Well, Wade (Mamoudou Athie) doesn't have hair because he's a guy made of water, so I was looking at the ever-undulating waves on the top of his watery head that had been shaped to look like hair.  It's a great reminder of why the PIXAR animation studio has had so many imitators over the years but few real rivals.  Even though their house style is starting to feel a little old fashioned since the "Spider-verse" movies popularized 2D/3D hybrid animation, nobody matches up to PIXAR when it comes to the resources spent on making their films real works of art.  They take time to get all the little details right - like the leading man's liquid locks.  

A lot of the chatter around "Elemental" over the summer had to do with its marketing, which was pretty terrible.  The ads and trailers made "Elemental" look formulaic and bland, another project where PIXAR anthropomorphized something inanimate and gave them feelings.  What it completely failed to show was how beautifully this  was all executed.  In "Elemental," the characters are earth, water, air, and fire "elements" who share the bustling Element City together, though not without some friction.  Our heroine, fire element Ember Lumen (Leah Lewis), is the daughter of Bernie (Ronnie del Carmen) and Cinder (Shila Ommi), an immigrant pair who run a small store in a fire element neighborhood on the edge of the city.  Element City isn't built for fire elements, since the other three groups got there first, and there are many prejudices and misconceptions for their community to overcome.  

"Elemental" reminds me of "Zootopia," in a very good way.  There is an absolutely stunning amount of creativity and ingenuity that went into all the worldbuilding.  I've seen several animated films lately that have maybe one or two clever ideas in each scene.  "Elemental," on the other hand, is absolutely jam packed with them, and some sequences are just one gag or pun or fun visual after another.  Ember and Wade, our star-crossed lovers, are constantly having to problem solve to simply exist in each other's worlds.  Ember always carries an umbrella to guard against accidental splashes that might put her out, and has to dim herself down in a movie theater.  When she goes to visit Wade's apartment, of course it's mostly submerged, so she spends the evening perched on an inflatable floatie chair.  As for Wade, he's forever trying to sneak around Ember's father, who has a hatred of all things watery.  There's a lot of hiding in crevices and vases.

The visuals are a treat, but more importantly director Peter Sohn and writers John Hoberg, Kat Likkel, and Brenda Hsueh figured out how to tell a very sweet, heartful story in this universe.  Yes, it's a romantic comedy about opposites who attract.  Tempestuous Ember and gushing Wade are a delightful pair to watch fall in love.  But beyond this, "Elemental" is a surprisingly nuanced second-generation immigrant experience allegory.  The biggest roadblock to Ember and Wade's relationship is actually Ember's sense of duty and guilt about her parents, especially her ailing father.  They sacrificed everything for her happiness, so Ember feels it's only right for her to sacrifice her happiness for them.  I also appreciate that this is a movie that points out racism (or elementism?)  as a problem, but doesn't devote the whole narrative to it, and doesn't have the heroes try to solve the whole situation in one swoop.  Instead, it's just something that they have to learn to patiently deal with, person by person, like the problem customers at the Lumens' shop.        

Sohn drew from his background as a Korean immigrant who grew up in New York, but the fire elements are a stand-in for just about any immigrant community.  There's a big influence from Studio Ghibli here on the character designs - the water elements are straight out of "Ponyo," and the fire elements all seem to be variations on Calcifer the fire demon from "Howl's Moving Castle." The challenge of using CGI to animate non-solid characters must have been considerable.  There's also something very Ghibli-esque about the storytelling, which is built on a lot of little incidental encounters and slice-of-life scenes.  Mysterious leaks and the store being in danger aren't because of any major villains or evil schemes, but because of larger systemic problems that can't be easily resolved.

Maybe I reacted so well to "Elemental" because I went in with low expectations.  There's evidence of a lot of frantic rewriting behind the scenes, and you could point to a dozen other recent films that have tackled parts of this story more elegantly.   The element allegory is just plain messy at certain points, and you really have to ignore some of the logic gaps.  Still, this feels like PIXAR returning to form in a way that I haven't seen since before the pandemic.  And it's definitely a step in the right direction.

---

"Ozark" Year Three

Spoilers for the first two seasons ahead.

This is a lot sooner than when I expected to be posting about "Ozark" again, and I was originally expecting to write about the last two seasons together, but I've been binging this show like nothing else in ages, and I really want to get some thoughts down before I dive into the final stretch of episodes.  After enjoying the first season of "Ozark," and being unimpressed with the second, the third season mounted a comeback and turned out to be everything that I wanted from the show from the start.  

I thought that "Ozark" had a great beginning, setting up all these characters and relationships and opportunities for good melodrama.  However, the second season fell into a rut pretty quickly.  The stories got repetitive and the juicier character stuff  mostly went nowhere.  Two major villains pretty much followed the same path of going unhinged and being dispatched quickly - outmanipulated by the Byrdes, who were able to out-think everyone with what felt like little real effort.  The third season introduced some new villains - a new FBI investigator, Maya Miller (Jessica Frances Dukes), prying into the Byrdes' finances, the head of the cartel, Omar Navarro (Felix Solis), and Frank Cosgrove Jr. (Jospeh Sikora), the arrogant son of the the Kansas City mob boss.  However, the Byrdes' worst antagonists this season are each other.

Since the beginning, Marty and Wendy's marriage has been on the rocks, but they were able to put the hostilities on hold while they sorted out all the other chaos in their lives.  In season three, disagreements over their business dealings turn the two against each other.  They don't communicate of course, as demonstrated by a comedic subplot with a marriage counselor, Sue (Marylouise Burke), but instead end up undermining each other until they're fully at war.  And the show was never better.    The conflict finally feels personal for everyone involved.  The deep imperfections in the characters are finally being explored.  The Byrdes are definitely up there with the Sopranos and the Jennings as one of the best TV drama couples because they're so well matched, and their fights reveal how deeply screwed up they are.  Bateman and Linney have been at the top of their game.

The other major newcomer is Wendy's unstable brother Ben (Tom Pelphrey), who ends up taking over the second half of the season.  It's a long, slow build to his unraveling, and handled very well.  Pelphrey's a great addition to the cast, initially presenting a very solid, likable presence.  Ben slides so neatly into the family dynamic and is such a good match for Ruth, the audience is tricked into letting down their guard.  Helen's arc functions in a similar way, with her briefly partnering up with Wendy for deals, and being very helpful in a crisis, but then things go sideways and we realize that her similarity to the Byrdes also makes her one of their most formidable enemies.  

All the stories and characters feel more balanced this year, with more emphasis on Marty and Wendy, but everyone else is getting the right amount of attention.  Ruth was put on a similar slow burn as Ben, which paid off beautifully.  The Charlotte problem was essentially solved by giving her and Jonah their own Charlotte to keep out of trouble, Helen's daughter Erin (Madison Thompson), and letting the kids stay mostly in the background.  Darlene regrouping in the shadows with Wyatt delivered some of the wildest twists this year, but it weirdly seems to have been the healthiest thing for everyone involved.  After the finale, I'm honestly tempted to root for them.    

I haven't said anything yet about the show's production values, which are great.  The gloomy cinematography isn't showy, but it's effective.  This year features a riverboat casino as a major location, an REO Speedwagon concert, and a few field trips outside of the Ozarks, which all look great.  This is one of those projects where Netflix spared no expense, and got their money's worth.  

I cannot promise I won't binge the rest of "Ozark" by next week, but I'll try my very best not to post about the show again until then.  

---

About That "Little Mermaid" Movie

The most annoying thing about the live action Disney remakes of their animated films is that while these movies are  mostly awful, they're rarely completely awful, and can't be written off completely.  Most are watchable and some of them, occasionally, are pretty good.  It turns out that if you put enough talented people together with a large enough budget, inevitably they're going to figure out a way to be a little bit entertaining.  The new "The Little Mermaid," based on the 1989 cartoon version, has no good reason to exist, and features some truly boneheaded adaptation decisions, but as a whole this Disney remake is one of the better ones.  

I think it helps that the 1989 cartoon hasn't aged as well as some of the other Disney Renaissance blockbusters.  The characters are very thin, and culture has shifted a bit when it comes to teenage love and romance.  Rob Marshall, who last directed "Mary Poppins Returns" for Disney, doesn't change the story much and keeps most of the songs.  However, he smartly fills in some plot holes, updates the boy-girl dynamics, and changes the setting to the Caribbean to better accommodate a multicultural cast.   The new Ariel is played by Halle Bailey, who is very good in the part, though she has more of a pop voice than a musical theater voice.  Her Ariel is also quite a bit smarter and more resourceful than her animated counterpart.  Prince Eric (Jonah Hauer-King) is still Caucasian, but the adopted son of a dark complexioned Queen Selina (Noma Dumezweni), ruler of their island kingdom.  Meanwhile, King Triton (Javier Bardem), the human-hating monarch of the seas, has fathered mermaid daughters of many different colors and complexions.  

The live action "Little Mermaid" is nearly an hour longer than the animated "Little Mermaid," which may test the patience of younger viewers.  However, the extra time is well spent.  The major characters are more fleshed out, and I'm happy to report that the romance is vastly improved.  Bailey and Hauer-King have good chemistry, and enough time onscreen together to actually form a connection.  It's only a few additional scenes, like Eric talking to Ariel about his adventures as a sailor, and Ariel finding a way to tell Eric her name while mute, but they do make a difference.  More emphasis is also placed on Ariel's relationship with Triton and the ongoing human/merfolk hostilities.  

As usual, the worst part of the adaptation is trying to turn the cartoon sidekick characters from the original film into more realistic CGI creations.  Flounder (Jacob Tremblay), Sebastian (Daveed Diggs) and Scuttle (Awkwafina) now resemble a real fish, crab, and sea bird, and it looks dreadful.  Scuttle getting a rap number (written by Lin Manuel Miranda, naturally) is a real low point in the film.  I'm an Awkwafina supporter, but she and Disney really need to take a break for a while.  Melissa McCarthy as the sea witch, Ursula, fares much better.  "Poor Unfortunate Souls" is the musical number that translates best to live action.  She doesn't get as much screen time as I would have liked, but she makes the appearances count.      

The 1989 "Little Mermaid" was the beginning of the Disney Renaissance, and I'm a little surprised that this adaptation took so long to reach our screens.  I suspect it has a lot to do with the technical challenges involved with doing so many nautical and underwater elements.  The film is very CGI heavy, with some visuals that work well, and others that don't.  The designs of Ursula and the mermaid characters, for instance, are great, but most of the other sea creatures are stuck in uncanny valley.  The  film is far more picturesque when it's on dry land.  Once again, underwater societies really don't work in anything even remotely close to live action.  

  

There's no end in sight for future live action Disney adaptations, despite their spotty track record.  And because I'm a Disney nerd who just can't resist, I'll keep watching them.  We have a new "Snow White" with Rachel Zegler and a "Lion King" prequel directed by Barry Jenkins up next.  Fingers crossed.      

---

My Top Ten Films of 1943

This post is part of my ongoing project to create Top Ten movie lists for the years before I began this blog, working my way as far back as I can.  Below, find my Top Ten films for 1943, unranked.

Carnival of Sinners - I can't resist a good genre picture, and "Carnival of Sinners" presents a great take on the Faust story.  It's a French horror film via a dark fairy tale, where the hero has to battle with the devil for his soul, with the assistance of ghosts, saints, and an angel.  The evocative visuals do most of the heavy lifting as this was one of the final films of Maurice Tourneau, one of the greats of the silent era.    

Casablanca - You must remember this.  "Casablanca" almost functions as a Rosetta stone these days, as it originated so many oft quoted lines and was the subject of so many parodies.  The film itself, however, is still as tender and heart-rending as it ever was, with Humphrey Bogart's best performance front and center.  And while I prefer Ingrid Bergman in other pictures, it was "Casablanca" that made her a star.

   

The Song of Bernadette - In the past, mainstream audiences could  take faith-based stories like this at face value, but it's hard to imagine anyone making a film so earnestly credulous today, or any actress playing the young heroine the way that Jennifer Jones does, like a platonic ideal of a Christian piety.  "Bernadette" is exceedingly well made, however, and still offers plenty of photogenic uplift.   

Day of Wrath - And while we're on the subject of religious films, nobody made them better than Carl Theodor Dreyer.  After taking nearly a decade break from filmmaking, Dreyer returned with a film about a 16th century witchcraft case, but is in essence a tense domestic drama.  Some have also interpreted it as an anti-Totalitarian work.  Slow, absorbing, and emotionally wrenching, it was worth the wait.    

Jane Eyre - Joan Fontaine and Orson Welles are perfectly cast as Jane and Rochester, not only because they have good chemistry together, but because there's such an ambiguity to their relationship throughout the film, and both actors are so adept at navigating this.  Welles' influence on the shape of the film is undeniable, but director Robert Stevenson deserves his share of the credit for its success.

Lassie Come Home - I didn't realize that there was a series of "Lassie" films that predated the television series until last year.  The first movie is the best by a wide margin, because it's such a simple, unselfconscious enterprise.  This is the perfect boy-and-his-dog story, or really a dog-and-her-boy story, because Lassie spends so much of the movie as a solo act - and her performance is excellent.  

 

The Living Magoroku - One of Keisuke Kinoshita's wartime efforts is technically a propaganda film, but is functionally just a charming, well-made rural drama about a family being prodded out of old, superstitious ways, toward a brighter future.  The cast is excellent, and the way that the different subplots and characters arcs all converge in the end is immensely satisfying to see play out.    

Munchhausen - A fabulous piece of fantasy media that I like much better than the Terry Gilliam "Munchausen" movie.  In spite of its unfortunate Nazi origins (yes, really) and some of the insensitive content, the film is a piece of pure escapism with gorgeously executed special effects.  I especially enjoy the performance of Hans Albers as the title character, by turns silly and poignant and easy to cheer for.        

Shadow of a Doubt - If Alfred Hitchcock made a Nancy Drew film, it would probably come out something like this.  Teresa Wright establishes herself as a leading lady, but it's Joseph Cotten as the sinister Uncle Charlie who is the most memorable thing about the picture.  Hitchcock claimed multiple times that this was his favorite film and I can see why - it's one of his simpler features, but every element is excellent.

Stormy Weather - One of two major African-American musicals released in this year, featuring so much talent that never got enough of the spotlight.  I prefer "Stormy Weather" to "Cabin in the Sky" because its individual sequences are more memorable, and I'm more familiar with its cast.  The Nicholas Brothers' "Jumpin' Jive" sequence is still one of the most impressive feats ever captured on film.  

This Land is Mine - Finally, this is one of Jean Renoir's handful of American films, an anti-Nazi melodrama starring Charles Laughton as a school teacher in a town suffering under occupation.  It's part morality play, part home front propaganda effort, and part character study of a weak man who finds his courage.  The whole cast, including Maureen O'Hara and George Saunders, is doing some of their best work. 

---