Your Thoughts on Live Little Mermaid Last Night?

SorcererHeidi

Sorcerer please cast forever love spell for me
Joined
Jul 16, 2007
I am just now BEGINNING to watch this, but had to pause the DVR to post my thoughts, before I forget. I hope you will indulge me.

Of course, it was very nice, and heartwarming, to see the always-beautiful (inside AND out!) and spectactularly talented Jodi Benson. And even though I have not been blessed to see her live, I have VERY much enjoyed video performances, and of COURSE gracious performances for the DIS events, and to raise money for GKTW.

What caused me to actually decide to post immediately is I am at the part (told you, I'm just starting to watch!) where they are introducing King Tritons's daughter. As a person of larger stature (okay - I'm fluffy!!!) my entire life, and being bullied and body shamed, overtly or covertly, by either society, or myself - it is SO heartwarming and validating to see a female of larger stature being used as one of the daughters. OMG, it was like a therapy session caught in a microsecond!

Thanx for listening to my self awareness, validation, blabberng and indulgence. Go back to your lives. :o
 
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I watched it with my wife and daughter, and all three of us thought Queen Latifah was awesome as Ursula. We also were all in consensus that there was way too much animation, should have been more live action, less cartoon. The young woman who played Ariel, while clearly talented came off as "flat" with both her singing and acting, not the best choice for that role. We also really liked Shaggy as Sebastian, even without the claws :) Overall I would give it a B, not great, but still entertaining and fun to watch.
 
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I agree! It was nice to see so much diversity in race AND in size. I thought it was a cute show. Not award winning by any means, but we thought it was fun.
@Daisybelle - Great point, thank you! I think I was so self focused and gobsmacked by the plus sized mermaid, I didn't even notice the diversity in race. Thank you for opening my eyes to another wonderful feature.

BTW - I'll just mention - "Part of Your World" has a deep, resonating personal connection for me, and is one of my all-time favorite songs (both to listen to and sing!) ever. Ad oh yeah - ALWAYS makes me cry! :)
 
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I watched it wife my wife and daughter, and all three of us thought Queen Latifah was awesome as Ursula. We also were all in consensus that there was way too much animation, should have been more live action, less cartoon. The young woman who played Ariel, while clearly talented came off as "flat" with both her singing and acting, not the best choice for that role. We also really liked Shaggy as Sebastian, even without the claws :) Overall I would give it a B, not great, but still entertaining and fun to watch.
@WGCFV - Thanx for your thoughts! I haven't gotten to either Queen or Shaggy yet, but I look forward to seeing them, with your thoughts as a backdrop. Let me just say also, I have always adored Latifah! Again - partly because while not fat, she has always been proud of her curves, and WORKED 'em!" !! Oh - and her massive multi talents! :)
 
I watched it wife my wife and daughter, and all three of us thought Queen Latifah was awesome as Ursula. We also were all in consensus that there was way too much animation, should have been more live action, less cartoon. The young woman who played Ariel, while clearly talented came off as "flat" with both her singing and acting, not the best choice for that role. We also really liked Shaggy as Sebastian, even without the claws :) Overall I would give it a B, not great, but still entertaining and fun to watch.

Agreed! Queen Latifah was the best part! She was fabulous. We cheered after her part, nerds that we are.
 


I just watched Part of Your World and Poor Unfortunate Souls. Not impressed with both. My money is on the choices the music director made and not the talent.
 
It's interesting that you brought this up. I was very happy to see all of the different types of women representing Triton's daughters. I wasn't a huge fan of the show as a whole and really disliked Shaggy's Under the Sea performance, but Queen Latifah and John Stamos (even with his prince flub) were highlights for me. While I didn't love the Prince Eric part, the Fathoms Below part before he came in was really good, IMO. In the end, I found myself wanting to watch the animated portions more than the live stuff. I also had a clutching of the invisible pearls moment when my older daughter questioned Jodi Benson being the the Little Mermaid...like, how could she!!?!?! 😂
 
OK - Finished it last night. Will try to remember all my thoughts.

TOTALLY agree with the thought that WAY too much time was spent on the animated bits- became very slow, draggy, even boring at times. I don't feel that way JUST watching the animated movie, and would NOT have felt that way if they had kept the bits short, but it was NOT done or paced I guess is the technical term (?) correctly at all, IMHO. I LOVE the movie, and yet FF'd through most of the animation when I could. Then it became like "work", and really ruined the experience for me.

Shaggy - Not overly impressed. He was good, IMHO, but not great. As one of the hosts of a live trivia game I play said "He looked like Sebastian, dressed up as a Michael Jackson impersonator, without the claws. :rotfl2:

Queen - Honey, the name says it all, she WAS. Fantastic singing, acting, costume, timing, special; effects. Everything.

The lady who who was the "emcee" - could Google her name, but don't feel like it - she was supposedly originally from Glee, which I never watched? She was pretty daggone good.

John Stamos - He was very good. I loved his obvious passion, and was more impressed that he COULD sing (I vaguely remember I think he's actually in a band, as many actors are) than his actual performance. I know he's a huge Disney fan, and I FELT that in his performance, more than anything else.

Ariel - Great in Mona, just okay here,. I agree with a somewhat "flat" performance - both emotionally, and in voice on "Part of Your World". But - her 2nd bit of the song - after they showed the animated sequence in there - AGAIN (UGH!) - was MUCH better.

Prince Eric - Good lookin' dude, and loved his rear view in them tight pants! :blush: Fairly good acting, became more impressed as time went on.

Overall, I'd agree with the "B" that somebody gave it. Not the best, but not the worst, and had some draggy parts,but also some spectacular moments too. I can DEFINITELY see this on Broadway in my head. Which - I'm SURE it was a test bed/sorta commercial - DUH!

Thank you so much, again, for your indulgence with MY thoughts (I know I can sometimes run on, I own it!) :thumbsup2, and often times my mind moves MUCH faster than my fingers, so I have to go back/edit later, but hopefully I stayed fairly coherent. And thank you all who have posted thus far, and I hope others will continue to do so. Only in SHARING the Disney magic that we find can we all keep it ALIVE.
 
I just watched "If Only". OMG where was the rest of the song??!!! I felt the girl playing Ariel did a fantastic job at the end of the song. The beginning was just really flat. I am starting to think the musical director had a "vision" and the actors had to sing that way. Not a fan.
 
I loved how bonkers it was. The audience with crab hands! The riotous colors! The songs that weren't from the movie (unless I'm remembering incorrectly) dragged it down a bit.

The puppets were a lot of fun. Flotsam and Jetsam were fantastic.
 
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We watched the first 40 minutes last night. It was just really odd. I've liked the live performance parts, but the way they combined the animated sections just pulled you out of the show. As someone else said on here - watching the animated movie is normally not a boring experience, but in this case - the animated parts felt like filler for the show. I kept thinking to myself "Didn't they do this as a stage musical? Couldn't they have found a way to pull off just having it all live?" I had no issues at all with the live performances so far - I give Auli'i all the credit in the world for carrying a tune while being hauled through the air.
 
@skier_pete - Yes! I thought about the live Little Mermaid show, and how everything is done there (and how much I love it!) in the Studios too, SEVERAL times while watching this!!
 
I haven't seen any other Little Mermaid live shows except for the one at Tokyo DisneySea, so I had zero expectations. I thought it was fun! My husband's company did all the puppets for the show, and word on the street is that Auli'i nailed her performance in all the rehearsals—unfortunately it was just during the live show that she was flat. Also, I guess there was some backlash about the way Flounder looked, but they gave the producers multiple concepts, including one that looked like Flounder in the movie, and that's the one they chose. :confused3
 
Cool, @lurkyloo - what a unique perspective! And when I said I could definitely see this on B'Way in my mind, I was DEFINITELY referring to the puppets too, of course!

And yes, there was a joke made on the trivia game I was referring to that commented about's Shaggy's look about the Flounder being the thing nightmares of made of, but I didn't particularly think so. ;)
 
Too much video, not enough live.
Queen Latifah stole the show. She is the QUEEN!!
Shaggy looked out of his element. He didn't seem comfortable and was stiff. Twitter was savage about him. "Who resurrected Michael Jackson's Thriller outfit?"

Ariel was darling, beautiful voice but not as strong as I expected.
Don't get me started on that Flounder.

Overall, the weakest of all the Live for TV events. The music is iconic so it's always fun to hear.
 
I vote "hot mess".
Queen Latifah was good - not good enough to warrant watching the whole thing. Didn't like Shaggy, HATED his costume - nobody else really stood out, good or bad. This would have been considered good for a High School Musical. Prime time TV? No - just no. Not bad enough to be good for comedy either.
 
Thank you all who've commented so far. Loving hearing all these different points of view! :)
 

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