After a couple of weeks in a row of action-adventure movies, I thought it would be fun to take a step back and review a more family-friendly movie.

Up to this point, the few live-action remakes of Disney classics that I have seen have been pretty underwhelming (except for Christopher Walken as King Louie in “The Jungle Book,” which was an absolute classic), but the live-action version of “The Little Mermaid” was a really fun movie.

I admittedly have not seen the original movie in about 15 years, so I do not have much of a comparison between that version and the brand-new one. Although it has been a long time since I have seen the original, I still have a pretty strong grasp of the plot and characters, just not specifics.

Now on to the movie itself. First of all, Halle Bailey absolutely stole the show. She is a great actress, but if you are familiar with the plot, Ariel is without her voice for a good portion of the movie. Despite that, her truly breathtaking singing is highlighted in “Part of Your World” and “Under the Sea.”

The audio-only versions of the new take on “Under the Sea” is available across streaming platforms and I highly recommend anyone to listen to the song and wait for Bailey’s vocals; they are incredible.

My first little nitpick of the movie, and it is a pretty small one, is Flounder; the character himself plays a minor part in the movie, but it is pretty weird seeing a lifelike CGI fish speak English and have his little fish lips match what he is saying.

Although the realistic-looking fish talking was slightly odd, the rest of the movie’s animation is very well done. The most impressive part for me was how the animators animated the water.

I have no experience in animation, but I assume that it is hard to animate water; you would not be able to tell that from the movie. The way all of the sea creatures moved around the water with ease and the long merperson hair floated uniformly in the water was really cool.

On that similar train of thought, seeing the merpeople float around the water was a really cool visual, and I have no idea how that was filmed and animated. The characters were able to swim around with ease; I am really curious about how that effect was created.

One thing I was surprised about was the climactic fight with Ursula at the end of the movie; it was pretty intense for a children’s movie, and the resolution of the fight was also more intense than I thought and expected it to be.

For me, the undisputed best parts of “The Little Mermaid” were the musical scenes; it was really fun seeing all of the mostly-aquatic characters express themselves, and the personification of the sea life was really well done and really fun. I know I keep going back to this example, but “Under the Sea” was a blast to listen to and the scene was a blast to watch.

Overall, this movie was really fun. I was slightly hesitant walking into the theater because this is not my usual cup of tea, but it brought back a lot of fun memories of watching Disney movies as a child and listening to Bailey’s singing was a great time.