Disney just released its 'The Little Mermaid' remake. Here's what critics are saying about it.

"Bailey wins hearts in the early going with a powerhouse take on 'Part of Your World.'" — Brian Truitt, USA Today

"The Beyoncé prodigy and the other half of the Grammy-winning duo Chloe x Halle gracefully presents her own Ariel: The character is still sweet and sharp-tongued, but there's a touch more bite to her defiance. Her voice, the narrative's raison d'être, sounds ethereal, too." — Lovia Gyarkye, The Hollywood Reporter

"Halle Bailey is all the reason that any audience should need to justify Disney revisiting this classic... Just wait till you hear her sing 'Part of Your World,' delivered with all the conviction of Jennifer Hudson's career-making rendition of 'And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going.'" — Peter Debruge, Variety

"Halle Bailey is radiant in the title role: Expressive, energetic and infinitely likable, with a mixture of girlish sweetness and womanly spine. She finds refreshing new avenues into songs, story beats and even specific lines of dialogue that longtime fans have cherished from the original." — Christy Lemire, RogerEbert.com

"McCarthy's sly, amoral performance is far and away the best part of the film. Every time she's onscreen, the movie finally seems, well, animated." — Hillary Busis, Vanity Fair

"Magee's screenplay gives Ursula a more fleshed-out backstory as Triton's sister, but it could go further, as we never fully understand the tension and relationship between the two." — Maureen Lee Lenker, Entertainment Weekly

"McCarthy's Ursula is an undeniable highlight, drawing you in with her general homage to the original character but delighting with little quips of her own comedic style." — Lex Briscuso, The Wrap

"Ursula (Melissa McCarthy) gets a little more as well, as screenwriter David Magee paints her and Triton (Javier Bardem) as feuding siblings, but fails to dive deeper than surface-level exposition." — Alex Abad-Santos, Vox

"A welcome aspect of this retooled narrative is letting Eric and Ariel really get to know each other – even though she can't speak – so that by the time of the romantic boat ride and Sebastian crooning 'Kiss the Girl,' their feelings for each other ring true rather than haphazard." — Brian Truitt, USA Today

"Ariel's fascination with life on land isn't driven purely by interest in a man. Instead, she and Eric (a dashing Jonah Hauer-King) are drawn to each other because of their mutual curiosity for worlds beyond their own." — Maureen Lee Lenker, Entertainment Weekly

"Their romance is less a love-at-first-sight situation and more a meeting of minds. They share a fascination with each other's culture; that fascination blooms into respect, and eventually bridges their two worlds together in an incredibly satisfying way." — Lyvie Scott, Inverse

"He's a man without the charisma and virile vulnerability the character demands. Instead of being the kind of strapping prince you swoon over, he comes across as the guy who served you coffee at a café down the block and whose visage you forget the moment you grab your cup." — Angelica Jade Bastién, Vulture

"While Hauer-King is handsome, his Eric lacks the rascally attitude of the animated version, who in retrospect felt like an Aladdin prototype." — Kristy Puchko, Mashable

"Nor can a Black Ariel make up for subpar renditions of classic songs (the vibrant Oscar-winner "Under the Sea" is dead in the water here) and the cringe-y addition of new songs by the studio's current go-to music man Lin-Manuel Miranda, which include a dull, forgettable ballad for Prince Eric and a ridiculous "rap" for Scuttle and Sebastian called – wait for it – "The Scuttlebutt." — Aisha Harris, NPR

"None of Miranda's contributions hold a candle to those written by the late, great Howard Ashman. The musical number that fleshes out Prince Eric may be welcome but it's not a memorable addition to the soundtrack, and the less said about Scuttle's rap 'The Scuttlebutt,' the better." — Leigh Monson, AV Club

"It's hard to make hits when you're trying to make hits and Lin Manuel Miranda's new songs are flat, boring and uninspired, despite being co-written with the original composer Alan Menken." — Lex Briscuso, The Wrap

"Then comes a new Miranda-penned rap song called "Scuttlebutt." See, it's meant to be funny, because it's gossipy Scuttle gossiping while repeating her name and the word 'butt' a lot, which is sure to be an illicit thrill for kids who consider that a bad word. For grown-ups, however, this song is so dissonantly juvenile and tedious that not even Diggs and Awkwafina furiously duetting its speedy delivery can help." — Kristy Puchko, Mashable

"Hauer-King sings a new time-waster easy-listening ballad from Alan Menken and Miranda called "Wild Uncharted Waters"... And the bland music doesn't stop there. Awkwafina as Scuttle the seagull and Daveed Diggs ("Hamilton") as Sebastian, the crab, squawk an annoying and out-of-place rap called "The Scuttlebutt" that should've been scuttled." — Johnny Oleksinski, New York Post

"Ariel's father is the sea king Triton, played sleepily by Javier Bardem, who might be bummed at having reached the Anthony Hopkins, long-gray-beard phase of his career." — Carla Meyer, SF Chronicle

"Bardem's Triton is bored and checked out, never granting genuine affection for Ariel or any of his daughters." — Angelica Jade Bastién, Vulture

"That is partly the fault of Javier Bardem, who is the film's weakest link as a rather one-note King of the Sea, relying on his general air of menace." — Maureen Lee Lenker, Entertainment Weekly

"Her father is similarly sanded down. As King Triton, Javier Bardem — sporting a flowing silver beard that matches a stunning cape of wriggling minnows — parrots a string of familiar lines from the first film, but without the bluster that Kenneth Mars brought to the animated monarch." — Kristy Puchko, Mashable

"Perhaps the most distracting element in the new 'Little Mermaid' is how awful everyone looks wet. When Ariel and Triton come to the surface, their wet hair lies dead on their faces. Triton's soppy beard flops against his dull abalone armor in the saddest of ways." — Alex Abad-Santos, Vox

"Shots of the human-obsessed mermaid Ariel (Halle Bailey) swimming among fellow sea creatures look as lifelike as a faux-aquarium screensaver, with the imagery overly CG smoothed and flattened. The look is more animation than live-action, yet lacks the beauty of the old-school original 'Mermaid' or the computer-animated 'Finding Nemo.'" — Carla Meyer, SF Chronicle

"Some scenes in this film — like 'Peter Pan and Wendy' — are so dim it looks like you're watching them through a dirty car window." — Kristy Puchko, Mashable

"Things are cloudy and dull and hard to see, once again probably in the name of authenticity, but straining to see what Marshall and the scores of VFX teams have labored on for years is not a pleasant experience. This could be a projection issue — I wasn't in an especially high-tech theater with color enhancing upgrades. But that also means anyone without access to things like Dolby Vision around the world will have this issue, too." — Lindsey Bahr, Associated Press

"'The Little Mermaid' 2.0 is not oppressively atrocious in the way 'Aladdin' 2.0 and 'Pinocchio' 2.0 are. Like the decent 'Beauty and the Beast' 2.0, there are a handful of moments and a performance or two that manage to stand out amid the cacophony of uncanny, deadening CGI." — Aisha Harris, NPR

"This iteration of 'The Little Mermaid' is the studio's freshest catch since it kicked off this live-action trend with 2015's 'Cinderella,' featuring refreshing storytelling that captures the magic of the original." — Maureen Lee Lenker, Entertainment Weekly

"'The Little Mermaid' is arguably the best live-action Disney remake since Kenneth Branagh's 'Cinderella.' The splendor is there; the romance is crafted with care — but something's still missing." — Lyvie Scott, Inverse

"It's not that this version of The Little Mermaid is bad – it's arguably one of the better live action Disney remakes – it's that, beyond Halle Bailey's incredible performance as Princess Ariel, there's little here that makes as much of an impact as the same moments in the animated version." — Alyssa Mora, IGN

"Diversity is surface level — a neat way for Disney to bolster its image and give the appearance of political thought; the studio is more than happy for Black people to act as foot soldiers defending the worth of the brand against a barrage of online trolls with bad-faith arguments." — Angelica Jade Bastién, Vulture

"There's a nagging sense of risk-aversion — narratively, at least — and that wariness makes the fun it does have feel sanctioned. Like other live-action remakes, 'The Little Mermaid' is a neatly packaged story ribboned with representational awareness." — Lovia Gyarke, The Hollywood Reporter

"'Little Mermaid' suffers from the same ailments almost all of these remakes have: Being 'progressive' while also creatively uninspired.'" — Aisha Harris, NPR

The performances, especially Bailey and McCarthy, stood out as highlights in a heavily rehashed tale that failed to make more of its additional runtime.

From our review: "Other than easy box-office wins, Disney uses these remakes to refine some moments that haven't aged well and they're mostly well-executed, but it's becoming more difficult to justify these projects as anything more than nostalgic cash grabs and subscriber bait if you can't match or outdo the moments that made it iconic."