Thankfully, the film versions of adolescent angst are less graphically painful.
(I should also confess that I usually springboard off of the selections by fairy tale podcast Of Slippers and Spindles, though I tend to add a few more films to round things out.)
Rusalochka (1976), October 3, 2021, streamed via YouTube
I should really learn the Cyrillic alphabet. It seems like an oversight, y'know? Anyway, in a move that startled me, after the mermaid rescues the prince, she gets spotted by some fishermen and they throw rocks at her. Rocks!
She does, however, find one kindly ally--a fatherly handyman to whom she confesses she must meet her prince or she'll die. So he goes and finds her a witch by, heh, going to the pub and asking where he can find a witch. There's a whole thing where people try to burn the mermaid at the stake, but the princess rescues her and decides to, like, adopt her or something. ("The 13th century we live in is very cruel," the princess tells the mermaid at one point, which seems an extremely meta thing to say.) Then the prince is killed dueling for the princess (or something), but the mermaid trades her life to the witch. The prince marries the princess, which DOOMS the mermaid, but then the handyman trades his life for the mermaid's. Except she doesn't stay human--she becomes a spirit wandering the globe, bestowing luck on those who see her.
Poor kindly handyman.
The Little Mermaid, 04 October 2021, streamed via Disney+
This is the gateway to the Disney renaissance, right? When the princess musicals got way SRS BZNS? And, I mean, it's not surprising, what with the catchy tunes and Ursula, true queen of the sea AND OUR HEARTS.
And yup, I know every lyric and trill to this soundtrack. Ariel's dilemma of, They just don't understaaaaand me, however, no longer resonates. I mean, until Triton goes nuclear on Ariel's grotto in the most violent way possible.
Like, dude. Also, if only Ariel's mother had been around, as cartoonist Emily Heller pointed out:
Ariel's transition to humanity is, YIKES, also extremely violent. And she would have drowned if Flounder hadn't hauled her up to the surface! Ariel recovers quickly, though, because this hair-fiddling she does is pretty dang effective flirting.
We have a delightful bit where the laundry women are jawing away, "If Eric's looking for a girl, I know a couple of highly available ones right here," and then we head right back into TRAUMATIC VIOLENCE AND FISH DISMEMBERMENT. Way to retain the spirit of Andersen's feet-like-knives aesthetic, Disney.
Anyway, "Kiss the Girl" remains pretty sultry.
I appreciate that things go horribly wrong--the spell doesn't get broken in time, Triton has to sacrifice himself, and Ursula becomes THE KRAKEN.
And while it is a damn shame Ursula gets taken out by an extremely phallic symbol, it is kind of nice to see Prince Eric take some initiative here? The prince of this story generally has things happen to him, so I guess it's nice he has some agency in the end? I don't know, guys. This story is whacked OUT.
Ponyo, 15 October 2021, streamed via HBO Max
A Miyazaki! How delightful! Our little mermaid is an adorable little water-dweller who happens to drift into the path of a boy named Sosuke. He rescues her from being stuck in a glass jar, cutting his hand in the process. She licks up the blood, healing him.
Sosuke thinks she's a goldfish and names her Ponyo. Meanwhile, Ponyo's father Fujimoto, a wizard, tries to rescue her from the humans because, let's be fair, humans are pretty gross.
Sosuke lugs Ponyo around in a bucket for a while and she spits on people who don't like her. Sassy li'l goldfish.
Ponyo's father "rescues" her, she declares she wants to return to land, and while her father is out, her dozens of tiny sisters helps her escape and she uses magic to transform into a girl. She also, alas, seems to bring tsunamis with her--it's a balance of nature thing. (Hilariously, she sometimes has chicken legs.)
Girl-Ponyo and Sosuke are adorable together, but also, Sosuke's father is on a ship out there in tsunami-land, and his mother is worried about the nursing home where she works, which is totally powerless due to the storm.
Meanwhile, out in the ocean, Ponyo's father meets up with her mother Gran Mamare, who just so happens to be THE GODDESS OF MERCY. They realize that Ponyo's imbalancing of nature (the tsunamis PLUS the moon is falling WTF Ponyo) can only be redressed if she becomes fully human--which she can only do if Sosuke passes a test, because this is a fairy tale. If he doesn't, Ponyo turns into seafoam. And, of course, THE WORLD ENDS.
There's an adorable interlude where Ponyo and Sosuke magick up a boat and then go sailing around the almost-completely-inundated island.
Thankfully, Gran Mamare gave all the folks at the nursing home the ability to breathe underwater, like, gods above and below, Ponyo, think about the consequences of your actions.
Yadda yadda yadda, the test is when Gran Mamare asks Sosuke if he would love Ponyo as a fish. His answer? He'll always love Ponyo, whether she's a girl, a fish, or something in between.
THIS KID. And then Ponyo gets to be human!
We
won't ask, like, where will Ponyo live and who will fund her education and all that. Nope.
Mei Ren Yu (The Mermaid), 16 October 2021, streamed via Amazon Video
This version is Chinese, directed by Stephen Chow, and it is supremely silly. That said, the premise is fun: Liu Xuan, a development billionaire, purchases Green Gulf and uses some sonar technology to...kill all the wildlife? Somehow. But it just so happens Green Gulf is also home to some mermaids. To stop the carnage, the mermaids send Shan, who has learned to shuffle about as if on legs, to assassinate Xuan.
That's right: Our little mermaid is a HITMAN, y'all. She's trained by the leader of the merfolks, the, uh, imaginatively named Octopus but, alas, incredibly bad at the whole assasination thing.
Anyway, Xuan wants to make his ex Ruolan jealous, but Shan's quirkiness wins him over, reminds him of his humble roots, yadda yadda yadda.
Anyway, there's a big battle and Ruolan has a bunch of the merpeople killed. Both Xuan and Shan are greivously injured, but things end up okay in the end.
The Little Mermaid (2018), 17 October 2021, streamed via Showtime via Hulu
I didn't even know this movie was a thing! Also, why is it a thing? Though it's a nice take on the legend. William Moseley AKA Peter Pevensie plays Cam, a young British man who moves to America to take care of his newly-orphaned and oft-ill niece. He takes her down to Mississippi to investigate a supposed miracle cure, "Mermaid Water" or something.
At the carnival, said Mermaid of the Mississippi is being kept in what's essentially an extra-large aquarium.
But also, mermaids get legs when it's low tide? Like, they run into Elizabeth the Mermaid as she's just...wandering around the woods?
Then everybody goes on a riverboat and why won't anybody just sell Cam the healing water and get him out of their business? That seems like a much more efficient way of dealing with a nosy reporter than, "Stay away if you know what's good for you." In any case, they all go to a dance, Elle proves to be an excellent wingman, and it's adorable.
Oh, the miracle water sold by evil ringmaster Locke isn't a permanent cure-all. He keeps Elizabeth's soul in a vial, because that's a thing you can do with souls? The water she swims in can heal folk for a time, but apparently it goes away. Or something. Anyway, it turns out Elle has "the heart of a mermaid," so Locke kidnaps her.
In a fun HCA reversal, Locke offers to turn Elle into a mermaid in exchange for her soul. But with the help of Thora the fortune teller and Ulysses the beast-dude, Cam frees Elle and Elizabeth and steals back Elizabeth's soul. BECAUSE THORA CAN STOP TIME. WHAT. He also decides to release the circus elephant, because it can completely fend for itself in the Mississippi Delta, I'm sure.
They hop a train to get to the ocean because, and I quote, "All our trains run towards the ocean." WHY NOT. Locke almost stops them, but Thora and Elle use Elizabeth's soul to immobilize him (okay), then the boys shove Locke off a cliff.
They get Elizabeth to the water and, rejuvenated, she's able to heal Elle with her own magic. Then she returns to the sea.
And it turns out this entire story is being told by Elle to her grandchildren. So I guess things turned out okay for everyone?
My Fairy Tail Love Story, 20 October 2021, streamed via Amazon Video
Dudes, it's a Filipino version of the story! How could I not? It's Taglish! And it starts with A DEBUT.
So, like, Chantel is super-spoiled. When her father ruins her debut by bringing HIS MISTRESS to the party, he makes amends by giving her a fancy necklace and funding a party for her and her friends on a secluded island. Then she's super-rude to a mysterious grandmother, Nana Gurang, on a beach and she gets MERMAID CURSED. In addition to the tail, she also feels compelled to sing almost all of her dialogue, lol.
She and her buddy Noah theorize that, as in Disney's The Little Mermaid, she needs true love's kiss to get turned human. So when they hear tell that DJ Ethan (YOU READ THAT RIGHT) was in a plane crash, she sets out to sea to find him. (There's a funny little gag where she gets extremely offended that she menstruates as a mermaid until she realizes it's blood from DJ Ethan's wound.) Anyway, she saves him and wakes up the next morning with legs.
It turns out that whenever Chantel is be-legged during the day and be-finned at night. Why? *shrug* It certainly makes her whirlwind romance with DJ Ethan awkward. Like when they get stuck in a ferris wheel and she turns mermaid while they're up there.
An extremely jealous Noah poses as Chantel's "Kuya Bro," and it's both hilarious and annoying. Like, I think we're supposed to feel like Noah is her true true love, but let's not play, y'all. He spends most of this movie pouting in the background and ditching work to help Chantel when she doesn't need it.
Noah is incel trash, my dudes. DJ Ethan is a straight-up himbo and his immediate freakout at Chantel's mermaidyness is character assassination HOW DARE THEY. Then Chantel's mom pops in to explain there's no such thing as true love. "Between love at first sight and happily ever after, there's the reality….Love doesn't always lead to a happy ending."
Btw, Noah tells Chantel she's always selfish, but he's gotten used to her? GTFO of here with this nonsense. I cannot even tell you how frickin' RELIEVED I was when Chantel was like, "I love you, but only as a friend." YAAAAAAAAS.
Anyway, DJ Ethan comes back and apologizes for being an asshat earlier, and Nana Gurang pops up with some additional information. Mermaidyness is transmittable via kiss! So...they do not kiss because Ethan, alas, has self-respect and appropriate boundaries and she acknowledges he shouldn't have to sacrifice his entire life because they love each other. RESPECT TO YOU BOTH.
Then Noah goes and gets himself mermaid cursed so they can be together forever because he's WILLING TO WAIT UGHHHHHHHHHHH. She points out that may never happen, and he's all like, we'll still be true mermaid best friends OR WHATEVER. Of course they kiss at the end, WAY TO SETTLE, Chantel.
The Little Mermaid Live!, 24 October 2021, streamed via Disney+
This production is WEIRD: It's the animated film, but also with live-on-stage parts? I was fairly skeptical, but Queen Latifah plays Ursula, so what the hell, right? And the cast is, in fact, pretty good. In addition to Queen Latifah, we've got Auli'li Cravalho (Moana), Graham Phillips (The Good Wife), Amber Riley (Glee), John Stamos, and Shaggy.
Who is the woman on the far left? JODY BENSON.
That said, what exactly do we get from a mash-up of the film and the Broadway show?
Okay fine, IT IS A REAL DOG PLAYING MAX. Her name, apparently, is Bagel. I APPROVE.
And I do, for some reason, have a soft spot for Graham Phillips from his time on The Good Wife, so there's that.
So I guess that all happened.
Anyway, can't wait for the 2023 live-action film. Will it be a remix or a straight-up copy? WHO CAN SAY.
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