After more than six years in the making, The Little Mermaid should be a spectacle for the ages, but even the magic of Rob Marshall (Chicago) and Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hamilton) cannot save the live-action remake. The film feels at once too stunted for an actual musical and too expansive to be just another movie. There's something uncanny, too, in how the humans look underwater and inland so that the wetness of the characters (of all things!) becomes a weirdly icky factor. Not to mention Scuttle the diving bird who looks more like a demonic creature than a feathery companion, or the flat disappointment that is Flounder. If that's the price we must pay for reality, we don't want it.

I've got two words for you: Halle Bailey. Not only does she seem to be the only actor actually acting in the film (sorry, Javier Bardem), but she brings Ariel to heights the 2D animated redhead could never do. Bailey's soft gestures both underwater and on the shore conceal a sharp sense of personal autonomy beyond the sacrifice narrative that's instrumental to the 1989 animated version. Her Ariel is more resolute, more powerful, and decisively more inspiring to young women today, even if the new film remains faithful to its predecessor in many patriarchal ways. But Halle's glorious voice will make you forget that for most of the film and tempt you to sing along before you know it.