The Little Mermaid Review: 5 Ups & 5 Downs

3. It's Too Damn Long

The film clocks in at a relatively beefy 135 minutes, making it both the longest of all the live-action Disney remakes so far - a whole minute longer than Cruella - and a stonking 52 minutes longer than the animated original.

No good film is too long, but this movie doesn't remotely persuade that it needed to be this over-extended. Even if you accept the mandatory existence of the new songs and some welcome added character development for Eric, does that really warrant almost an extra hour of a movie?

Right from the film's opening scenes, there's a leaden, meandering pace which prevails throughout. It's a full hour before Ariel is even transformed into a human, and the middle of the movie sags something fierce.

It's easy to see how this could've been improved by trimming 20-30 minutes of fat, because as it stands it's dangerously close to being an outright slog.