While the live-action version follows the original story’s plot fairly closely, it somehow feels much slower-paced. The original version has a runtime of an hour and 22 minutes while this year’s has a confirmed two-hour and 15-minute runtime. Some songs from the original were cut and new ones were added, while the more dramatic scenes were elongated, and made the film feel less lighthearted and heavier than the animated version.
So while their target audience seems to be younger children, wouldn’t it make more sense to make it as fast-paced and digestible as possible? We’re currently in a space in film where it seems like a rarity to have a project that is less than two hours long. I implore all studios that they get back to leaving some things on the cutting room floor so a movie doesn’t feel longer than it has to be, regardless of whom they are making films for.
The children at my screening seemed enthralled in the story from beginning to end regardless of the movie’s length, though, so perhaps it’s just my millennial brain that is yearning for brevity. The scenes with Ursula, played deliciously by Melissa McCarthy, in particular, felt as if they were unnecessarily stretched. Perhaps she was too good at playing the villain that it made me want to see less of her, the same way I felt regarding Dante (Jason Momoa) in Fast X. Too much of a bad thing, no matter how strong the performance, is never good.