‘The Little Mermaid’ Review: Halle Bailey’s Star Performance Anchors Rob Marshall’s Dark Disney Remake

Emiliano Granada As Annecy rounds the final bend on its biggest edition to date, with a tantalizing promise of a brighter future for animation in much of Europe, Marjolaine Perreten’s 29-minute film “Pebble Hill” (“La Colline aux cailloux”), part of its TV Films competition,  has been one of the multiple gems to come out of it.  Minimalist in design, a trademark of the young Swiss filmmaker’s unique style, the animation, which has already won an award at Hamburg’s Mo & Friese Kinder Kurzfilm Festival, is charming and tender, the 29-minute film, produced by renowned Swiss production company Nadasdy Film in Geneva, a producer on “No Dogs or Italians Allowed,” and France’s Les Films du Nord, tells the story of a family of shrews that after loosing their home due to the breaking of an upstream dam embark on a journey alongside an old shrew to find the Pebble Hill. 

Apple Martin is channeling one of her mom's most famous looks! The 19-year-old daughter of Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin rocked her mom's iconic Alexander McQueen dress from the 2002 Oscars in a new snapshot shared by the actress. While participating in a Q&A session via her Instagram Story on Thursday, Paltrow responded to one fan's query regarding whether her daughter ever wears items from her personal fashion archive. The Goop founder and actress responded by sharing a photo of Apple striking a pose in the gothic-inspired gown, smiling with one hand under her chin and the other on her hip. «Everybody really hated this, by the way, but I think it’s kind of dope, Like, I'm into it,» Paltrow said of the head-turning look in a 2021 fashion retrospective interview with.

Melissa McCarthy is opening up about her Gilmore Girls past.

Jodi Benson, the actor that gave voice to Disney’s animated film The Little Mermaid, is showing her support for the live-action adaptation starring Halle Bailey.

Actress Halle Bailey and Darryl Dwayne “DDG” Grandberry Jr. first met through their respective careers.

BreAnna Bell “American Idol” scored a win for ABC with this season’s penultimate episode, which aired May 15. The episode hit season highs in total viewers (7.9 million) and with a 1.2 rating among the Adults 18-49 demographic. The episode’s performance pushed the series to its strongest showing in a year according to Nielsen ratings, according to new numbers obtained by Variety. According to the network, “Idol” jumped 3% for the third straight week in total viewers, climbing up the previous week’s 7.7 million total viewers, and also grew week-to-week by 9% among adults 18-49, from a 1.1 rating. In the episode, fans were given a closer look at the Season 21 contestants, including Colin Stough, Iam Tongi and Megan Danielle, via their journeys from hometown to Hollywood. (Tongi was later crowned this season’s winner in the May 21 episode.) Live+7 day numbers for the finale won’t be released until next week, but according to live+same day data, the season finale is the show’s most-watched in three years among total viewers, recording an audience of 6.6 million.

Disney’s return to live-action takes of their animated vault in the fullest theatrical form happens this weekend with Rob Marshall’s The Little Mermaid which is eyeing a $180M worldwide start.

 features a few tweaks to the story's iconic story and music, but a familiar voice vows that the changes are not only necessary but «beautifully» done.Jodi Benson, the voice actress who provided the voice of Ariel in the 1989 animated film, shared her support for the film's changes during an interview with , pointing out how different the world was when the original movie began recording sessions in 1986. «It's 2023, so we have to grow, we have to learn, we have to be aware of our surroundings,» she says. «We've got to be aware of our growth as humans and what's important now and what maybe isn't as important. Things change.

 features a few tweaks to the story's iconic story and music, but a familiar voice vows that the changes are not only necessary but «beautifully» done.Jodi Benson, the voice actress who provided the voice of Ariel in the 1989 animated film, shared her support for the film's changes during an interview with , pointing out how different the world was when the original movie began recording sessions in 1986. «It's 2023, so we have to grow, we have to learn, we have to be aware of our surroundings,» she says. «We've got to be aware of our growth as humans and what's important now and what maybe isn't as important. Things change.

Halle Bailey saw the viral videos of young black girls happily reacting to clips of the upcoming The Little Mermaid.

The Little Mermaid is opening in theaters in just a couple of more days and many fans are looking forward to it.

Melissa McCarthy is opening up about a film set that left her "physically ill" because of the "hostile" work conditions. In a recent interview, the actress, 52, did not name the film set or the person who made the movie set "volatile." "I did work for someone once who ran such a volatile, hostile set that it made me physically ill. My eyes were swelling up, I was absorbing all of this nuttiness," McCarthy told The Observer.  "There were people weeping, visibly so upset by this one person.

Halle Bailey wants her fans to trust what she’s doing.

boasts a star-studded cast that loves one thing even more than working together --  about their time working together!Speaking with ET's Nischelle Turner ahead of the film's May 26 release, Melissa McCarthy and Javier Bardem, who portray Ursula and King Triton, respectively, couldn't help but gush about their leading lady, Halle Bailey.When asked about their favorite song from the new film, Bardem can't help but praise Bailey's rendition of Princess Ariel's iconic tune, «Part of Your World.»«What she does with her voice in that song, it's very special. And also, it's the first song in the movie,» he notes.

Halle Bailey is prioritizing her privacy as her star shines brighter every day.In conversation with for their May cover story, the 23-year-old shared how she strives to ensure the attention doesn't overwhelm her as fans gear up for the release of on May 26 and  on Dec. 25.«Mentally, sometimes it's really difficult being in this industry,» she tells the outlet, «knowing that there are so many opinions [about] you and what you're doing, or what you should be or what you could be doing better.

Melissa McCarthy likes a cool, calm set.

Naman Ramachandran Universal’s “Fast X” debuted atop the U.K. and Ireland box office with £5.8 million ($7.3 million), according to numbers released by Comscore. In second place, Disney’s “Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3” continued its strong run in the territory, adding £2.8 million in its third weekend for a total of £28.9 million. In its seventh weekend, Universal’s “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” earned £544,283 in third position for a total of £51.8 million. Lionsgate’s “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” debuted in fourth place with £327,197. Rounding off the top five was another debut, Sony’s “Beau Is Afraid,” with £231,370. The other debut in the top 10 was Trafalgar Releasing’s “Don Giovanni – Met Opera 2023,” which bowed in ninth position with £99,842.

Melissa McCarthy is coming forward about a work environment she found both «hostile» and «volatile.»Although The Little Mermaidstar didn’t name the film set the situation took place in or who the person was, she did recall feeling «physically ill» from the strenuous workplace conditions. «I did work for someone once who ran such a volatile, hostile set that it made me physically ill. My eyes were swelling up, I was absorbing all of this nuttiness,» McCarthy tells The Observer.

Halle Bailey is just three days out from the anticipated release of “The Little Mermaid” and, ahead of the big day, she’s recounting her reaction to the overwhelming response of young Black girls who gleefully reacted to an Ariel they identified with.

The Little Mermaid star is venturing away from home for the very first time. In her , the 23-year-old singer and actor shared that she moved into her first solo apartment after returning to Los Angeles from London, where she'd been filming the Disney live-action remake. After relocating from Georgia to California with her family in 2012, Halle recently took an important baby step toward independence by moving into a place of her own…in the same building as her 24-year-old sister “It’s nice because we’re neighbors and she’s always there when I need her, but we have our own space,” Halle told Glamour.

The Little Mermaid to the screen, as star Halle Bailey knows all too well. Before she shot to fame as the new Ariel, was half of a well-loved singing duo with her sister , and just one of the starlets Disney was considering for its reimagining of the 1989 animated classic.In 2019, her agent told her that, after seeing her perform at the Grammys, director Rob Marshall wanted her for an audition. Bailey figured the part was “one of the sisters or something like that," she told Glamour exclusively.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Disney’s live-action “The Little Mermaid” is both a faithful and expanded adaptation of the studio’s 1989 animated classic, which featured an iconic voice performance from Jodie Benson as princess Ariel. News broke in April that director Rob Marshall and his “The Little Mermaid” team changed lyrics to classic songs such as “Kiss the Girl” and “Poor Unfortunate Souls” to address matters of consent and more. The love story between Ariel and Prince Eric was also overhauled so that Ariel isn’t simply giving up her voice for the love of a man, which is perhaps the biggest criticism made these days against the 1989 original. “We’re talking about starting our [voiceover] sessions in ’86 [for the original film],” Benson recently told Entertainment Weekly, defending the new film’s decision to update “The Little Mermaid” to contemporary times. “It’s 2023, so we have to grow, we have to learn, we have to be aware of our surroundings.”

Melissa McCarthy is opening up about a work environment she found herself in that she deemed as “hostile, volatile.”

The Color Purple is coming!

this year’s CinemaCon that director Blitz Bazawule’s musical adaptation of Alice Walker’s novel is “not your Mama’s ‘Color Purple’,” and based on the first trailer, she’s right. Warner Bros.

Culturally, “The Color Purple” is many different things to many people. To some, it’s the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1982 novel of the same name by Alice Walker, the 1985 adaptation of that novel by Steven Spielberg, and more recently, it’s the 2005 musical with music and lyrics by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis, and Stephen Bray.

Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg have reunited to revive “The Color Purple” into a movie musical. After debuting footage for distributors at CinemaCon last month, Warner Bros. has released the first trailer of the new adaptation, directed by Blitz Bazawule and set to premiere in North America on Dec.

 presents the proclamation for viewers with their first look at the Blitz Bazawule-directed reimagining of the story made iconic in the 1982 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Alice Walker, the 1985 Warner Bros. Pictures film and the Tony Award-winning stage musical.Called a «revival» by producer Oprah Winfrey during the trailer's presentation, the preview gives a brief look at how the film tells the powerful and heartbreaking story of Celie, a young Black woman living in the South from the early to mid-1900s, who finds strength in an extraordinary sisterhood and unbreakable bond.«The reason this moment is so important is because for as long as there is a need for self-discovery, self-empowerment, as long as there's a need for victory in someone's life, as long as there's a need for people to know what it feels like to be loved up and to be made full and whole through somebody's love, there will be a need for ,» Winfrey told journalists. Steven Spielberg and Quincy Jones serve as producers alongside Winfrey, a full-circle moment for the trio since Spielberg directed the film adaptation in which Winfrey made her film debut and Jones produced. Fantasia Barrino makes her major motion picture debut by reprising the role of adult Celie, which she first portrayed in her Broadway debut in 2007 and won a Theatre World Award for. Danielle Brooks stars alongside her as Sofia, a role that she played on Broadway during the 2015 revival production, which earned her a Tony Award nomination.The star-studded cast includes Taraji P.

, McCarthy—who’s starring as the villainous Ursula in Disney’s live-action Little Mermaid remake—revealed that she once fell “physically ill” due to the toxic nature of a set she was working on. “I did work for someone once who ran such a volatile, hostile set that it made me physically ill,” the Oscar nominee said. “My eyes were swelling up, I was absorbing all of this nuttiness.”According to McCarthy, the toxicity on set stemmed from one person in particular, whom she did not name. “There were people weeping, visibly so upset by this one person,” she said.

latest flesh-and-blood cash grab that’s more lifeless than far better two-dimensional painted drawings.The magic and soul of the studio’s animated classics never, ever translate to this colder, realistic context, and still they keep churning them out.   Why learn their lesson? “The Lion King” and “Beauty and the Beast” both grossed over $1 billion. The movies don’t need to be high-quality because the titles and logos do the heavy-lifting for them. While director Rob Marshall (“Chicago”) and writer David Magee make enough prudent changes to ensure their musical film functions efficiently, many alterations seem to exist only to achieve a bloated two-hour runtime or to wedge Lin-Manuel Miranda’s name into the end credits.For instance, when a smitten Prince Eric (Jonah Hauer-King) takes speechless Ariel (Halle Bailey) around his island kingdom, the Caribbean carriage ride is more of the “Gilligan’s Island” length — a three-hour tour.  That’s one of many middling efforts to deepen the prince’s character from just a smile on legs.

Halle Bailey and Melissa McCarthy are joined by director Rob Marshall as they walk the red carpet for the the Australian premiere of The Little Mermaid on Monday (May 22) in Sydney, Australia.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Here’s the funny thing about “The Little Mermaid”: Ariel spends most of the film wishing she were human, wondering what it’s like to go walking around on those … what do you call ’em? But practically every girl who sees the movie dreams of swimming in the opposite direction — which is to say, they want to be mermaids … or else an animated Disney princess. “The seaweed is always greener in somebody else’s lake,” as the song goes, and the most important thing about remaking this particular favorite for a fresh generation is maintaining the fantasy that any of us can be Ariel, when in fact, it takes a one-in-a-million talent like Halle Bailey to fill those flippers on-screen.

Melissa McCarthy is opening up about working on a set that was so toxic, it made her physically sick.

Disney’s live-action “The Little Mermaid” — the highly anticipated and revamped musical starring Halle Bailey — is finally here to take us back under the sea. The music by Oscar-winner Alan Menken that made the first one a hit is also back, but these songs have been rewritten for the live version with help from Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Halle Bailey recently praised her “The Little Mermaid” co-star Melissa McCarthy for teaching her how to speak up and say what works for her on set, but there was a time when McCarthy herself wasn’t always so vocal. In a recent interview with The Observer, McCarthy revealed she once became sick due to working on a toxic set that left many of the cast and crew “weeping.” The experience led McCarthy to realize she can’t remain quiet amid inappropriate working conditions. “I did work for someone once who ran such a volatile, hostile set that it made me physically ill,” McCarthy said. “My eyes were swelling up, I was absorbing all of this nuttiness.”

Amazon Prime’s “Citadel,” which stars Meghan Markle’s pal Priyanka Chopra.Chopra, 41 — who plays the series lead, agent Nadia Sinh — has been a close friend of Markle’s since 2016, when they met at Elle’s Women in Television event.In the third episode of “Citadel,” which dropped earlier this month, Nadia sends Mason Kane, played by Richard Madden, to meet with crime honcho Balduino Basto.Balduino, played by Sen Monro, is asked to help break into the office of the armed forces chief, to which he exclaims: “The chief of armed forces? You might as well have asked me how to get between the legs of the Duchess of Cambridge!”The Post reached out to Amazon for comment.The line coincides with a clever critic noting what seemed to be a reference to the royal family in the live action remake of Disney’s “Little Mermaid,” starring Halle Bailey.In the scene, Prince Eric guesses Ariel’s name — because she traded her voice for legs — asking first if it is Diana, then Catherine. “His first guess is Diana.