Everyone calm down — the fish in the live-action Little Mermaid actually look fine

polygon.com:

Here’s a controversial opinion about Disney’s new live-action remake ofThe Little Mermaid: In spite of all the complaining, the CG animals don’t actually look that bad.

Make no mistake, I don’t think they look good, especially when compared to the original movie. Far from it! But they don’t look as off-putting in the actual movie as they did in some of the trailers. Most of the clips released for promotional purposes were focused on re-creating scenes from the animated classic as closely as possible, which means inserting realistic-looking fish, Sebastian the crab, and other creatures into moments where they mostly react to the human (and mermaid) characters. And realistically rendered animals just won’t have the same evocative expressions as their cartoon counterparts.

Watching a regular, realistic crab respond to a yearning song isn’t all that visually interesting. But watching a realistic crab skitter around trying to keep up with walking humans, while frantically waving his little claws in order to get Ariel’s attention — that’s actually hilarious on screen. The 2023Little Mermaid feels like it’s close to being self-aware about how funny it looks when an actual human talks to a crab or a fish and expects an answer. When director Rob Marshall and the animation team lean into that absurdity and embrace just how ridiculous their sea creatures look, it works surprisingly well.

The movie works because of those interactions. Some of the bigger set-pieces, like the performance of “Under the Sea,” don’t land as well as the more comic moments, because the focus is on a bunch of animals dancing around without any expressions to indicate that they’re enjoying it, so their behavior comes off as stilted and forced. In this