Dad Review of Little Mermaid Live! on ABC

I'm secure enough in my masculinity that I'm not ashamed to say I love Disney movies. I loved them when I was a kid, and now that I have kids of my own I love them even more. When I saw the promo for Little Mermaid Live! on ABC I got excited and made plans to watch.

Within a few minutes, I realized this wasn't what I was hoping for. I've seen The Little Mermaid play at Disney World and I loved it. Northwestern High School did a Little Mermaid musical last spring and it was great! Those were live productions.

This was watching The Little Mermaid original animated movie with cut ins for live performances of the musical numbers. It wasn't what I expected, and it was a little hard to get over that. But, my 6 year old didn't seem to mind. She loved it.

The musical numbers that were actually live on a unique stage were good. It was a good live production, for what was actually live. The actors and actresses were all on point and sounded good. But then again, it's not a full live production. It's easy to nail your one or two performances of the night.

Queen Latifah was solid as Ursula, John Stamos did a good chef. Shaggy sounded great. High school me would be shocked to see Shaggy doing this in 2019, but here he was.

Overall, while it wasn't what I expected it was still an enjoyable experience. I'd give it a B-, not because any of the live music was bad, but just because that's all it was.