If I had to pick just one word to describe Disney’s live-action remakes of the studio’s beloved classics, it would be lackluster. The House Of Mouse has remade a bunch of its old animated movies, and started remaking them in earnest with 2010’s Alice in Wonderland from Tim Burton, though the current project effectively kicked into high gear with 2015’s Cinderella (Maleficent released the year before, but was more of a spin-off than a remake of Sleeping Beauty).
Previous films like 101 Dalmatians came out before there was any real organized effort at Disney to remake everything. There have been over 20 remakes all told at this point, the last of which—The Little Mermaid—hit theaters in 2023. It was actually better than I expected, but still felt lifeless and drab compared to its animated counterpart. And good luck humming any of the new tunes. As much as the live-action fails to live up to the original animation, the music has been even more of a disappointment.
This is the running theme with Disney’s live-action remakes. Even the better ones fail to capture the magic of the animated classics. Beauty and the Beast is one of the better remakes, but it sits in the shadow of what is perhaps the greatest of all of Disney’s animated princess films. Others, like Mulan, are genuinely embarrassing. I couldn’t even bring myself to watch Peter Pan & Wendy.
I liked Moana quite a bit, though it’s far from my favorite Disney princess movie. I still rank Tangled as the best of the “new” Disney animated princess movies, though I like Moana better than the wildly overhyped Frozen movies.
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