Memorial Day Movies: You Hurt My Feelings & The Little Mermaid

The long weekend has come and gone but I got to see two great movies in theaters. One is a small, charming New York comedy, and the other is a fantastical Disney extravaganza. Both made me very happy.

You Hurt My Feelings: From the mind of writer-director Nicole Holofcener, this is a very New York movie about Beth and Don (the wonderful Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Tobias Menzies), a couple that have been married for many years but are now both having mild career crises and dealing with all that middle age malaise. Their 23-year old son, Elliott (Owen Teague), who they love to bits, is going through his own romantic and career struggles and has that wonderful only child problem where he’s really close to his parents but also subsequently thrown by the co-dependence of their family unit. Beth‘s sister, Sarah (played by the great Michaela Watkins) is also a bit fed up with her job, but is also dealing with her husband’s anxiety over his foundering acting career. So yeah. Everyone’s generally alright, but also a little bit existential, and what follows is a movie brimming with light observational comedy and a bunch of weird and random characters who get to toss off some genuinely hilarious one-liners.

My favorite storyline probably involved Don because he is a therapist who is going through a bit of a slump and his clients constitute a truly magnificent cast of characters who either feel bad for their struggling therapist, or have raging contempt for him. But naturally, Julia Louis-Dreyfus is the star of the show, playing Beth as a woman brimming with insecurities, walking around with a bright but worried smile, trying to keep it all together while she feels like everything’s falling apart. I appreciated how gentle and kind this film was - nothing truly devastating happens, but in classic human fashion, everything feels truly devastating to these people until they can reach a resolution. It made me laugh and it made me feel seen. It’s a damn fine movie.

The Little Mermaid: I know Disney has been wildly hit-or-miss with these live-action adaptations of their classic animated movies. But writer David Magee and director Rob Marshall really hit it out of the park with this one. You all know the story right? Mermaid falls in love with a prince, makes a deal with an evil sea witch to give up her voice in return for legs, and has three days to get true love's kiss. She’s accompanied on her adventures by a crab, a fish, and a bird, and eventually there’s a happily ever after. But oh there’s so much to enjoy in between!

The visual effects are absolutely superb. I don’t know how they managed it, but everyone looks like they’re swimming around under the ocean and the colors are vibrant and everything is beautiful. The actors are top-notch, with Halley Bailey absolutely crushing it as Ariel, while Melissa McCarthy hams it up nicely as the evil Ursula and Javier Bardem delivers as Ariel’s overbearing father, Triton. Daveed Diggs and Awkwafina are perfect voice casting for Sebastian and Scuttle, and Jonah Hauer-King is perfectly adequate as Prince Eric (listen, we don’t watch Disney movies to get robust character development for the princes ya know?). But of course, the star attraction is the music. Under the Sea and Kiss the Girl are Disney’s two greatest songs, and here they get a joyous rendition. Obviously, the new songs they’ve added in are nothing to write home about, but the classics are still absolute bangers, and I was dancing away in my seat. So dive right in and become part of this world - you may never want to leave.