Disney has been pulling out all the stops to promote the highly-anticipated live-action remake of The Little Mermaid, set to debut next month, with new trailers and the release of the single “Part of Your World” on music platforms.
As the momentum continues to build the closer premiere date approaches, the film has also received some flak. As previously reported, The Little Mermaid star Halle Bailey faced massive backlash when it was announced that she would be portraying the role of Ariel in 2019.
The reason surrounding the scrutiny, which led to the hashtag “Not My Ariel” to trend on Twitter, was because Bailey, who is Black, was going to play a white character. To date, the criticism about Bailey’s role has seemed to calm down because of the other things that people are alleging that Disney has done wrong with the live-action The Little Mermaid. The list includes the makeup for Ursula the sea witch, played by Melissa McCarthy.
Recently on TikTok, @selmanillanyc called out the company for not hiring a proper makeup artist to do McCarthy’s face. One of the faults the frustrated social media user pointed out was that McCarthy’s dark eye shadow was two different shapes and it appeared that it was applied by an individual learning how to do “drag makeup” for the “first time.”
“This makeup makes me irrationally angry. Disney could have thrown a pebble and hit a drag queen that could paint Melissa [McCarthy] better than this. Like the shapes one they’re not even. These eyes are completely different shapes. Two the shape is just so amateur. It’s literally like first time ever doing drag makeup. That’s what it is.”
In addition to the previous remarks, @selmanillanyc explained that another issue they found that contributed to McCarthy’s questionable makeup job was that the particular artist didn’t blend the eye shadow or adhere to continuity. Because of that, the actress looks different in every scene she appears in. They said, while also criticizing McCarthy’s eyebrows,
“Like what is this shape. There’s no blending, there no continuity. This is a different shape than the last photo I just showed, there’s no continuity in the makeup either. Which means it going to look different everytime we see Ursula in the film. The last thing I’ll say with the budget and the CGI that they already doing in this film you couldn’t hide her brow coverage. First of all Elmer’s glue is water soluble that’s not realistic is it? But also she is literally just an octopus, she’s an octopus so she wouldn’t have eyebrows to cover.”
The TikTok user would end their rant by saying they would still enjoy the live-action The Little Mermaid, but they felt Disney should have done better because of all the money they spent on the budget and the CGI to make this film.
The Little Mermaid is scheduled to make its theatrical debut on May 26.