The original story would be absolutely unadaptable. (Spoilers for a 40+ year-old story) A family of toddlers being murdered by a monster is not going to find much of an audience even among hard-core horror fans.  This story fucked me up as a kid.

I think you’re exactly right. It’s a great song, but it really is this last part that puts it over the top. I don’t see how it could be anywhere near as good now. But they completely neutered Be Prepared as well so this is par for the course sadly.

He can talk, but she can’t. The original Kiss the Girl references that subtly. The new one just hits you over the head with a message that honestly doesn’t even fit the premise. He can use his words and ask her but she still can’t talk back. She’s not writing anything down so it’s still going to be non-verbal/body…

This story was scary as hell. Good or bad, I am not sure I could stand to lose the sleep associated with watching an adaptation.

I’m disappointed this verse was edited out of “Poor Unfortunate Souls” from more of a songwriting perspective. It is the climax of the song, it’s the best PART of the song from a singing and instrumental standpoint. It’s memorable, sarcastic, funny, manipulative. It’s her last ditch effort to get what she wants from…

The whole POINT of that song is Ursula trying to con Ariel into giving up her voice for legs! Ursula doesn’t just bring up douchebro behavior because it’s fun to indulge in awful societal tropes, she’s trying to manipulate Ariel by telling her that men on land don’t WANT women to talk. If you remove that element, what …

From what I can tell, they cut the song from the movie.

Making the villain less villainous by removing those lines makes about as much sense as them 86ing the bad little boys in Pinocchio from drinking beer and smoking cigars. Drinking root beer and staying up past bed time is worthy of getting donkey-fied and then sent to slaughter? 

yeah, something tells me no one was too concerned with THAT one

That’s fair, but again, kids are smarter than people take them for and villains have to be allowed to be clearly villainous. I don’t think one lonely film needs to conduct itself as part of the wider context of an entire lifespan of cultural and social input. It’s painfully clear Ursula isn’t to be trusted. I don’t…

long-overdo

The target audience is families looking for something to do on a lazy Sunday, and it nails that. This is why all these Disney re-make movies make around ten trillion dollars each.

Not a great actress either but I’m sure she’s a great person in general.

AVClub commenters either A) despise the website or B) are the most boilerplate MSNBC-brained dorks imaginable without a single nuanced opinion about anything. I don’t see any reason a writer here would listen to them in either case.

It’s not so much that Gal is a dork for doing the Imagine thing, it’s that the internet is full of assholes who will shit upon anything nice for the lulz and clicks. 

Did they change the part where Ursula takes away Eric’s right to consent by using her powers to make him fall in love with her and agree to marry her?

They should’ve just updated Ursula’s lines for today’s audience. This way, you don’t have to remove the section and it’s still clear that Ursula is giving toxic advice:

I had assumed the part of Poor Unfortunate Souls that they’d change is the part where Ursula talks about helping fat people by making them thin with magic.

I’m split on this, and I think along the same lines you do. I don’t think “Kiss The Girl” needed the update, but I can see it and I don’t think it ruins the song or changes anything. Seems rough on the meter based on the quoted new lyrics, but I’m no musician.

The entire plot is about a woman giving up everything to chase after a man she doesn’t actually know, I don’t think changing a song few lines is gonna make that any less regressive.