more fun then a dingelhopper

Well every October I wait and buy the Disney Platinum edition DVD’s. All the platinum so far have been pretty good with the likes of the Lion King and Beauty and the Beast. And I remember liking the little mermaid as a kid despite not watching it in 15 years. So I decided to buy the DVD and while it’s not as good has the 3 Disney movies released after that (Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and the Lion King) it set up the stage for those movies beautifully.

The movie
The movie is set up in an underwater sea kingdom which is ruled by King Triton king of the seas. And it follows his youngest daughter a young mermaid Ariel. Ariel happens to be curious about the outside world and explores ruins of humans’ ships underneath the sea for treasure. She takes whatever she finds to Schuttle the seagull so he can tell her what they are used for. Schuttle doesn’t know anything about humans and he confuses a fork (or what he calls a dinkelhopper) for a comb.

Trouble happens when Ariel saves a human prince from drowning; and then falls in love while singing to him while he’s still half unconscious. King Triton forbids it and he finds out from Sebastian his court composer and crab who’s supposed to be looking out for Ariel that she’s in love with a human he destroys her collection of human artifacts.

This falls in line perfect with the evil sea witch Ursula’s plan, to add Ariel to her own private collection. She convinces Ariel to make a deal with her despite Sebastian’s and Flounders warnings about the witches trick. The deal is she will turn her into a human for 3 days. If she can get the Prince to kiss her in 3 days she will remain human. But Ursula will get her voice; and if she can’t get the prince to kiss her in 3 days she belongs to Ursula. Ariel accepts and gets turned into a mute human and has to convince the Prince, who is more interested in searching for the woman with a lovely voice who saved him from drowning who she really is without her voice. Luckily she does have help from Schuttle, Flounder, and Sebastian to help pull it off.

My thoughts.
While The Little Mermaid isn’t a good a movie has the Disney animated movie that came after it. It still is a good movie that helped revitalize the company’s animation department after a long drought in the 80’s.

Where the movie gets a lot of it’s charm from is it’s music. Now for the kiddies who think the music in the movie has to with the Alantica stage from Kingdom Hearts 2 (which by the way if the government outlaws Red Hot Chili Peppers at Gitmo those would make good replacements) I can tell you that those songs have little to nothing to do with the songs and the way they are sung in the movie. Some great hits came out of the movie including under the sea, part of your world, and kiss the girl.

The animation in the movie is pretty good considering that this is one of the last Disney movies to use the classic cel animation. Compared to the other Disney movies that followed Little Mermaids animation has the inconsistency and flatness that old fashion cel drawn cartoons can have. But don’t think that the movies animation is boring. There is plenty of affect animation used for the under the sea parts including bubbles and water distortions. Also some CGI and digital animation was used in small parts of the movie for extra effect when needed. Despite the fact that the Little Mermaid is showing its age it’s still a beauty to look at.

As for the overall story its pretty good in-between the songs. We have the usual Disney heroine love story to go through the paces. The Disney wise cracking side kicked hadn’t been quite done yet so Ariel has two comic relief side kicks to turn to. There is Sebastian who not only sings two songs in the movie but is also uptight and worry wart. This is of course the type of character that is easily abuse and plenty of slapstick humor is used. Then of course Schuttle who is of course an idiot who as some pratfalls and jokes to him as well. Some jokes that come from Schuttle are Ariel’s misunderstanding of the human thanks to him, expect more then one fork combing joke.

The only thing that some people might be mad is that the story has a Disney ending to it, and the original Hans Christian Andersen tale had anything but a Disney ending to it may disappoint folks. But that’s forgivable consider this is a family movie with bright animation fast pace and happy tunes it would kind of killed the mood to have kept the original ending in there. Of course it would have meant no bad Disney sequels though.

DVD extras.
The two pack DVD is packed with extras. On the first disc you get the movie plus an audio commentary. Also each song in the movie can be played on with it’s own sing along subtitles. There is also a music video by the latest Disney pop singer Ashley Tisdale singing kiss the girl. It’s not as bad has you think it is but the song was a slow moving romantic song, turning it into a fast moving bubble gum rock song kind of ruins it. Finally there is a scene from the little mermaid 3, it’s not a bad scene to bad the song they sing was way overused in Beetlejuice.

The specials features on the 2nd disc are laid out as most modern day Disney DVD’s are. You have backstage stage Disney with plenty of features about the movie. There is a 40 minute documentary about making the movie. An interview with the special effects animators. A biography of Hans Christian Anderson as well has comparisons between the original fairy tale, a version Walt Disney had started in the 40’s but was never completed and the 89 final movie. And finally there is a short Disney movie called the little match stick girl, this movie unlike the main feature though doesn’t have a happy Disney ending to it.

Then there is deleted and extended scenes about 20 minutes of them each starting with a little explanation what it was about and why it was cut.

Finally there is the fun and games but don’t skip over this one. For once there is no Disney personality test and other mind numbingly bad DVD games. This time the fun and game go around a ride that Disney created in the 90’s around the little mermaid. The ride was canned despite being deep in development. So the people behind the ride have created a CGI version to show what the ride would have looked like and what they would have done. You can see it with commentary as well has play with lights and sound effects to see how Disney imaginers create there theme park rides.

Final Recommendation.
If you’re a fan of classic Disney movies then the little mermaid is a definite pick up. The DVD as plenty of fun extras to sort through and some like the Little Matchstick Girl and the virtual ride are definitely worth looking at in the 2nd disc alone.