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| The colorful and infectiously happy poster for Ron Clements and John Musker's The Little Mermaid |
The Little Mermaid is a Disney classic based on the same-titled 1837 fairytale by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen (The Snowman (1861)). It was the last Disney film to be done with only hand-painted cel animation and analog film work. This required more than 1 million hand-made drawings. The enormous effort paid off as a hugely successful fairy tale animation that marked the start of the 'Disney Renaissance'. Disney animation had fared poorly during the 80s, but Mermaid turned things around, and in the following decade's renaissance, Disney was revived to its former glory within animation with major film successes like Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), The Lion King (1994), Pocahontas (1995) and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996). Tarzan (1999) is thought of as the end of the Disney Renaissance.
Ariel is an unhappy mermaid, who idolizes humans against her father King Triton's demands. She falls in love with the human Prince Eric and makes a Faustian deal with the sea witch octopus Ursula to be a human for 3 days. If she succeeds in getting a kiss of true love from Eric within that time frame, Ariel will be freed from Ursula's eternal bondage, which also entails that Ariel has lost her voice.
Seeing Mermaid again today is a great experience, and it is obvious that much has happened in the world of animation since 1989. Animation now almost singularly means computer animation, and big releases run like near adult comedies on kiddie speed or acid (it sometime seems), and are sold with famous comedians like Steve Carell, Jack Black or Will Ferrell as poster candy. This way more people decide to join the little ones to the multiplexes, and the studios make more dollars. (And potentially lose more, as we also see regularly as with Turbo (2013) or Rise of the Guardians (2012) recently.)
Back to the Mermaid, - which has no star voice actors at all, but doesn't fare any the worse for that reason.
It's a beautifully animated movie with strong, charming characters: Ariel's cautious friend, Flounder, the New York-accented, funny seagull and Triton's right hand crab, Haitian-accented Sebastian. There's scenes of raucous slapstick, as when Sebastian survives a ridiculous, French chef, and many really amazing songs, - an element that sadly seems largely extinct in today's animation output. Mermaid deservedly won Oscars for Best Original Song (Under the Sea by Alan Menken (Sausage Party (2016)) and Howard Ashman (Aladdin (1992))) and Best Original Score by Menken. (It was also nominated for the song, Kiss the Girl.)
Ariel's eyes sometimes grow to hysterical excess, (bigger than the shells that make up her bra), in outrageous romantic feeling, and caused by prince Eric, who actually seems like something of a dullard throughout the film. It is an intensely romantic fairy tale, - about half of the film is about her getting him to kiss her, - and, understandably, Andersen's original, tragic ending has been thrown into the sea in favor of something lighter and happier.
The film is written and directed by Ron Clements and John Musker (Hercules (1997), both), with Ashman, Gerrit Graham (Oliver & Company (1988)), Sam Graham and Chris Hubbell (Peter Pan and the Pirates (1990-91), both) contributing dialog, based on the Andersen story.
An online list of scary movie villains from non-horror movies recently included Ursula from The Little Mermaid and that with good reason. - The sea witch of Mermaid is a damn scary creation. A devilish, tentacled, super-obese diva, somehow reeking of sins of every nature, who keeps the souls of her unlucky clients as slimy, weeping snails in her gloomy, violet-colored, underwater lair. I don't remember villains in any recent animation films coming even close to Ursula in malice and scare-factor. Her evil culminates in a nightmare-inducing sequence, where she grows to enormous kaiju monster size in the sea. (Perhaps Western animators today are less induced to go all in with evil villains in their films than was the case in 1989. If so, that's a damn shame.)
Curiously, Ursula was inspired by the drag queen/disco singer/performance artist/actor/actress phenomenon, the now many years dead and gone Divine, most famous for her parts in John Waters films like Roman Candles (1966), Mondo Trasho (1969) and Pink Flamingos (1972). These films couldn't be further replaced from Disney's target group and are definitely not for children. (In the latter film, Divine notoriously devours real dog feces.)
Here's pictures of both movie personas for your own comparison:
Cost: 40 mil. $
Box office: 211.3 mil. $
= Big hit (returned 5.28 times its cost)
[The Little Mermaid premiered 13 November (New York) and runs 83 minutes. The Andersen story had been planned as a Disney feature ever since the 1930s but had been scrapped for unknown reasons. Production took place in California. It was Disney's biggest budget in decades and the first time they would include Broadway-type songs in the film. The film opened #3, behind fellow new release Harlem Nights and holdover hit Look Who's Talking, to a 6 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spent another 5 weekends in the top 5 grossing 84.3 mil. $ (39.9 % of the total gross). A 1997 re-release garnered impressive 27.1 mil. $ additionally in North America. Disney broke with their strategy to keep releases from the home video market for years to profit from re-releases by releasing Mermaid to home video after 6 months, garnering enormous merchandise and video profits, reportedly bringing the film's total revenue past 1 bil. $. The film won 2 Oscars, for Best Score (Menken) and Song (Under the Sea by Ashman and Menken, with their Kiss the Girl also getting nominated.) It also won 2/4 Golden Globe nominations, 1/3 Grammy nominations and several other honors. Roger Ebert gave it a 4/4 star review, translating to a notch over this one. Two direct-to-video sequels were made, and a 2023 live-action remake is in post-production right now. Clements and Musker returned with Aladdin (1992). The Little Mermaid is certified fresh at 93 % with an 8.20/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of The Little Mermaid?
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