Disney Movie Challenge Bonus: The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea (2000) and The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning (2008)

 Disney Movie Challenge Bonus

The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea (2000)

and The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning (2008)

Once again Disney couldn’t leave a classic alone and felt the need to make sequels. Actually it is one sequel and one prequel. 

Return to the Sea picks up soon after the first one. Ariel and Eric have a daughter Melody.  Ursula’s sister, Morgana, wants revenge and tries to kill Melody as an infant. They are able to fight her off but fearing her return they swear never to let Melody go in the ocean and will keep the fact that she is part mermaid a secret from her. Jump to 12 years later and Melody is defying all the rules and swimming in the ocean. Once again Sebastian is tasked with keeping an eye on her but unable to control a teenage girl. Of course Morgana finds out and grants Melody’s wish to be a mermaid and convinces Melody to steal Triton’s trident.  Ariel must turn back into a mermaid to save her daughter before Morgana’s evil plan can come to fruition.  

The premise isn’t bad but it hits pretty much the same plot points as the first one. One of the differences is that in this one Melody is joined by a penguin and a walrus on her journey as two comic relief characters . Unfortunately these two side characters are just annoying and add nothing to the story. It’s interesting to see Ariel in the role her father was in during the first movie although that aspect is not really explored much.  The songs aren’t very good, definitely not as memorable as the songs in the original. 

Ariel’s Beginning is a prequel to the original as the title implies. The movie is pretty much Footloose underwater.  King Triton banned music after his wife died.  His daughters are miserable and miss the happy times when music was a part of their life.   Ariel meets Flounder who is in a band, she learns that Sebastian has a secret club where they play music.  There is also an evil mermaid, Marina Del Ray  who is trying to take over Sebastian’s spot as the King’s advisor.  When Marina finds out that Sebastian is disobeying the King she sees this as an opportunity to take over his role.  Eventually Ariel has to convince her dad to allow music to come back and that Marina is really evil.  

The worst thing about this movie is that there is only like one original song and it’s pretty bad.  They use "Jump in the Line (Shake, Shake, Shake, Señora)” a number of times which makes it feel like they couldn’t come up with their own music.  It’s also a song that brings to mind Beetlejuice, a much better movie so makes the filmmakers seem even more lazy.  Sally Field does the voice of Marina Del Ray which is fine but the song she sings is just really bad.  She also had a sidekick Benjamin that I couldn’t figure out what kind of fish it was supposed to be and assumed it was a blobfish (according to Wikipedia it’s a manatee). The film ends betraying the beginning of the original.  Since in this one  it’s clear that Ariel wants to bring back music and please her father it makes no sense that in the beginning of the original she is skipping singing classes and forgetting about a performance.  But maybe that’s only a problem if you watch the two movies close to each other.  

Overall: Don’t go in expecting too much from these movies and you won’t be disappointed.  Return to the Sea is the better of the two but lacks the magic of the origins.  Ariel’s Beginning just feels lazy and boring. Reading about it on WIkipedia I found out there are 2 original songs in Ariel’s Beginning but I must have fallen asleep for one of them so that’s how exciting that is.  

Random Facts: 

Tara Strong was 26 when she played Ariel’s 12 year old daughter. She also returned for Ariel’s Beginning and voiced one of her sisters. 

Ariel’s Beginning release was delayed due to production on Cinderella III. Neither was very good.