Disney Movie Challenge
The Little Mermaid (1989)
I made it to the Disney Renaissance and I have been nervous about writing about this one. It’s a movie everyone knows and is universally loved. What can I say that hasn’t already been said? So while I might not have any earth shattering insight I will give it a go.
The story itself is pretty straight forward. Ariel is a teenage mermaid princess who feels like she is being stifled by her overbearing father, King Triton. She is obsessed with the human world and ends up falling in love with a human prince. When Tritan forbids her to see him, the evil sea witch Ursula tells her she can help her. Ursula promises to turn Ariel into a human and all Arial has to do is give up her voice and make the prince fall in love with her in 3 days. Ursula’s main plan is to use Arial to get to her father and steal the king's trident. After she is turned into a human Ariel gets help from her sea friends including Sebastian the crab, Flounder the fish, and Scuttle the seagull. They try to help make her dream come true and prevent Ursula from taking over as ruler of the sea.
So what makes The Little Mermaid so special? It’s a couple of things. First the story is a more return to form for Disney. They hadn’t made a Princess movie since 1959’s Sleeping Beauty. Also while they have made musicals (Oliver & Company came out the year before) the music in this one felt different. It really had more of a broadway sensibility. The Little Mermaid was also the last Disney film to use the multiplane system in place since Snow White, the last to use xerography used since 101 Dalmatians, and the first to use a new computer program called CAPS.
It seems like when Disney needs a hit to get them out of a slump it’s a Princess movie that does it. Of course their first big hit was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs but it was Cinderella that saved the almost bankrupt company after the lean war years. Unfortunately Sleeping Beauty did the opposite and lost a bunch of money so it made Disney reluctant to head back into the genre. 30 years after Sleeping Beauty it was The Little Mermaid’s turn to reinvigorate Disney. After a few lean years it seemed like Disney was losing their grip as the animation king. Bluth studios were turning out hits like An American Tale and The Land Before Time. The Care Bears movie was made super cheap and made almost as much as The Black Cauldron which was very expensive to make. Having the budgets cut The Great Mouse Detective and Oliver & Company made money but weren’t huge hits. But the Disney co-produced Who Framed Roger Rabbit was a huge hit and gave Disney the chance to put a bit more money into their animation features. And Disney must have felt they had a hit on their hands with The Little Mermaid because it was one of the highest budgets in years. The underwater scenes required a lot of bubble special effects and Disney hired an outside studio to help with those.
I think the music is what sets this movie apart from prior films and defines the Disney Renaissance films. After the success of Little Shop of Horrors musical Alan Menkin and Howard Ashman we’re hired to write the music and songs for The Little Mermaid. I’m not sure what made Disney think the guys that wrote a musical about a man eating plant would be perfect for a Disney Princess Movie, but it somehow worked out great for all involved. Menken and Ashman brought a broadway sensibility to animated films. The main effect of that was having really big musical numbers at the center of the movie. The effect of doing that obviously would be carried over in other Disney musicals that followed.
Computer images have been slowly finding their way into animated films most notably the final battle scene in The Great Mouse Detective. With The Little Mermaid a new system was created called CAPS that would make things easier and cheaper to transfer the drawings to film and would do away with animation cels that had been the main way for doing animations since the beginning. It would also replace Xerography that had been in use since 101 Dalmatians. CAPS was only used in the last scene in the film but would be the main way Disney Animation films would be made for years to come. But the filmmakers also took a step back in time. They used the Multiplane system which hadn't been used in a while and they also used actors as a guide for their animations. This combining old film techniques and new makes The Little Mermaid a great example of a transition film.
Overall: I was nervous going in that the film wouldn’t live up to the hype. I hadn’t watched it in a long time and as a kid I always thought of it as a “girls” movie so never really gave it any notice. But it still holds up today. The music is great, the animation looks good, and the story is really timeless. "Kiss the GIrl" is one of my favorite songs in the film but the lyrics always feel kind of icky since it’s seems to be encouraging date rape, but it works really well in the context of the movie. Ursula is a classic villain that is the perfect blend of smooth talker and sinister.
Random Facts:
"A Part of their World" was almost cut from the film because Katzenberg thought it would be too boring for kids. But the directors convinced him that it was pivotal to the plot and was kept in.
Ursula was partially based on the drag queen Divine and has become a queer icon.
Since the Mutiplane system hadn’t been used on Disney films in while they had to use one from an outside company.
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