Joe Talks About Stuff: 28. The Little Mermaid (1989)

Well, this is it, the film that changed everything for Disney; since the start of the 70’s and the loss of Walt Disney, many of their films just didn’t do well enough critically or financially and though there were a few successes along the way, they were few and far between. It had been thirty years since Disney had done a movie based on a fairy tale, stung from the financial failure of Sleeping Beauty and their attempts at reinventing themselves and trying out new ideas in films such as The Black Cauldron just weren’t working; perhaps it was because of this that Disney decided to put all their money and effort into another fairy tale, in an attempt to recapture that old Disney style and magic, or perhaps it was because their traditional animation department really had nothing left to lose, but for whatever the reason, in 1989 we got The Little Mermaid. The film proceeded to not only bring Disney back to what it was known for in its early years, but also become its biggest hit in years, breathing new life into the animation department and kicking off what is often considered the golden age of Disney animation, better known as the Disney Renaissance. But, for all its landmark accomplishments, is The Little Mermaid itself truly a great film? The answer is yes, mostly, but despite all the good it did for Disney, it does have some familiar problems that can’t be ignored.

The animation is some of the best we’ve seen in years, which is not to say that the quality is necessarily that much better than recent films such as The Fox and the Hound and The Great Mouse Detective, but it is the energy, the care and the attention to detail that really sets The Little Mermaid apart from its contemporaries and harkens back to the passionate animation of the early Disney classics. The characters, especially Ariel and Ursula, are wonderfully expressive through their movements and facial expressions, they emote so strongly and really communicate their thoughts and feelings effectively – while always nice to see, this is especially important in a film as emotional as this one and because Ariel spends almost half the movie with no voice and so it falls entirely on the animation of her expressions and movements to translate her character and feelings, a challenge the animators rise to with aplomb. Another challenge for the animation is the fact that the characters spend a great deal of the movie underwater and again, the attention to detail in this regard is just fantastic – the movement of Ariel’s hair, based on footage of astronaut Sally Ride when she was in space, is so elegant and controlled and even better is that of Triton’s, who not only has long flowing hair but also a long flowing beard and both are animated moving with the currents expertly. The animation does have its problems, there are a few flubs and moments where characters are off-model or move particularly awkwardly and much of the film does have kind of an 80’s grime to it – this is more of a precursor to the Renaissance, we’re not quite there yet – but these are minor problems in an otherwise very well animated film.

The character designs are a welcome and successful return to the original Disney style; though the last few films have mostly done away with that rough and scratchy style propagated by the xerographic process of animation beginning with One Hundred and One Dalmatians, this is where it is finally completely eradicated and a conscious effort is made to return to the softer, more rounded designs of the early Disney films. This is especially noticeable in Ariel and Eric, who look very much like the classic Disney princess and prince (And oddly, each other, both having the same weird hair quiff) but with a modern spin on things; the film takes these classic designs and injects new life into them, updating them while still keeping what made them charming and, appropriately, timeless, in the first place. As is often the case, particularly in the Renaissance, the character with the best design has to be the villain, Ursula, how can you not love a bad guy modelled after a drag queen? Not only is her design bold and memorable, but her animation is fantastic, with loads of great exaggerated movements and creepy grins that would make The Grinch squirm, never underestimate the importance of body language indeed. The backgrounds are also very nice, though the ones on land are just good, the underwater scenes look great and, once again, are reminiscent of early Disney films in their detail, being mostly similar to the equally wonderful underwater backgrounds in Pinocchio, both are teeming with a sense of life and mystery well suited to the almost completely foreign world of the deep ocean.

‘why so serious??’ - guess the movie ;))

Following the theme of re-imagining ideas from early Disney movies for a modern audience, the story is a fairy tale which returns to the classic Disney ideas of true love, dreams and wishes and so on; where The Little Mermaid succeeds in this, however, is in the fact that it takes these old ideas and puts a new spin on them, rather than just copying them outright like Cinderella, allowing the film to recapture the joy and spirit of classics such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio and Sleeping Beauty, rather than simply repeat them. The Little Mermaid adds a more contemporary sense of humour with characters such as Sebastian and Scuttle and inserts more modern, feminist sensibilities by giving Ariel real characteristics, hopes and dreams – she yearns to explore the world above the ocean and rails against her father’s old fashioned beliefs and attempts to coddle her. Unfortunately, despite these admirable attempts, Disney is not quite able to separate The Little Mermaid from the uncomfortable and dated gender issues prominent in the early Disney films and it is here that the film suffers the most, as we see a return to some very familiar problems.

Ariel is still much better developed than her predecessors – Snow White, Cinderella and Aurora – she has a personality beyond just being nice, being rather absent minded and eccentric, as well as rebellious and headstrong. In Disney’s attempts to modernise the style of their early films, Ariel is seemingly an attempt at creating a stronger and more independent female protagonist, as well as one more relatable for an 80’s audience – her story arc is set up to be a classic struggle between teenage daughter and overbearing father, she wants to be treated like an adult and allowed to explore the world, while he wants to keep her safe and is afraid of her leaving him behind and so continues to treat her like a child. We are clearly supposed to empathise and relate with Ariel and want to see her prove her independence and responsibility to Triton and, in turn, be allowed to explore the surface world she loves so much and start a life with Eric. However, this doesn’t really work because Ariel just comes off as... well, a teenage girl. She is naive and self-involved, she thinks she’s special and that she knows better than her father, when really, she doesn’t; she wants to be taken seriously and given responsibility, but she proves time and again that she can’t handle it, constantly putting herself and her friends in harm’s way and needing to be bailed out by Daddy.

Ariel’s fascination with the surface world is just that, a surface fascination – she knows nothing of what the outside world is really like, she is enamoured with the idea of it, simply because it is new and different, it may be a goofy line from a talking crab, but Sebastian is right when he says ‘the seaweed is always greener in somebody else’s lake.’ This extends to Ariel’s infatuation with Eric as well, it is based purely on the surface, namely his looks – she declares her love for him before she’s even spoken to him, before she knows anything about him or his personality, purely because he is handsome; in these moments, Ariel seems less like an ambitious and strong willed young woman and more like a naive schoolgirl, who obsesses over a man, a world and a life she doesn’t even know, just because she’s bored of her own. If this idea was explored properly, with Ariel perhaps discovering that the surface world and Eric are not quite what they seemed and that there is no such thing as a perfect world, then The Little Mermaid would have made for a very interesting and mature film, however, because things are played straight and we are expected to support Ariel in her whimsical and misguided beliefs, the central drive of the film just falls flat.

‘Now I know for sure, that’s the man I love and we’re gonna be together no matter what! ...What was his name again? Lester?’

Ariel’s behaviour gets very frustrating not only because of how childish she is, but because of how it impacts on the other characters – she decides to give up her friends, family, voice and entire way of life, just to be with a man she’s never even spoken to, which is not only stupid, but incredibly selfish of her to leave everyone she is supposed to care about behind for someone she doesn’t even know. While her frustration with Triton is understandable, considering how overbearing he is, her refusal to even consider Flounder or Sebastian’s feelings is pretty hard to rationalise; though Sebastian can be bossy, he obviously cares for Ariel and puts himself and his position in danger to help her and Flounder frequently puts his life in danger and does everything Ariel asks of him with no question, yet she never really thanks them or shows any real gratitude for their sacrifice and seems perfectly willing to leave them behind forever for, again, a man she DOESN’T KNOW. Ultimately, this leads to the entire ocean being put in danger because Ariel was foolish enough to sign herself away to Ursula, her selfishness and quite frankly, stupidity brings her home, friends and family very close to complete destruction and again, she barely seems to appreciate this, her attention is always on Eric.

The romance between Ariel and Eric is just too flimsy to justify this behaviour, The Little Mermaid manages to modernise and appropriate many of the best aspects of the earlier Disney movies, but it fails to fix the familiar problem of “prince and princess meet, fall in love, get married after spending about five minutes together”; Snow White may have had the excuse of being old-fashioned and the first Disney movie, but it’s way too late in the game at this point to excuse this poorly developed relationship. Ariel and Eric fall in love at first sight (Or first sound, in Eric’s case) and are desperate to be together, despite having no idea if they’ll even get along; they do spend three days together, but we barely get to see any of that time and in those three days Ariel can’t speak, meaning that even when their relationship “develops”, it is still based primarily, if not solely on looks. I know I’m harping on about this and it’s not like this one aspect ruins the whole movie, but it is a pretty big aspect, as Ariel’s “love” for Eric is at the centre of the story and really, I just don’t like the implications of their relationship and the kind of message it sends to young girls: that your friends, family and sense of individuality aren’t as important as looks and that if you see a guy and happen to think he’s cute, then that means you’re destined to be together and you should throw away everything and everyone you know just for a chance to be with him. I know Disney is all about fairy tales and following your dreams, but you can still be rational as well as idealistic and The Little Mermaid just feels kind of irresponsible with the ideas it puts forward.

Still, despite getting on my nerves at times, I do find Ariel sweet and likeable and she is definitely an improvement over previous Disney princess protagonists. The other characters are not bad either – Eric is generally a stereotypical Disney prince, most similar to Prince Charming from Cinderella, he’s nice but a bit boring, though to be fair, he certainly has much more personality and time dedicated to him than previous Disney princes, as we see glimpses of a rebellious, adventurous and wise cracking side, but he still doesn’t have enough to him for Ariel’s infatuation with him to really be justified. Triton is a very generic overbearing father character, he’s bossy and harsh but he means well and he learns to respect his daughter and let her follow her dreams yada yada yada he’s pretty boring. Flounder is just there to be cute and sell toys, considering how identifiable he is with The Little Mermaid and how large a part he plays in its spin-off material and merchandise, I was surprised how little he did in the film, he hardly gets more than five lines and really isn’t in it very much at all. Scuttle is pretty standard comic relief and though I don’t really find a lot of his antics funny, I do find him oddly charming, though he did get annoying after a while. Sebastian is also there for comic relief, being much more successful, with his character taking some inspiration from earlier villainous comic relief characters such as Sir Hiss and Creeper and providing inspiration for later comic relief characters such as Zazu and Iago. He is enjoyably pompous, stuffy and hypocritical and it’s fun to watch him get his comeuppance for being such a blowhard, though the effect is somewhat diminished by the fact that his advice to Ariel is usually accurate, but whatever. Ursula is a really great villain, she’s deliciously evil, cunning and always looks like she’s having fun, she really seems to enjoy ensnaring Ariel not just because it will allow her to regain control of the sea from Triton, but also because she just finds it fun to bring people misery. She’s funny, capable and effective, she’s just a really good villain and one of Disney’s most memorable.

‘Uh so... do you like... stuff?’

Where The Little Mermaid really shines is in its songs – for years now Disney films had been kind of shying away from the musical format they were known for early on, only slipping in the occasional musical number or background song just to keep up appearances; The Little Mermaid not only brings back the traditional musical style in a big way, but does so even better than ever before. The Little Mermaid is often credited as ‘the film that brought Broadway into cartoons’ and it very much is, managing to appropriate the Broadway musical style of tying musical numbers into story and characterisation better than any of Disney’s previous efforts. The film introduced the team of Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, who would go on to write some of Disney’s best musical scores and here is where they, more than anyone else, really started to understand not just what makes a great Disney musical, but a great musical, period. There are a couple of less memorable songs, namely “Kiss the Girl” which is sweet and catchy, but nothing too special and the oft-forgotten “Les Poissons”, a goofy, high-energy song that comes out of nowhere and has very little to do with the story; I still find it very fun to listen to and you can kind of hear the early beginnings of “Be Our Guest” in its tune, but I understand why it’s not as well known as the others. The other songs however, are all classics, while “The World’s Greatest Criminal Mind” may have been the first Disney villain song, “Poor Unfortunate Souls” is where they really get the idea down and set the stage for what will often be the best song for many of the upcoming films. It is big and brassy, the rhythm builds all through the song to a big climax at the end, the lyrics are clever, the animation is great, it is directly involved with and in fact, necessary to the progression of the story, it gives a great insight into Ursula’s character as devious, charming, seductive and theatrical – it does everything a character based musical number should, rather than just being an excuse for a character to sing to fill time, it is relevant, important and just a damn good song. “Part of Your World” is the slow, sentimental song about hopes, dreams and wishes, in other words, the “Whole New World Number”, but it’s one of Disney’s best – a genuinely sweet and sad, but hopeful song with some very nice lyrics and a great opening which is repeated throughout the movie as Ariel’s character motif.

But best of all is of course, “Under the Sea”. This is it, this is where Disney really nailed it, where everything came together and they finally harmonised their style of storytelling with the traditional Broadway musical format and created their first truly perfect song. If “Poor Unfortunate Souls” was their first fully successful character based musical number, then “Under the Sea” is the first of the other kind of musical number, the showstopper, the big number that gets a whole group singing together – think “June is Bustin’ Out All Over” from Carousel or, from later Disney movies, “Prince Ali” or “Zero to Hero”. This is a hard one to pull off, as it’s easy to end up with a bloated and self-indulgent sequence that lasts too long, or a showy but ultimately empty number which uses a lot of characters and bluster to disguise the fact that it really has nothing to do with the story and is just killing time, but Disney’s unique combination of being able to create impossible visuals and not make transitions into song seem awkward through the use of animation and having a traditionally short run time and thus having to trim down every scene as much as possible is what allowed it to strike gold in a way that no-one else really has before or since. “Under the Sea” manages to both be big and bombastic, but also brief and humble, it does not directly service the plot and is mostly there to be a fun song, but it does tie into the themes and atmosphere of the movie and its characters and doesn’t feel like a musical number just for a musical number’s sake, it feels intrinsically tied to the nature of the film and not superfluous in any way. Add to that an insanely catchy tune and at last, a true realisation of that clever and playful use of rhyme that we saw the early seeds of so long ago in “When I See an Elephant Fly” and “Bare Necessities”; finally, those seeds have sprouted and grown strong with the nourishment of Ashman’s wonderful lyricism, how can you not love ‘while we devotin’ full time to floatin’’ or ‘when the sardine begin the beguine’? On top of that the animation and editing are just fantastic and this all culminates into the first truly perfect Disney song and one of the best in their entire catalogue – the songs in The Little Mermaid, particularly “Under the Sea”, set the benchmark for what Disney musical numbers should be like and the next few films took that and ran with it, filling the Disney Renaissance with some of the company’s absolute greatest musical scores as they finally realised their potential and truly redefined what it means to be a musical.

‘Sebastian, that’s your solution to everything, to move under the sea. It’s not gonna happen.’

‘Not with that attitude.’

The Little Mermaid definitely does have its problems – the central premise and main characters are just a little too ingrained in the old fashioned Disney prince and princess format, leading to some uncomfortable implications in regards to gender and unrealistic expectations from relationships that do bother me a little; still, I understand that this is a personal thing and that most people probably aren’t really bothered by it, it just kind of hampers my enjoyment of the movie a bit. Everything else in the movie is still really good, the animation, the backgrounds and especially the songs, which breathe new life into the Disney musical style and put the company on a path towards even greater ones in the future. Despite its problems, The Little Mermaid is undeniably a turning point in the history of not just Disney animation, but animation in general, kicking off what would come to be the greatest run of films in Disney’s long history and still being a really good film in its own right.

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