Ginger Magic

As we work through the Disney PrincessesReleased in 1937, Disney's Snow White was a gamble for the company: the first fully-animated, feature-length film ever created. It's success lead to the eventual creation of the Disney Princess franchise, which has spawned 13 main-line films and multiple spin-off movies and shows. line, we come to another formative title for the animation studio. I credit Beauty and the Beast a lot for how that film blends the then cutting edge 3D visuals into traditional 2D animation, and it’s true that the film does have quite gorgeous artistry going for it. Disney was slowly working to blend their various artistic styles together, understanding that they were on the cusp of an artistic revolution. Beauty and the Beast helped to push that forward.

Still, there’s something to be said for sheer artistry when it comes to the traditional, hand drawn style, and for the money, it’s hard to do better than The Little Mermaid. In fact, I’d go so far as to say this is probably one of the best drawn works the studio has ever done, showing a level of artistry and care that it might just be unmatched in equaling since. The move to CGI has been big for Disney, helping them to stay relevant as audience tastes have shifted away from traditional animation, but something has been lost in the process, and that’s never more clear than going back and watching their 1989 tale of a mermaid that wants to get out on land.

It’s really interesting because despite being the start of the Disney Renaissance, that golden age from The Little Mermaid through Tarzan when the studio saw one Box Office success after another, The Little Mermaid feels far more aligned with the classic films that came before it. The drawing style, the way characters talk and animate, the fluidity of the movement, it’s all very classic Disney in a way even Beauty and the Beast couldn’t match. The Little Mermaid is a gorgeously crafted film standing as the high water mark for traditional Disney. And, it doesn’t hurt that it also is filled with toe-tapping music and a story that feels far less akin to a Stockholm syndrome parable than the next princess we would see.

While I’m sure you’ve seen the movie, we’ll go over the details here anyway. Ariel (Jodi Benson) is the 16-year-old, youngest daughter of King Triton (Kenneth Mars) the ruler of the mer-people who live under the sea. But while the rest of mer-kind follow the king’s rules and stay far from human eyes, Ariel is fascinated by the land creatures. She loves humans in a way her father can’t understand and dreams, one day, of being able to go up and spend even a day among the humans. She even collects their discarded “treasures”, collecting them in a secret little hideaway so she can marvel at them when no one else is around.

Once King Triton finds out about what Ariel is up to, especially after she lends a hand and helps save the human Prince Eric (Christopher Daniel Barnes), he flies off his rocker, destroying all her collected treasures and forbidding her from ever going near humans again. But Ariel has already become smitten with Eric, and nothing her father says will stop her from somehow going to the surface. That’s when Ursula (Pat Carroll), the sea witch, steps in. She can grant Ariel legs, but it comes with a couple of catches. First, Ursula demands Ariel’s voice as payment for the conversion. And second, Ariel has to win the love of Eric in three days or she’ll be cursed to spend eternity in Ursula’s collection of lost souls. It’s up to the voiceless Ariel, along with her fish friend Flounder (Jason Marin) and crab protector Sebastian (Samuel E. Wright) to help Ariel gain her love before Ursula demands her foul payment.

I was a kid when many of these Disney Renaissance films came out, but I was also at just the right age to be like, “Disney Princesses are girls stuff…” Stupid, I know, because this film really is a marvel, it just took time for the dumb child version of me to get over themselves. I still will likely hold Aladdin and The Lion King in high esteem. Those are solid films everyone enjoys, verifiable Disney masterpieces, but there is no denying that there’s something special about The Little Mermaid, and my recent rewatch of the film gave me a greater appreciation for it.

Not everything about the film works perfectly for me, mind you. For starters, while I think some of the songs are great, with both “Part of Your World” and “Kiss the Girl” being standouts, some songs are less magical. I know “Under the Sea” is a jaunty tune everyone is supposed to enjoy, but I find it kind of grating. It tries way too hard to be fun and magical, but when you compare it to “Kiss the Girl”, a song that actually feels magical, and is paired with great production values, it feels like night and day.

Yes, “Poor Unfortunate Souls” is Ursula’s big number, but, eh… it doesn’t work for me. It’s weird because usually the villains get such great numbers, but Ursula’s is clearly there to explain the plot of the rest of the movie to us, to force the film into its second act, and it feels less like a showstopper than a song forced to do the heavily lifting to get us into the rest of the film. It’s like if From Dusk Till Dawn featured a song right at the point where the vampires showed up, telling us all about the vampires, before the film shifts directions completely. It’s a big number, but it feels like the kind of song giving us five minutes of music when a couple of lines of dialogue would suffice, all so it can say, “hey, now you’re going to watch a different film with a different goal featuring the same characters.”

And let’s be clear, Ariel is kind of an idiot. But hey, that’s fair, she’s a teenager. She thinks she’s more mature than she is (she’s only 16, which we have to assume is parallel to 16 in human years), and she dives head first into an adventure she doesn’t understand, signing a contract for her very soul all for an infatuation she’s had for a day. The fact that she has to fall in love with Eric after only seeing him twice, and that they then get married after knowing each other for, what, five days max? That’s fast even by Disney standards.

And yet the film wraps you up in its magic to the point that you almost don’t care. Unlike Beauty and the Beast where you can’t help but think about whether the relationship between the woman and the prince is creepy, The Little Mermaid’s plotting is kinder, safer, and really all about love. It builds up the love story, making it clear that both Ariel and Eric have become smitten with each other despite barely knowing the other, and then when the music kicks in and the Disney animators let loose… yeah, it’s magic.

“Kiss the Girl” is really the best example, with its sweeping, swirling motion and detailed set pieces, but every frame of the film really shows it. The flowing of the water, the movement of hair under the sea, the way characters move and sing and talk all at once. There’s a level of detail and care that current animated films struggle to match. Hell, even Disney’s later works in the Disney Renaissance frequently couldn’t match the artistry on display here. There’s something special about this film that is ninety-nine percent hand drawn (I did see one CGI staircase in the film as if the animators were dipping a toe in to see how they could use the 3D art for backdrops). It’s a gorgeous film with a good story and, frequently, infectious music.

So yeah, The Little Mermaid is great. It might have taken me thirty-plus years to get to that point, but I think I have to agree with it. This is one of the better Disney Princess films out there, and certainly, when it comes to hand drawn art, a high water mark for the franchise. Even if you have seen the film before and thought you didn’t like it, maybe go back and give it another try. I did, and I was finally won over.