Disney has destroyed this story.

In the original tale, the little mermaid -does- fall in love with an arbitrary prince and -does- make a deal to transform into a human to pursue this infatuation.

In the original tale, however, she does -not- wind up happily ever after. Walking feels like her feet are being pierced by shards of glass and the prince never pays her notice. She dies alone and miserable... AND her spirit is condemned to roam the earth for some unseemly amount of time (usually 700 years).

Now, I'd like to point out the little mermaid's actions prior to these events. The part of the storyline that Disney does keep in tact is that she betrays her friends, family, and everything she knows for a guy she has seen once and with whom she has never spoken. As a child, I was quite upset with the little mermaid for this I thought the fish were a thousand times niftier than the stock prince. In return for this betrayal, what does she get?

In the original tale, she gets extensive suffering and unhappiness for turning her back on everyone who cares about her. In the Disney tale, she is rewarded for throwing away everything she cares about for an unknown prince. Which moral would you support? Remember to consider use of isolation tactics in domestic violence cases when considering your response.

This is my favourite Disney.
Why ? because I love the sea ? because I love mermaids ? because I love fairy tales ? because it the first Disney I saw ? because there is a love story ? because the songs are beautiful ?
See it and get your advice ! -)

I'm not exactly a big fan of this movie, but I often wish Disney would return to the same level of care given to its movies that the earlier creators gave to movies like this. The Little Mermaid is a blockbuster of the highest degree that had as much an impact on me when I was a child as it did any girl. The story is well told and smartly crafted, even if it had already been told time and again by classics like Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. Ariel is naive but wonderfully emotional and her trials and discoveries move you along. The typical Disney sidekicks, which would later become the bane of my existence in subsequent movies, here are actually interesting secondary characters that seem to hold some weight in the plot. And the villain is wonderfully crafted and colorful, and the climax scene shows Disney still knows how to craft a good white knuckle finish.

Unfortunately, just like The Lion King, as I've grown older, the luster of The Little Mermaid seems to have faded with time, and long forgotten classics have taken the modern Disney movies' place in my heart. One beautifully heart-wrenching song(Part Of Your World) sadly isn't enough to cover up the other three or four sappy songs. "Under the Sea" is an extravagant number as big as any of Disney's other famous song-and-dance scenes, yet now it just looks strangely cartoony. And "Kiss The Girl", I'm sad to say, sounds like nails on chalkboard to me. The animation is as handsome as one has any right to expect but still can't match the attention to body structure and fluidity of shape seen in even The Fox and the Hound, let alone the more sharply animated classics like Bambi. Nor are the backgrounds as handsome or artistic. And with the characters having an eternally wide-eyed look, facial expressions and emotions just can't match up. The humor is decidedly very juvenile. This shouldn't be a problem, as such humor is often found, and done far worse, in other Disney movies. But wittier writing is also non-existent in this movie. Sebastian steals the spotlight, thankfully. However, King Triton gets on my nerves, and Prince Eric has a personality of exactly zero.

Thankfully though, when compared with many of Disney's other movies, The Little Mermaid is still overall enjoyable and a shining star whose example of fun and storytelling should probably be followed once again in today's much bleaker Disney.

It is often forgotten in the string of "blockbusters" that Disney has released this past decade that this is the movie that heralded the studio's return to grace, and with very good reason. It simply has all the right elements: great characters and character dynamics, drama, action, humour.. it's all here and blended together seamlessly.

The animation style has smooth line, rich colour and memorable imagery--a friend of mine once told me she use to fling her hair back in the bathtub in an attempt to capture that moment when Ariel takes her first breath as a human. The characters are wonderfully drawn--Flounder has the tubby neighbourhood-kid look, Ursula has a frightening polished menace about her and King Triton can switch from compassionate to furious in the space of a heartbeat. The only thing that caught my attention was the shift in style during the climatic battle with Ursula at the end of the film. It seemed to me that things got very surreal very quickly and Ursula's death may be a bit graphic for younger viewers.

All the songs in this movie are high calibre and integrated perfectly into the story. From the reggae notes of "Under the Sea" and "Kiss the Girl" to the Ariel's beautiful, character-illuminating piece, "Part of Your World," they all have something really special to offer.

In the successful wake of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which caused a resurge of interest in animation, Disney had a chance to re-emerge as a great animation power. A bad movie would have probably killed animation, leaving Roger as a flash-in-the-pan and cartoons would have returned to the status as purely kiddie entertainment. Fortunately, Disney (and animation in general) was reborn with The Little Mermaid, a film which appropriately enough returned Disney to their original tradition of remaking fairy tales.

The Little Mermaid follows the fortunes of Ariel, a misfit mermaid princess with an obsession for humanity. When she falls in love with a prince, she trades her voice for legs in order to pursue her love. She has only three days to make the prince love her in return.

Along the way, she is aided by a childlike fish, a stern but softhearted crab (Sebastian has to be the best character in the film) and a screwball seagull. The movie features a large variety of likeable characters, as well as a quite effective (and visually arresting) villain.

A good, solid (but not deep) teenybopper romance, The Little Mermaid also features some of the most memorable songs of any Disney feature. They were written by the hit songwriting team of Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, still glowing from their successful musical, Little Shop of Horrors. (They went on to write songs for Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin.)

For sheer light-hearted musical fun, the Little Mermaid has plenty of appeal and laughs.

(And people who enjoy trying to find hidden naughtiness in Disney flicks can have fun arguing whether the bulging wrinkle at the front of the priest's robe at the beginning of the wedding ceremony is suspicious or not.)