Movies - The Little Mermaid

Home > Listing Index > Movies > The Little Mermaid (film)

	Movies - The Little Mermaid

The Little Mermaid is a Disney animated feature adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale The Little Mermaid. The film was produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and first released on November 15, 1989 by Walt Disney Pictures and Buena Vista Distribution. It is the twenty-eighth animated feature in the Disney animated features canon. Grossing over $80 million domestically, this movie is given credit for breathing life back into the animated movie genre after a string of critical and commercial failures (The Black Cauldron
, The Great Mouse Detective
, Oliver and Company), signaling the start of a decade-long period of successful Disney movies.

An upcoming stage adaptation of the movie is planned with additional songs by Alan Menken and new lyricist Glenn Slater. The book for the musical has been completed by Doug Wright. The musical is planned to open on Broadway in 2007.

Plot

The film follows the story of a headstrong sixteen-year-old mermaid named Ariel (voiced by Jodi Benson), who is dissatisfied with life under the sea. Ignoring the warnings of her father, King Triton (voiced by Kenneth Mars), the ruler of the merpeople, and the court musician, Sebastian the crab (voiced by Samuel E. Wright), Ariel and her best friend, a fish named Flounder (voiced by Jason Marin), often sneak up to the surface of the ocean. There, they collect human artifacts with the help of a goofy seagull named Scuttle (voiced by Buddy Hackett). Ariel knows that contact between the humans and merpeople is forbidden, but she longs to be part of the human world.

Worried about his daughter's behavior, Triton assigns Sebastian to look after her and report on her activities. Sebastian discovers that Ariel has been collecting all of the items she finds on the surface in a secret underwater grotto, but he decides not to tell Triton for Ariel's sake.

Unknown to anyone, all of this is being observed by Ursula the sea witch (voiced by Pat Carroll), who for many years has been seeking a way to exact her revenge upon King Triton for banishing her from the kingdom. She sees Ariel as the perfect pawn in her quest to rule the seas.

That night, Ariel and Flounder travel again to the surface to watch a fireworks celebration for Prince Eric's birthday. Eric (voiced by Christopher Daniel Barnes) is presented with a giant stone statue of himself, commissioned by his guardian, Grimsby, who is pressuring Eric to find a bride and marry, so that he can assume the throne. The birthday celebration is cut short when a violent storm moves in and Eric's ship is destroyed. Eric is lost at sea and almost drowns before he is saved by Ariel, who has taken a liking to the prince. She disappears just as he is awakening, and Eric finds himself enthralled by the memory of her beautiful singing voice.

Ariel spends the next morning floating around the underwater palace in a daze, and Triton attempts to extract from Sebastian the name of the person she is in love with. When King Triton learns that his daughter is in love with a human, he becomes furious and destroys Ariel's grotto, including the stone statue from Eric's birthday party that Flounder had managed to find for her.

Ursula decides that now is the time to make her move, and she assigns her pet eels Flotsam and Jetsam (both voiced by Paddi Edwards) to bring Ariel to her underwater cave. There, Ursula makes a deal with the princess to transform Ariel into human form for three days. Within these three days, if she plans to remain a human, she must give Eric the "kiss of true love"; otherwise she will transform back into a mermaid at sunset on the third day. If this happens, Ursula will own her very soul and wither her down into a polyp, to join her garden of other lost merfolk.

As agreed, Ursula makes a potion to change the little mermaid. As "payment", she takes Ariel's voice and makes her unable to speak, knowing that Eric remembers Ariel only by her voice. A bubble grabs Ariel and rips her tail into two legs, turning her into a human. Sebastian and Flounder bring the drowning and helpless Ariel to the surface, where she takes her first breath of air in one of Disney's most memorable shots. Flounder and Sebastian help her to the beach, where she is taken in by Eric. He has no idea who Ariel is and what she has done for him, and she is unable to tell him.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for The Little Mermaid (film) ]

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article The Little Mermaid (film); it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.

Movies - The Little Mermaid

Plot

Searches on eBay

Related searches on eBay