The Little Mermaid (1989 film)

The Little Mermaid
File:Movie poster the little mermaid.jpg The Little Mermaid Original Teaser Poster
Directed by	Ron Clements John Musker
Written by	Hans Christian Andersen (fairy tale) Roger Allers (story) Howard Ashman (musical) Ron Clements John Musker
Produced by	Howard Ashman John Musker Maureen Donley
Starring	Jodi Benson Samuel E. Wright Pat Carroll Christopher Daniel Barnes Kenneth Mars Jason Marin Buddy Hackett
Music by	Alan Menken (music) Howard Ashman (lyrics)
Distributed by	Buena Vista Pictures
Release dates	November 15, 1989 (original release) November 14, 1997 (re-release)
Running time	83 minutes
Language	English
Budget	$40,000,000
Box office	$222,300,000

The Little Mermaid is a 1989 American traditional-animated feature film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios with pencil test began on September 23, 1988 and first released on November 17, 1989 by Walt Disney Pictures with the first Wallace and Gromit shot film, A Grand Day Out. The twenty-eighth animated feature in the Disney animated features canon, the film is based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale "The Little Mermaid." During its initial release, it grossed over $84 million in the United States and an additional $99 million internationally. The film is given credit for breathing life back into the animated feature film genre after a string of critical and commercial failures that had dated to the early 1980s. It also marked the start of the era known as Disney Renaissance. A stage adaptation of the film with a book by Doug Wright and additional songs by Alan Menken and new lyricist Glenn Slater opened in Denver in July 2007 and began performances on Broadway.

Plot

Prince Eric, eighteen years old, and his manservant Grimsby are aboard a sailing ship. From the sailors, Eric learns about Triton, the ruler of the sea who rules and controls the oceans. He is the king of merpeople in the watery depths.

Underwater, a sixteen-year-old mermaid princess named Ariel is unsatisfied with life under the sea and curious about the human world. Ariel, with her best friend, a fish named Flounder, collects human artifacts, and visits the surface of the ocean to visit a seagull named Scuttle, who offers comically inaccurate knowledge of human culture. Ignoring the warnings of her father, King Triton, and the court musician, Sebastian the crab, that contact between merpeople and humans is forbidden, she longs to be part of the human world; to this end she has filled a secret grotto with all the human artifacts she has found.

Ariel and Flounder travel to the surface to watch a celebration for the birthday of Prince Eric, with whom Ariel falls in love. The birthday celebration is cut short by a massive storm, during which the ship is lost. Eric almost drowns, but is subsequently saved by Ariel, who drags him onto a beach. She then sings to him, but when he stirs awake, she dives underwater. Eric has a vague impression that he was rescued by a girl with a beautiful voice; he vows to find her, and Ariel vows to rejoin Eric.

Later, Triton and his daughters notice a lovesick Ariel. Sebastian tries to impress her with the wonders "Under the Sea", but Ariel sneaks off with Flounder midway through the song. Triton questions Sebastian about Ariel's lovesick behavior, during which Sebastian reveals Ariel's secrets. Furious, King Triton confronts Ariel in her grotto, during which he destroys her entire collection. A pair of eels, Flotsam and Jetsam, convince a distraught Ariel that to rejoin Eric, she must visit Ursula, the Sea Witch.

Ursula makes a deal with Ariel to transform her into a human for three days. Within these three days, if she plans to remain a human, she must receive from Eric the "kiss of true love"; otherwise she will transform back into a mermaid on the third day and be owned by Ursula. In exchange for her voice, Ariel is turned into a human by Ursula's magic which turns her tail into legs. However, she can't swim as a human and Ariel is helped to the surface by Sebastian and Flounder.

When she subsequently discovers that she has legs, she has a hard time walking and Scuttle helps her by covering her in a sail. She is eventually found by Eric when Max finds her, but when he learns that she cannot speak, he discards the notion that she is the one who saved his life. He helps her to the palace, where the servants think of her as a survivor of a shipwreck. As for Sebastian, he stumbles into the palace kitchen and narrowly escapes being turned into stuffed crab by Chef Louis.

While Ariel is enjoying life with Eric in her tour of the human kingdom, Sebastian, Flounder and Scuttle try to get Ariel and Eric to kiss so Ariel will become human permanently. They come close to kissing, but are thwarted by Flotsam and Jetsam. Angered at the close call, Ursula takes the disguise of a beautiful young woman named "Vanessa" and appears onshore singing with Ariel's voice, which is housed in a magic nautilus shell around her neck. Eric recognizes the song, and "Vanessa" casts a hypnotic spell of enchantment on Eric.

The next day, Ariel finds out that Eric will be married to "Vanessa" on a ship. She is left behind when the wedding barge departs. Scuttle discovers Vanessa's true identity and informs Ariel. Ariel and Flounder chase the wedding barge, Sebastian informs Triton, and Scuttle is assigned to "stall the wedding." With the help of various animals, the nautilus shell around Ursula's neck is broken, restoring Ariel's voice back to Ariel and breaking Ursula's enchantment over Eric. Realizing that Ariel was the girl who saved his life, Eric rushes to kiss her, but the sun sets and Ariel transforms back into a mermaid. Ursula reverts back to her true form and she kidnaps Ariel.

Triton appears and confronts Ursula, but cannot destroy the contract Ursula made with Ariel. Triton chooses to sacrifice himself for his daughter and is transformed into a polyp. Ursula takes Triton's crown and trident and declares herself queen of the oceans, which was her plan from the beginning. Eric dives into the sea and throws a harpoon at Ursula. In her rage, she attempts to kill him using the trident, but Ariel attacks her, and Ursula accidentally kills Flotsam and Jetsam. Angered, Ursula subsequently transforms into gigantic proportions and stirs up a storm using the magical trident. A whirlpool is also formed, which disturbs several shipwrecks, one of which Eric later commandeers. Just as Ursula is set to destroy Ariel, Eric rams the ship's splintered bowsprit through Ursula's abdomen, killing her in a huge explosion.

When Ursula dies, her power breaks, and the polyps in Ursula's garden (including Triton) turn back into merpeople. Later, Triton willingly changes Ariel from her mermaid form into a human using his trident. She runs into Eric's arms, and the two finally kiss.

The final scene is Ariel and Eric's wedding, with both humans and merpeople as attendees. The film ends with Ariel and Eric embracing.

Divergence from the Andersen original

This film is based on the original story (by Hans Christian Andersen) but diverges from the source material in a far more radical way than previous Disney productions such as Cinderella and Snow White, since the original story does not feature a romantic happy ending: rather than winning over the prince, the mermaid dies after throwing herself back into the ocean, dissolving into foam on the water; but she happily learns that she had an immortal soul to begin with and that after a kind of Purgatory where she will spend her time as a wandering Spirit of the Air, she will then be in heaven with God. Changing the tale to conclude with a "they lived happily ever after" involved changing the basic philosophy underlying the Disney film from that of the Andersen original. The religious elements of the plot are entirely removed: there is no desire of the film's mermaid to gain an immortal soul, there is no related desire to attend religious ceremonies (unlike Andersen's mermaid), and much of the plot has been removed involving a rival convent religious girl (later revealed to be a princess) that the mermaid desires to emulate. Andersen had strong Christian religious elements in many of his stories, including "The Snow Queen" and "The Little Match Girl", but these were removed from Disney's version.

The original story is essentially a tale without a dominant villain. The Little Mermaid is faced with an inherently unjust world, where her love for the Prince and her wish to gain an immortal soul have a chance only through terrible sacrifices, privations and risks. And the Mermaid ultimately fails, though Andersen presents her as amply deserving of the Prince's love and of gaining a soul (or, rather, demonstrating over and over again, by her courage, compassion and noble sacrifice, that she has a soul already). Unlike the film, the Sea Witch in the original tale is not a dominant villain, but rather a "technician" implementing the harsh rules of this universe. In the original story, an attack on the Witch - such as forms the climax of the film - would have been pointless, since the Witch as depicted by Andersen did not cause the Mermaid's dire predicament and had no power to resolve it. In the end the Sea Witch is revealed to be a misguided villain as the Mermaid already had a soul to begin with, and the story is really about how great trials in life and striving for a soul can lead to eternal reward in the afterlife.

A lesser, though significant, difference is that Andersen chose to give none of his characters a name - they are "The Little Mermaid", "The Little Mermaid's Sisters", "The Sea Witch", "The Prince", "The Temple Girl", etc. Disney, on the contrary, bestowed on all characters a specific given name. The story also has strong similarities to the opera Rusalka by Antonin Dvorak, possibly even more so than to the original Andersen tale, although this opera, like the Andersen tale, has a tragic ending.

The Disney sequel, The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea, centering on the daughter of Ariel and Eric, obviously could not have been a sequel to the original Andersen story.

Cast and characters

• Princess Ariel, voiced by Jodi Benson, is the protagonist, a mermaid entranced with the human world.
• Sebastian, voiced by Samuel E. Wright, is the crab (that is often mistaken for a lobster) that leads the Atlantica orchestra. During development, he was turned from British to Jamaican.
• Ursula, voiced by Pat Carroll, is the antagonist, a witch half-human half octopus banished by Triton long before the film's event. After getting Ariel's voice, she tries to marry Eric under the identity of Vanessa (Jodi Benson).
• Prince Eric, voiced by Christopher Daniel Barnes, is a prince that likes to sail, and with whom Ariel falls in love after she saves him from a shipwreck.
• King Triton, voiced by Kenneth Mars, is the ruler of Atlantica and Ariel's father.
• Flounder, voiced by Jason Marin, is Ariel's fish sidekick.
• Scuttle, voiced by Buddy Hackett, is a seagull which Ariel considers an expert in the human world.
• Flotsam and Jetsam, voiced by Paddi Edwards, are Ursula's eel pets/henchmen.
• Grimsby, voice by Ben Wright, is Eric's majordomo.
• Chef Louis, voiced by Rene Auberjonois, is the chef of Eric's house, whose favorite dish is fish and seafood in general. He tries to cook up Sebastian into stuffed crab.

Other actors include Edie McClurg as Carlotta, Will Ryan as a seahorse messenger, Frank Welker as Eric's Sheepdog Max, and Mark Hamill.

Significance

The Little Mermaid is an important film in animation history for many reasons:

• It marked a return to the musical format that made Disney films popular from the 1930s to the 1970s, after a test run with Oliver and Company the year before. It featured seven original songs by composer Alan Menken and lyricist Howard Ashman, who also served as the film's producer.

• It was the return to fairy tales since Sleeping Beauty.

• It had the most special effects for a Disney animated feature since Fantasia was released forty-nine years earlier. Effects animation supervisor Mark Dindal estimated that over a million bubbles were drawn for this film, in addition to the use of other processes such as airbrushing, backlighting, superimposition, and some flat-shaded computer animation.

• The Little Mermaid was a box office success and grossed over $200,000,000 worldwide.

• This film marked the one of the first uses of CAPS (Computer Animation Production System) in a Disney feature, seen in the movie's final scene. CAPS is a digital ink-and-paint and animation production system that colors the animators' drawings digitally, as opposed to the traditional animation method of tracing ink and paint onto cels (see Traditional animation). All subsequent 2D animated Disney features have used CAPS instead of ink-and-paint, with Home on the Range as the last one.

• This film signaled a renaissance in Disney animation; the films were popular and financial successes, causing Disney's feature animation department to begin significant expansion, from about 300 artists in 1988 to 2,400 by 1999. In fact, The Little Mermaid was Disney's first significant animated success since The Rescuers in 1977.

• The Little Mermaid won the 1990 Academy Award for Original Music Score. "Kiss the Girl" and "Under the Sea" were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Song; the Oscar went to "Under the Sea."

• The soundtrack, riding high on the heels of the film's popularity and the Academy, Golden Globes and Grammy Awards, went triple platinum, an unheard-of feat for an animated movie at the time.

Music

Main article: The Little Mermaid (soundtrack)

The Little Mermaid was considered by some as "the film that brought Broadway into cartoons". Alan Menken wrote the Academy Award winning score, and collaborated with Howard Ashman in the songs.

Songs

• "Fathoms Below" - Sailors
• "Daughters of Triton" - Triton's daughters
• "Part of Your World" - Ariel
• "Part of Your World (Reprise)" - Ariel
• "Under the Sea" - Sebastian & Sea Creatures
• "Poor Unfortunate Souls" - Ursula
• "Les Poissons" - Chef Louis
• "Kiss the Girl" - Sebastian & Chorus
• "Vanessa's Song" - Scuttle, Vanessa/Ariel & Ursula*
• "Part of Your World (Finale)" - Chorus

• Note: "Vanessa's Song" is not included on any official Disney Soundtrack of The Little Mermaid. It is a reprise of "Poor Unfortunate Souls".

The compilation Classic Disney: 60 Years of Musical Magic includes "Kiss the Girl", "Under the Sea", and "Poor Unfortunate Souls" on the red disc, "Part of Your World" on the blue disc, and "Les Poissons" on the green disc. The compilation Disney's Greatest Hits includes "Kiss the Girl" on the blue disc, "Under the Sea" on the green disc, and "Poor Unfortunate Souls" and "Part of Your World" on the red disc.

Production

The film was originally planned as one of Disney's earliest films. Production started soon after Snow White, but was put on hold due to various circumstances.

In 1985, The Great Mouse Detective co-director Ron Clements discovered a collection of Hans C. Andersen's fairy tales while browsing a bookstore. He presented a two-page draft of a movie based on "The Little Mermaid" to CEO Michael Eisner, who passed it over, because at that time the studio was in development on a sequel to Splash. But the next day, Walt Disney Pictures boss Jeffrey Katzenberg, green-lighted the idea for possible development, along with "Oliver & Company." Unknown to the production team at the time, the idea for the movie had actually been one of Walt Disney's favorites. While in production in the 1980s, someone found Walt's Mermaid script by chance. Many of his changes to Hans Christian Andersen's original story were coincidentally the same as the changes made by Disney writers in the 1980s.

That year, Clements and Great Mouse Detective co-director John Musker expanded the two-page idea into a 20-page rough script, eliminating the role of the mermaid's grandmother and expanding the roles of the Merman King and the sea witch. However, the film's plans were momentarily shelved as Disney focused its attention on Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Oliver & Company as more immediate releases.

In 1987, songwriter Howard Ashman became involved with Mermaid after he was asked to contribute to Oliver & Company. He proposed changing the minor character Clarence, the English-butler crab, to a Jamaican Rastafarian crab and shifting the music style throughout the film to reflect this. At the same time, Katzenberg, Clements, Musker, and Ashman changed the story format to make Mermaid like an animated Broadway musical. Ashman and Alan Menken (composer) teamed up to compose the entire soundtrack. In 1988, with Oliver out of the way, Mermaid was slated as the next major Disney release.

More money and resources were dedicated to Mermaid than any other Disney animated film in decades. The artistic manpower needed for Mermaid required Disney to farm out most of the bubble-drawing in the film to Pacific Rim Productions, a China-based firm with production facilities in Beijing.

Principal artists worked on the animation - Glen Keane and Mark Henn on Ariel, Duncan Marjoribanks on Sebastian, Andreas Deja on King Triton and Ruben Aquino on Ursula. Originally, Keane had been asked to work on Ursula, as he had established a reputation for drawing large, powerful figures (the bear in The Fox and the Hound, Professor Ratigan in The Great Mouse Detective.) Keane, however, was assigned as one of the two lead artists on the petite, charming Ariel and oversaw the "Part of Your World" musical number.

Another first for recent years was that live actors and actresses were filmed for reference material for the animators. Broadway actress Jodi Benson was chosen to play Ariel, and Sherri Lynn Stoner, a former member of Los Angeles' Groundlings improv comedy group, acted out Ariel's key scenes. Not all of Disney's animators approved of the use of live-action reference; one artist quit the project over the issue. An attempt to use Disney's famed multiplane camera for the first time in years for quality "depth" shots failed because the machine was reputedly in dilapidated condition.

Aside from its main animation facility in Glendale, California, Disney opened a satellite feature animation facility during the production of Mermaid near Orlando, Florida, within the still-unfinished Disney-MGM Studios Theme Park at Walt Disney World. Though the park opened to the public a year later, work at the animation studio began in May 1988, and the Disney-MGM facility's first projects were to produce an entire "Roger Rabbit" cartoon short, and contribute ink and paint support to Mermaid.

The Little Mermaid is the last Disney feature film to use the traditional hand-painted cel method of animation. Disney's next film, The Rescuers Down Under, used a digital method of coloring and combining scanned drawings -- CAPS (Computer Animation Production System), which eliminated the need for cels. A CAPS prototype was used experimentally on a few scenes in Mermaid, including the final wedding scene. Other CGI includes some of the wrecked ships in the final battle, a staircase behind a shot of Ariel in Eric's castle, and the carriage Eric and Ariel are riding in when she bounces it over a ravine. (Notice that the wheels aren't moving when it comes down for a landing.)

Glen Keane, the supervising animator for Ariel, jokingly stated on the Pocahontas: 10th Anniversary Edition DVD that his wife looks exactly like Ariel "without the fins." The character's body shape and personality were based upon that of Alyssa Milano, then starring on TV's Who's the Boss? and the effect of her hair underwater was based on footage of Sally Ride, when she was in space.

On November 15, 1989, The Little Mermaid began critics' screenings in Los Angeles and New York City. On November 17, 1989, the world premiere of The Little Mermaid took place near Orlando, Florida on all ten AMC Pleasure Island screens at Walt Disney World's newly-built Pleasure Island nightclub.

Actresses from all over the globe were considered for the role of the film's villian, Ursula the Sea Witch, from the United States names like Bea Arthur (who turned it down because she was having too much fun filming The Golden Girls) Nancy Marchand, Charlotte Rae, Elaine Stritch. From England it was Joan Collins, Jennifer Saunders (who auditioned for it) and Dawn French (who also auditioned for it). From Australia it was Rowena Wallace, who claims she was asked to audition for the role by Michael Eisner (who was in Australia on holidays, saw her performing her famous character Pat the Rat in Sons and Daughters and immedietally set out to offer her the role) himself.

Box office

According to TheNumbers.com.

1989 original run

Release Week	Gross	Rank	Total
1	$6,031,914	3	$6,065,716
2	$8,384,862	3	$16,832,844
3	$4,030,274	5	$22,109,571
4	$2,764,119	7	$25,748,251
5	$2,522,362	4	$28,941,871
6	$3,319,664	6	$34,089,416
7	$9,235,512	3	$49,401,857
8	$4,585,047	5	$56,126,383
9	$3,851,208	6	$60,855,174
10	$2,823,840	8	$65,247,711
11	$2,174,414	9	$68,066,110
12	$1,774,352	9	$74,262,415

1997 re-release run

Release Week	Gross	Rank	Total
1	$9,814,520	3	$9,814,520
2	$5,687,421	5	$17,950,386
3	$3,990,314	8	$23,947,879

Awards

Academy Awards

• Two Wins
  • Best Original Score
  • Best Original Song - "Under the Sea"
• One Nomination
  • Best Original Song - "Kiss the Girl"

Golden Globe Award

• Two Wins
  • Best Original Score - Motion Picture
  • Best Original Song - Motion Picture - "Under the Sea"
• Two Nominations
  • Best Motion Picture - Comedy/Musical
  • Best Original Song - Motion Picture

Grammy Award

1991 - Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture or for Television: Alan Menken (composer) Howard Ashman (lyricist) for "Under the Sea"

Other Awards

• BMI Film & TV Awards
  • One Win: BMI Film Music Award
• Los Angeles Film Critics Association
  • One Win: Best Animation
• Golden Screen Awards
  • One Win: Golden Screen Award
• Golden Reel Awards
  • One Win: Best Sound Editing - Animated Feature
• Young Artist Award
  • One Win: Best Family Motion Picture - Adventure or Cartoon

Theatrical release history

American, Canadian, and Mexican release dates

• November 17, 1989 (original release)
• November 14, 1997 (re-release)

Worldwide release dates

• Brazil: December 15, 1989
• Argentina: December 7, 1989
• Peru: December 14, 1989
• Australia: June 20, 1990
• U.K.: October 12, 1990
• Italy: November 9, 1990
• Denmark: November 16, 1990
• Belgium: November 20, 1990
• France: November 28, 1990
• Germany: November 29, 1990
• Norway: November 29, 1990
• Finland: November 30, 1990
• Sweden: November 30, 1990
• Greece: December 2, 1990
• Spain: December 5, 1990
• Netherlands: December 21, 1990
• Hong Kong: January 24, 1991
• Japan: July 20, 1991
• South Korea: December 21, 1991
• Costa Rica: February 15, 1992
• Guatemala: February 15, 1992
• Saudi Arabia: October 30, 1993
• India: April 11, 1994
• Ethiopia: January 14, 1995
• Israel: May 3, 1995
• Kenya: December 18, 1996
• Republic of Ireland: May 16, 1997
• Thailand: October 15, 1997
• Kuwait: September 23, 1998
• Bulgaria: June 1, 1999
• Palestine: September 5, 2002
• Russia: October 28, 2006

Home video release history

The film's home video debut was in May 1990 with a VHS release, part of the Walt Disney Classics line, that became that year's top-selling title on home video, with over 10 million units sold (including 7 million in its first month). It was one of the highest-selling home video titles ever at the time.

Following the re-release on theaters, a new VHS was released in March 1998 as part of the Masterpiece Collection. The VHS sold 13 million units and ranked as the 3rd best-selling video of the year.

The Little Mermaid was released in a Limited Issue "barebones" DVD in 1999, with a standard video transfer and no substantial features. The film was re-released on DVD on October 3, 2006, as part of the Walt Disney Platinum Editions line of classic Walt Disney animated features. Deleted scenes and several in-depth documentaries were included, as well as the Academy Award-nominated short film intended for the shelved Fantasia 2006, The Little Matchgirl. On its opening day the DVD sold 1.6 million units, and in its first week, over 4 million units, making it the biggest animated DVD debut for October. On its first three months out, the DVD had already sold 6.5 million units and ranked as one of the year's top ten selling DVDs.

Legacy

• Note: John Musker and Ron Clements have no affiliation with these sequels/spin offs.

Sequels and Spin offs

• The animated series version of this movie titled The Little Mermaid premiered in late 1992. Each episode focuses on Ariel's adventures before the events of the original film.
• A series of shorts starring Sebastian (in a simillar fashion to The Lion King's Timon & Pumbaa) were aired as part of the Disney animated series Marsupilami.
• A direct-to-video sequel, titled The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea, was released on September 19, 2000. The plot focuses on Ariel's daughter Melody who longs to be a part of the ocean world. However, Ariel must keep her curious daughter away from the ocean to protect her from Ursula's evil sister, Morgana.
• A second direct-to-video sequel, titled The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning, is in development for an August 26, 2008 release. It was originally scheduled for mid 2007, but when John Lasseter took over Disney Animation, more resources were spent on completing Cinderella III: A Twist in Time, (among other things) for a quicker release. In July 2006 Disney announced that work was wrapping up on Cinderella III and continuing on The Little Mermaid III. The date was pushed back to February 2008, but has since then been pushed to August 26, 2008. A trailer and a musical number from The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning are attached to the DVD re-release for the original film. However, this trailer advertises the sequel simply as The Little Mermaid III.
• Ariel, Sebastion, Flounder, King Triton, Ursula, Prince Eric, Scuttle and Chef Louie are featured as guests in House of Mouse. Ursula appears as one of the leading villains in Mickey's House of Villains. Ariel, Prince Eric and Ursula also appear in Mickey's Magical Christmas: Snowed in at the House of Mouse.
• The Little Mermaid is featured as a playable world in the Kingdom Hearts Series known as Atlantica. Characters from the film include, Ariel, Sebastion, Flounder, King Triton, Prince Eric, Ursula, Flotsam and Jetsam.

Broadway

Main article: The Little Mermaid (musical)

A pre-Broadway stage version premiered in September 2007 in Denver, Colorado, at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House, with music by Alan Menken, new lyrics by Glenn Slater, and a book by Doug Wright. The musical began performances on Broadway at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on November 3, 2007 and officially opened on January 10, 2008. The show features Sierra Boggess as Ariel, Norm Lewis as King Triton, Sherie Rene Scott as Ursula, Eddie Korbich as Scuttle, Tituss Burgess as Sebastian, Sean Palmer as Prince Eric, Jonathan Freeman as Grimsby, Derrick Baskin as Jetsam, Tyler Maynard as Flotsam, Cody Hanford and J.J. Singleton as Flounder, and John Treacy Egan as Chef Louis.

The show became the most successful tryout for a Disney musical by selling nearly 95,000 seats.

Reviews of the show have varied widely; The New York Times called it "charm free", while Time described it as "ravishing." These mixed reviews may be due to the differences between the film and musical versions of the book, such as the depiction of King Triton and Ursula as siblings.

Video games

Four games were released based on the film: The Little Mermaid, by Capcom for the Nintendo Entertainment System and Game Boy, The Little Mermaid: Magic in Two Kingdoms, by Buena Vista Games, released for the GBA, Ariel the Little Mermaid by Sega for the Mega Drive/Genesis, Game Gear and Master System. This also includes the feature of playing as Triton. The most recent game released was Disney's The Little Mermaid Ariel's Undersea Adventure which was released on the Nintendo DS on October 2, 2006. The Little Mermaid was also featured on Kingdom Hearts, a game featuring heavy usage of scenes and characters from famous Disney movies, as well as many of the original voice actors. A Little Mermaid hand-held LCD game from Tiger Electronics was also released.

Theme parks

Ariel makes regular appearances in the Disney theme parks, having a special location called Ariel's Grotto. Ariel and one of her sisters also make an appearance in the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ride, at which point the submarine captain remarks "Mermaids and sea monsters?! It cannot be!" Prince Eric and Chef Louis make appearances as well, though less frequently. Sebastian and Flounder appear only in parades, shows, and at special events.

Allegations of Sexual Innuendo

Closeup of the alleged penis

Closeup of the alleged penis

In the film, King Triton lives in a castle of gold, along with his daughters. The castle is displayed in the artwork for the cover for the VHS cassette when the film was first released on video. Close examination of the artwork, as well as the film, shows an oddly shaped structure on the castle, closely resembling a penis. Many have alleged the artwork to have been an intentional act by a disgruntled animator. However, Disney, and the actual person who designed the cover insist it was an accident, resulting from a late night rush job to finish the cover artwork. The questionable object does not appear on the cover of the second releasing of the movie.

The second allegation is that a clergyman is seen with an erection during a wedding scene, specifically the scene where a brainwashed Prince Eric is about to marry a disguised Sea Witch. The clergyman is a short man, dressed in Bishop's clothing, and a small bulge is slightly noticeable in a few of the frames that are actually later shown to be the stubby-legged man's knees, but the image is small and is very difficult to distinguish. The combined incidents led an Arkansas woman to file suit against The Walt Disney Company in 1995, though she dropped the suit two months later.

The question is compounded by allegations of sexual innuendo in other Disney movies, including The Lion King, Aladdin, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, and Disney's 1999 recall of original releases of The Rescuers due to the discovery of two photographs of a nude woman in the background of two frames of the movie.

See also

• Disney special editions
• Mermaids in popular culture
• The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning
• The Little Mermaid Broadway Musical
• The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea
• List of Disney theatrical animated features

References

External links

• The Little Mermaid - Official The Little Mermaid Platinum Edition DVD site
• The Little Mermaid Special Edition - Product page on DisneyVideo.com
• The Little Mermaid at IMDb
• The Little Mermaid at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Little Mermaid at Box Office Mojo
• Template:Bcdb title
• Original drawings of The Little Mermaid - Disney-Archive
• KimmyMarie's Secret Mermaid Grotto - Movie Stills