Jodi Benson
Ariel
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The Little Mermaid is a 1989 American animated musical fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation in association with Silver Screen Partners IV and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It is loosely based on the 1837 Danish fairy tale of the same name by Hans Christian Andersen.
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- The Little Mermaid
Nov 17, 1989 · The Little Mermaid: Directed by Ron Clements, John Musker. With Rene Auberjonois, Christopher Daniel Barnes, Jodi Benson, Pat Carroll. A mermaid princess makes a Faustian bargain in an attempt to become human and win a prince's love.
- (284K)
- Animation, Adventure, Family
- Ron Clements, John Musker
- 1989-11-17
Triton is the King of the Merpeople, but the humans believe them to be a myth. Ariel (Jodi Benson), 16 yr-old mermaid princess, is curious about the human world. With her friend Flounder (Jason Marin), Ariel collects human artifacts and goes to the surface of the ocean to visit Scuttle (Buddy Hackett) the seagull.
- Overview
- Plot
- Cast
- Development
- Music
- Reception
- Release
“Somewhere under the sea and beyond your imagination is an adventure in fantasy.”
―Tagline
is a 1989 musical comedy fantasy animated film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation. It was first released on November 17, 1989 by Walt Disney Pictures, but returned to theaters on November 14, 1997. The 28th animated feature in the Disney Animated Canon, and the first to be released during the Disney Renaissance, the film is loosely based upon the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale of the same name.
The story centers on a young mermaid named Ariel, who is captivated by the world upon the surface. When she falls in love with a human prince, she makes a deal with a villainous sea witch to become human, herself, and must earn his love before the agreed time runs out.
was an unmitigated success for the studio, being praised for its animation, storytelling, and music by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken. The movie grossed over $100 million at the US box office upon its initial release and won two Academy Awards for Best Song ("Under the Sea") and Best Original Music Score. It is credited as the film to have started the historic Disney Renaissance, an era that had breathed life back into the animated feature film medium after a string of competent, but only inexpensive successful animated films such as The Aristocats, The Rescuers, and The Great Mouse Detective.
Following The Little Mermaid were a direct-to-video sequel and a prequel (The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea and The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning) and an animated television series that ran from 1992 to 1994. A decade after the film's release, Ariel would be inaugurated into the Disney Princess media line, while Ursula would appear as a staple character in the Disney Villains franchise. In 2007, a stage adaptation of the film made its Broadway debut. A live-action reimagining based on the 1989 animation, and featuring the music of Alan Menken and Lin-Manuel Miranda, was released on May 26, 2023.
The film begins on a foggy morning out on the open sea. A ship then comes from the fog, filled with sailors singing stories of the legendary merfolk. ("Fathoms Below") Aboard that ship is a young prince, named Eric, his dog Max, and his advisor Grimsby, who denounces the merfolk as, "nautical nonsense," but one sailor insists them to be real. While distracted by Grimsby, a fish the sailor was holding slips from him and falls back into the ocean.
The fish breathes a sigh of relief before swimming away from the ship. The opening credits play as the fish crosses the deep ocean until at last, we see merfolk. They then make their way through the ocean towards a shining underwater castle located in an aquatic kingdom called Atlantica. The castle is the domain of King Triton and is where he was holding a concert in his name, performed by his seven daughters and the crab court composer, Sebastian. ("Daughters of Triton")
The concert goes as planned until it is discovered that Triton's youngest daughter, Ariel, is not there, much to his anger. As it turned out, Ariel was out excavating a ship graveyard with her best friend, Flounder the Fish. Inside one wreck, she finds a pipe and a fork, which fascinates her curiosity, all the while unaware of a shark watching her and Flounder from outside.
The shark bursts into the room Ariel and Flounder are in and gives chase to them, all across the graveyard, until the two manage to get the shark ensnared in an anchor ring. They then make their way to the surface, where their friend, a seagull named Scuttle, lives. Ariel asks Scuttle to tell her what the items she collected are. He describes the fork as a dinglehopper, an item humans use to style hair; and the pipe as a snarfblatt, an object for making music.
Upon hearing the word "music", Ariel is quickly reminded of the concert she missed and makes haste back home. However, Ariel fails to realize she is being watched by two suspicious eels by the names of Flotsam and Jetsam. The two are spies under the employ of Ursula the Sea Witch, a member of King Triton's court before being banished. Ursula hates Triton with a passion for his atrocities towards her and constantly schemes of ways to exact revenge. The moment Ariel caught her eye, Ursula commanded her cronies to watch her, hoping to use her to get to the king.
The film then moves to the royal palace, where Triton and Sebastian are scolding Ariel for missing the concert. But Flounder moves in to defend her, accidentally letting slip the encounter with Scuttle, which quickly angers Triton. The law of his kingdom forbids going to the surface world for fears of merfolk being caught by humans. But Ariel believes humans not to be all that bad, which angers Triton to the point of telling her that as long as she is living under his ocean, she'll do what he says and what she does not want. And this sends Ariel away crying, with Flounder following after.
•Jodi Benson as Ariel and Vanessa
•Christopher Daniel Barnes as Prince Eric
•Pat Carroll as Ursula
•Samuel E. Wright as Sebastian
•Jason Marin as Flounder
•Kenneth Mars as King Triton
In 1986, The Great Mouse Detective co-director Ron Clements discovered a collection of Hans Christian 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.
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 firm'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 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 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 a dilapidated condition.
The film contains 10 songs in total; including three reprises with lyrics by Howard Ashman and a score by Alan Menken, his first Disney film he composed.
A soundtrack was released for the film on October 13, 1989, and was met with great praise and accolades. The soundtrack would be re-released in 2006 as well.
was released to rave reviews upon its initial release. It quickly became a cultural phenomenon, with many critics hailing it as a return to the quality filmmaking Disney animation was known for during the days of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Cinderella. It won a number of accolades, specifically for its music, including two Academy Awards fo...
Theatrical release history
•USA: November 17, 1989 (original release) •Liberia: December 29, 1989 (re-release) •Bahamas: November 21, 1990 (re-release) •USA: November 14, 1997 (re-release) •USA: September 13, 2013 (one-month limited engagement 3D re-release at the El Capitan Theatre) •USA: September 20, 2013 (Disney Second Screen Live re-release)
Home video release history
•1990 (VHS/Betamax/Laserdisc - Walt Disney Classics) - The film's home video debut was in May 1990 after a highly successful run at the box-office. Consumers made this the 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. On the cover of this version, one of the pillars on the golden castle bears a resemblance to a phallus, though it is a coincidence as said by Disney and the man who drew it, who in fact did not work for Disney. •1998 (VHS/Laserdisc - Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection) - The growing popularity of Disney films that peaked with The Lion King in 1994 ignited much interest in The Little Mermaid from new Disney fans and from a new generation of kids. By the time the movie was re-released on VHS in March 1998, millions of people were eager to set their hands on a copy. The VHS sold 13 million units and ranked as the 3rd best-selling title of the year on the VHS chart. •1999 (DVD - Limited Issue) - The film was included in the Limited Issue line and was released as a "barebones" DVD set with a poor video transfer and no substantial features. •2006 (DVD - Walt Disney Platinum Editions) - 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, new musical sequences 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/Blu-ray Disc sold 1.6 million units, and in its first week, over 4 million units, making it the biggest animated DVD/Blu-ray Disc debut for October. It ranked second on the DVD sales chart and enjoyed the best first-week sales of all the Platinum titles. The Special edition came out in the U.K. on November 6, 2006. •2013 (DVD/Blu-ray Disc - Diamond Edition) - The film was re-released on October 1, 2013, as part of the Walt Disney Diamond Editions. •2019 (DVD/Blu-ray Disc - Signature Collection) - For the first time in 4K UHD Blu-ray, the film was released on February 26, 2019, as part of the Walt Disney Signature Collection.
In Disney's beguiling animated romp, rebellious 16-year-old mermaid Ariel (Jodi Benson) is fascinated with life on land. On one of her visits to the surface, which are forbidden by her...
- (31.7K)
- Ron Clements, John Musker
- G
- Kids & Family, Fantasy, Animation
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The Little Mermaid is a 1989 American animated musical fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation in association with Silver Screen Partners IV and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It is loosely based on the 1837 Danish fairy tale of the same name by Hans Christian Andersen.
