The Little Mermaid is a American animated feature produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale of the same name. Distributed by Walt Disney Pictures, the film was originally released to theaters on November 17, 1989 and is the twenty-eighth film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series. During its initial release, The Little Mermaid grossed over $84 million in the United States and an additional $99 million internationally.

After the success of the 1988 Disney/Amblin film Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Little Mermaid is given credit for breathing life back into the animated feature film genre after a string of critical or commercial failures that dated back to the early 1980s. It also marked the start of the era known as the 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

Ariel, a sixteen-year-old mermaid princess, is dissatisfied with life under the sea and curious about the human world. With her best fish friend Flounder, Ariel collects human artifact and goes to the surface of the ocean to visit Scuttle the seagull, who offers very inaccurate and comical knowledge of human culture. Ignoring the warnings of her father (King Triton) and court musician (Sebastian the crab) that contact between merpeople and humans is forbidden, Ariel still 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. ("Part of Your World") While Sebastian, who was assigned to watch over Ariel and be sure she does not visit the surface again tries to convince her that its better to live under the sea than in the human world ("Under the Sea")

One night, Ariel and Flounder travel to the ocean surface to watch a celebration for the birthday of Prince Eric, with whom Ariel falls in love. A sudden storm hits, during which everyone manages to escape in a lifeboat except for Eric who goes and rescues his dog Max, who was still trapped on the ship. He saves Max but almost drowns but is saved by Ariel, who drags him to the beach. She sings to him, but when he stirs awake he sees a vision. She dives underwater when Max comes to Eric. 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 find a way to join Eric. ("Part of Your World (reprise)")

Triton and his daughters notice a change in Ariel, who is openly lovesick. Triton questions Sebastian about Ariel's behavior, during which Sebastian accidentally reveals the incident with Eric. Triton furiously confronts Ariel in her grotto, using his trident to destroy her collection of human treasures. After Triton leaves, a pair of eels, Flotsam and Jetsam, convince a crying Ariel that she must visit Ursula the sea witch, who can supposedly make all her dreams come true.

Ursula makes a deal with Ariel to transform her into a human for three days ("Poor, Unfortunate Souls"). Within these three days, Ariel must receive the "kiss of true love" from Eric; otherwise, she will transform back into a mermaid on the third day and belong to Ursula. As payment for legs, Ariel has to give up her voice, which Ursula magically traps in a shell she wears as a locket. Ariel's tail is transformed into legs and Sebastian and Flounder drag her to the surface.

Eric and Max find Ariel on the beach. He initially suspects that she is the one who saved his life, but when he learns that she cannot speak, he discards that notion—to both the frustration of Ariel and Max (who knows the truth). He helps her to the palace, where the servants think she is as a survivor of a shipwreck. Ariel spends time with Eric, and at the end of the second day, they almost kiss ("Kiss the Girl") but are thwarted by Flotsam and Jetsam. Angered at their narrow escape, Ursula takes the disguise of a beautiful young woman named "Vanessa" and appears onshore singing with Ariel's voice. Eric recognizes the song, and in her disguise, Vanessa/Ursula casts a hypnotic spell of enchantment on Eric to make him forget about Ariel.

The next day, Ariel finds out that Eric will be married to the disguised Ursula on a ship. She cries and is left behind when the wedding barge departs. Scuttle discovers that Vanessa is Ursula in disguise, and informs Ariel. Ariel and Flounder chase the wedding barge, Sebastian informs Triton and Scuttle is assigned to literally "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 to her true form and she kidnaps Ariel.

Triton appears and confronts Ursula, but cannot destroy Ursula's contract with Ariel. Triton chooses to sacrifice himself for his daughter, and is transformed into a polyp. Ursula takes Triton's crown and trident, which was her plan from the beginning. Ursula uses her new power to gloat, forming a whirlpool that disturbs several shipwrecks, one of which Eric commandeers. Just as Ursula is set to use the trident to destroy Ariel, Eric turns the wheel hard to port, in effect ramming the ship's splintered bowsprit through Ursula's abdomen.

With Ursula gone, her power breaks and the polyps in Ursula's garden (including Triton) turn back into the old merpeople. Later, after seeing that Ariel really loves Eric and that Eric also saved him in the process, Triton willingly changes her from a mermaid into a human using his trident. She runs into Eric's arms, and the two finally kiss. Ariel marries Eric in a wedding where both humans and merpeople attend.

Cast and characters

• Chef Louis, voiced by top-billed Rene Auberjonois, is the chef of Eric's house, a diminutive man with a very short temper whose favorite dish is fish and seafood in general. He tries to cook up Sebastian into a stuffed crab.
• 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. He is kind and giving, easily taking Ariel in when he finds her stranded on the beach despite not knowing she was the one who once saved his life.
• Princess Ariel, voiced by Jodi Benson, is a 16-year old mermaid entranced with the human world. She is kind, innocent and naive and very trusting. She falls in love with a prince and trades her voice to the sea witch Ursula for 3 days as a human. She is the primary protagonist.
• Ursula, voiced by Pat Carroll, is the villainous Sea Witch, a cecaelia banished by Triton long before the film's events. After getting Ariel's voice, she tries to marry Eric under the identity of Vanessa (Jodi Benson).
• Scuttle, voiced by Buddy Hackett, is a seagull which Ariel considers an expert in the human world when in fact he knows very little about the world's actual working from beyond a bird's eye view. He's loud, obnoxious but has the best of intentions for Ariel.
• Flounder, voiced by Jason Marin, is Ariel's fish sidekick. He is a talkative, yet timid gold and blue striped fish who is just as naive and impressionable as Ariel is, often involving himself in her adventures.
• King Triton, voiced by Kenneth Mars, is the ruler of Atlantica and Ariel's widowed father. He is curmudgeonly, but caring and overbearingly protective of his youngest daughter Ariel. Despite his good intentions he feels he can tend to be too harsh with her, often hurting her feelings.
• Grimsby, voiced by Ben Wright, is Eric's majordomo. He is sophistocated with a low sense of humor, but generally caring of Eric and his best interests. This was Wright's final acting role before his death in 1989.
• Sebastian, voiced by Samuel E. Wright, is a crab that leads the Atlantica orchestra. During development, he was turned from British to Jamaican. He is a high strung, somewhat cowardly crustacean with a natural musical aptitude and though charged with keeping an eye on Ariel he often sides with her and protects her from harm despite what Triton might think of her (or his) actions.
• Flotsam and Jetsam, voiced by Paddi Edwards, are Ursula's eel pets/henchmen. They are twins, who usually speak in sync, they are killed accidentally by Ursula in the climax of the film.
• Carlotta the maid, voiced by Edie McClurg, is one of Eric's maids. She is kind hearted and always willing to help Ariel out, she is one of the few people who see her as a match for Eric.
• Ariel's Sisters, voiced by Kimmy Robertson and Caroline Vasicek, Aquata, Andrina, Arista, Attina, Adella, and Alana are Ariel's six older sisters, and although they were introduced in the above order, their age order is different, as revealed in The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning, with Attina being the oldest instead of Aquata.
• Harold the Seahorse, voiced by Will Ryan, is the court announcer to King Triton's palace.
• Max the Sheepdog, vocal effects by Frank Welker, is an Old English Sheepdog and Prince Eric's pet, who first appears in the film.

Production

The film was originally planned as one of Disney's earliest feature films. Development started soon after Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in the late 1930s, 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, the staff found the original 1930s Disney Mermaid story and art development work by chance. Many of the changes made by the staff in the 1930s 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 underwater bubble effects animation in the film to Pacific Rim Productions, a China-based firm with production facilities in Beijing.

Mermaid's supervising animators included 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 Ariel and oversaw the "Part of Your World" musical number. He jokingly stated 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.

Another first for recent years was that live actors and actresses were filmed for reference material for the animators, a practice used frequently for many of the Disney animated features produced under Walt Disney's supervision. Broadway actress Jodi Benson was chosen to play Ariel, and Sherri Lynn Stoner, a former member of Los Angeles' Groundlings improvisation 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.

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 villain, Ursula the Sea Witch. These included American actresses such as Bea Arthur, Nancy Marchand, Charlotte Rae, Elaine Stritch, English actresses such as Joan Collins, Jennifer Saunders (who auditioned for it) and Dawn French (who also auditioned for it), and Australian actress Rowena Wallace, who claims she was asked to audition for the role by Michael Eisner.

Music

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 and Sea Creatures
• "Poor Unfortunate Souls" – Ursula
• "Les Poissons" – Chef Louis
• "Kiss the Girl" – Sebastian and Chorus
• "Vanessa's Song" – Vanessa/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.

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 served as the film's producer.

• It was the first return to fairy tales since 1959's 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 final use of the Disney studio's multiplane camera, as well as one of the first uses of CAPS 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. Since then, it has gone 6x Platinum in the US.

• Ursula the Sea Witch is perhaps the first example of a cecaelia – a hybrid mythological creature not unlike mermaids that is half-human and half-octopus appearing on the big screen. Due to the popularity and widely-known appearance of the villain, the usage of cecaelia in art (particularly online), literature, video games, and even aquatic-themed parades increased dramatically. Additionally, cecaelia are now more frequently referred to as 'sea witches'.

Box office

According to TheNumbers.com.

1989 original run