The legacy of The Little Mermaid, 25 years later
Monday, November 17, 2014 at 9:30PM 
Tim here, to celebrate the silver anniversary of one of the most important films in the annals of American animation. 25 years ago today – some of you are going to have to brace yourselves, because you’re about to feel very old – Walt Disney Pictures released The Little Mermaid, in one fell swoop rewriting the landscape for family entertainment and animation alike.
As hard as it is to believe now, once upon a time, Disney was an embarrassing underdog, whose theme parks were solely responsible for keeping its saggy movie division propped up. 1989 was only four years removed from the disastrous release of the pricey The Black Cauldron, and the takeover of the company by executives Michael Eisner and Frank Wells, who managed to stabilize the live action filmmaking division, while putting the animation studio under the command of Peter Schneider.
It was Schneider who managed an ambitious and terrifyingly foolhardy plan, concocted by Jeffrey Katzenberg to restore the luster of Disney animation after a generation or more of mismanagement, by releasing a new animated feature on an annual basis. The first film produced on that model was 1988’s Oliver & Company, a rock-solid hit, but hardly the triumphant return of Disney animation that everyone was hoping for. That came with the second film in Schneider’s plan, The Little Mermaid, and the rest is history.
Making $84 million in the U.S. alone, The Little Mermaid set a record as the highest-grossing fully-animated feature ever made, and continued the shift begun with the previous year’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit in encouraging American audiences and critics to think of animation as something that could be more ambitious and artistic than just the thing you drop your kids in front of for 80 minutes. More than just pulling Disney out of a financial tailspin, though, the true legacy of The Little Mermaid is the shadow it has cast over so many animated films in the quarter-century since its debut.
Disney has a reputation for making fairy tale musicals about princesses, but this is largely a modern invention: only three of the 27 Disney features preceding The Little Mermaid meet this description, while three of the next five released in its wake do. And so everything down to Tangled and Frozen is obliged to nod its head in thanks to The Little Mermaid’s proof that such films still had a constituency in the modern world. While that specific model has been only intermittently revived by other studios (though after Frozen’s enormous success, I’d be shocked if we don’t see a few attempts by other studios in the next several years), the reliable success of Disney’s fantasy musicals in the next several years re-established animation as a major commercial force, and led to rival studios starting up their own studios to compete. And here we are, and animation is one of the biggest economic forces in the Hollywood landscape.
As the film that served as the instigator for all of this, The Little Mermaid has an awful lot of historical importance to live up to. And of course, it does – if I’ve made it this far into a discussion of the movie’s impact without really saying a single word about the movie, that’s because I’m sure that most of you have seen it, and already know about the many, many things it does well. There are problems with it, sure: it has a blander male lead than any other Disney romance since the 1950s, and its gender politics are appalling on a level beyond just about anything else in the studio’s entire output. But set against that are some of the most extraordinary successes of any animated movie in history. The songs by Howard Ashman & Alan Menken make for one of the strongest of all original movie musicals, with one iconic tune after another (and Menken’s score is even better – easily my pick for the best in Disney’s 54-film canon). The villain, Ursula, is a mainstay on lists of the best movie bad guys ever, a deliciously over-the-top diva played by Pat Carroll with the ebullience of a showstopping drag queen (no surprise, then, that Divine was a major influence on Ursula’s design).
The Little Mermaid showcased a newly-forming generation of Disney animators in their great breakout moment. Even after the studio’s films throughout the ‘80s had restored a degree of lushness and visual ambition that had been largely abandoned in the decades following the costly Sleeping Beauty, there was still no precedent for the scope of animation showcased here, with its limitless world-building, and character designs that permitted an extraordinary range of facial expressions and acting (so useful was the facial design on Ariel, the little mermaid herself, that Disney has re-used it constantly throughout the years, especially her eyes; Tangled’s Rapunzel and Frozen’s Anna are very little more than three-dimensional renderings of Ariel’s facial structure). And it pointed to bolder futures yet: the film’s final scene was the demo for a new digital coloring system, CAPS, that would enable Disney’s output in the 1990s to be still more ambitious and complex.
But even as technology has left The Little Mermaid behind, it has aged gracefully into being one of the indisputable classics of its medium. The storytelling isn’t always flawless, but the mix of light comedy, action-adventure, and drama gives the film a ranginess and emotional heft that has been barely been matched anywhere else in animation, before or sense. The characters are fun to look at and vividly etched (outside of that grimly functional prince), the music is playful, dramatic, and catchy as all hell. 25 years later, the film hasn’t lost any of its charm, and it still stands head and shoulders above virtually all of the dozens and dozens of films which owe to it the entirety of their existence.
Reader Comments (16)
I always forget what a turnaround this was for Disney, but it's true. I was a child of the 80s, and my parents didn't show me a single modern Disney movie until this one.
Great read!
Tim couldn't agree more. I think the score is so romantic, lush and beautiful. The piece that plays when Sebastian is explaining to Ariel on how to get Prince Eric to kiss her as they go to bed is one of my all time favorite pieces of movie music.
The Little Mermaid is the first movie I have memory of ever seeing and I've been in love ever since. It's my favorite movie of all time and I revisit more than once a year. It's responsible for many things in my life, including my love for redheads and aquatic life and water. I know it's flawed but in my eyes it's a perfect film and one that, no matter how hard the fight, aklways brings me and my dad together. We watch it in awe of its beauty and we are always tearing up by the end.
And, moreover, A Little Mermaid made possible the veritable, ne-plus-ultra classic of the genre: Beauty and the Beast. Blessed be.
maybe the best disney princess movie. wonderful characters and music, and I just love the moment at the end where ariel's father grants her wish (and then when they hug goodbye).
I still get teary-eyed at the end, when she says "I love you, Daddy"
...and then a rousing chorus sings "now you can walk, now you can run, now you can stay all day in the suuuun..."
I rewatched this recently, on Blu-ray for the first time. The animation looks truly stunning still, and the characters and music are exceptionally vivid.
"Appalling on a level beyond just about anything else in the studio’s entire output" is to my mind going a bit far regarding gender. Ariel is a far more active and characterized protagonist than any of the female leads of previous films, and her adventurous personality was in fact conceived by the animation team to provide more explanation for why she wanted to visit the surface world.
Is it been 25 years already? Somehow it doesn't feel that old.
Even though it differs so greatly in plot from HCA's original story, the extremely vivid, lush and detailed descriptions of the sea world in the tale must have served as a great starting point and challenge for the look of the film. HCA leaves no stone unturned when describing the sea world.
Seven-year-old me was convinced this was the greatest work of art ever created by man.
Fourteen-year-old me begged to differ and was hugely disappointed when revisiting it.
But this review makes me think [number-censored]-year-old me should give it another shot.
It's true that the gender politics aren't great, but no way is it worse than Sleeping Beauty or Snow White. At least Ariel defies authority and doesn't spend half her movie asleep!
I have never seen The Little Mermaid!
I really hoped to read this article open-minded, but then I scrolled down and this picture of Ariel is there and immediately reminded me why I hated this movie so much. It actually put a disdain for all Disney in me and I didn't watch any Disney movie on principle until Tangled. I was a teenager when it opened, wasn't reading any reviews and wasn't aware of the disneyfication of stories and thus was horrified what they did to the beautiful melancholy tale of HCA. Luckily now they give their retellings original names. I try to understand why this movie is regarded so well by so many people, but this picture of Ariel which is used so often, for me actually comprises everything what is wrong with the movie, and I haven't yet managed to overlook it.
If it wasn't for Disney re-telling, or adapting, all of these stories that are super dark and depressing, then not many people would be aware of them today. There's plenty of adult themes in The Little Mermaid and on top of that you have amazing voice acting, gorgeous animation and incredible music. I think you are being unnecessaryly stubborn. The original story is still there, you should try to enjoy this for what it is: an adaptation. Maybe Sofia Coppola's take will be more up your alley.
This is the film that truly made me fall in love with Disney. I can't tell you how many times I've sung the "Part of Your World" reprise around the house just because, and now I get to play Sebastian in a current D.C.-area theatre production, which has been a treat.
"At least Ariel defies authority" Akash
Maybe you could see this as a feminist quality but not really a positive one. I did not not really like this film as a child since I loved the original tale, this seemed too cheesy 80-American style occasionally which is not really a quality I love but the main problem with me was Ariel's character who seemed so unlikable and not terrible intelligent.
But it is a good film, my childhood dislike is a bit unfounded. It is an adaption so it does not need to tell the same story (it could be some other mermaid) happy and colorful films can be very nice and Ariel learns (at least somewhat) from her mistakes in the film and is quite cute and memorable character.
And for the criticisms of gender politics, I think those are always a but unfair. She dreams of the human world long before meeting Eric (The song says part of THAT world originally, it is only in the reprise where is it is part of Your world), she actually saves the prince in the film which everyone seems to forget, and it the villain who says that Ariel should trade her voice for her man. I was under the impression that moral was that both Ariel and her father had were wrong in their behavior and realized that in the end.
My 4 yr old is an ecstatic fan of Ariel and I don't know how many times she has watched the movie. But I do remember all lines of Ariel because I always watch with her.