  |
|---|
 |
| Available October 3, 2006 |
Look out! Disney's The Little Mermaid - 2 Disc Special Edition is finally here! My wife absolutely loves this movie, so she was excited to see it get the re-mastered 2-Disc Special Edition treatment. I enjoyed the movie too when I originally saw it... a long, long time ago. Too long ago, in fact. When we actually sat down to watch it last night, I couldn't hardly remember a thing about it. And that's actually a good thing, because once again I was kept entertained all the way through.
The first thing we noticed as we started watching it was that this an old-school cartoon. And I mean that in the sense that it uses colored cells, and so doesn't have that super-crisp, bright, perfectly uniformed color that you find in every current cartoon nowadays. Man, talk about spoiled! It was a little off-setting at first, but it didn't take long for either of us to get over it and stop noticing.
The story, as if you don't know, is about a beautiful 16 year old mermaid named Ariel who dreams of life above the sea, where humans live. Her father, King Triton, doesn't take to kindly to this, but then we all know how stubborn teenage daughters can be... and I say that not because I have a teen daughter, but because I am a TV junkie who has seen plenty of shows and movies involving teenage daughters. And TV would never lie to me....
So when Ariel swims to the surface and sees a handsome prince dancing on his ship, she instantly falls in love. But then a huge storm picks up, the prince's ship catches fire, and he is blown overboard by an explosion. Ariel, seeing this, rescues him. As the prince starts to awake, he hears her song and then just catches a glimpse of her before she disappears.
Now, while the prince searches for his mystery woman with the lovely voice, Ariel enters into a pact with the evil seawitch Ursula to make her a human. The catch: she only has three days to get the prince to give her a kiss of true love, otherwise she will revert back to a mermaid and become Ursula's property. The other catch: Ariel has to give up her voice to Ursula. Sounds like a pretty one-sided contract if you ask me.
So now our lovely young maiden finds herself with only 3 days to find the prince and have him give her a kiss of true love, all without her voice... which is going to prove difficult considering the prince is still searching for his mystery woman with the lovely voice. And then of course we all know that evil Ursula isn't just going to stand by and let her succeed, as she's is bound and determined to take the crown from King Triton, no matter the cost!
As I understand it, the story by Hans Christian Andersen on which this film is loosely based doesn't quite have a happy ending... but this is Disney we're talking about here, so of course they're going to make it have a happy ending. I've never read the story by Hans Christian Andersen so I can't really compare the two, but Disney's version is definitely worth watching. Besides having great animation and an interesting story, the songs are also quite enjoyable. Normally I don't like songs in my movies, but this is one of those rare occasions when I actually think they work really well.
There are a few extra features on the first disc, such as an audio commentary by several of the people involved, a section where you can listen to the various songs (and view optional on-screen lyrics), a live-action music video for the song "Kiss the Girl", a sneak peak at The Little Mermaid III, and even a preview of disc two (what's that about?). The second disc of this of this 2-disc set contains most of the extra features, such as the deleted scenes, the making-of the movie, the special effects stuff, adapting the story from the original Little Mermaid story by Hans Christian Andersen, and other such goodies, including stupid little games that kids might like.
So to sum up, if you don't yet own The Little Mermaid, then this is worth picking up.
