A slightly overrated but overall impressive Disney flick

Rating: 7/10 (19 April 2009)

I was only three years old at the time of this animated Disney movie's release, and can remember seeing a lot of it quite a few times back in the early 90's, but don't recall ever actually seeing the whole thing from start to finish. I don't think I ever watched any of "The Little Mermaid" after the early 90's, until this month, when I finally decided to rent it. (Before that, I didn't even know how the film ended, and the last bit of it didn't ring any bells.) Although I hadn't seen any of it since I was a little kid, and there are obviously many things which entertained me then but wouldn't now, I knew it was a popular Disney effort, so I had relatively high expectations. These expectations weren't quite met, but it has enough for me to give it a good review.
Ariel is a sixteen-year-old mermaid and one of the daughters of King Triton, the Sea King. Her best friend is a yellow and blue fish named Flounder. The teenage mermaid is not happy with life underwater, and wishes to be a human, living up on the land. However, her father believes that all humans are "barbarians," and forbids Ariel to ever go up to the surface, though she sometimes does. He assigns his assistant, a crab named Sebastian, to keep an eye on her, but this doesn't turn out to be easy. When Ariel sees a ship at the surface, she goes up to observe the human activity. She sees Prince Eric, and immediately falls in love. When a storm comes and destroys the ship, the young prince nearly drowns, but Ariel rescues him and takes him back to shore. After more conflict with her father, Ariel goes to see Ursula, the Sea Witch, and makes a deal with her, but doesn't realize that the evil Sea Witch intends to use her to try and take King Triton's place as the ruler of the sea!
There are reasons why this particular Disney effort failed to absolutely blow me away, and one of them is the main character. Sometimes, Ariel's naivety can be excessive, and sometimes, thanks to her, the story doesn't seem quite right. It's certainly not the greatest love story ever told. "The Little Mermaid" doesn't have the greatest bunch of characters ever featured in a Disney film, and the script might sometimes be a problem as well. Fortunately, despite these flaws, there are quite a few things to like in this film. As usual with animated Disney films, there's humour here, provided by the likes of Scuttle, Ariel's seagull friend who tells her things about the human world (even though they are incorrect), as well as Sebastian, and sometimes other characters. There are also several memorable songs in this film (I can remember them from my childhood), which aren't bad, plus there's some excitement and nicely colourful animation, as usual for Disney.
It seems many people absolutely adore this 1989 Disney flick, and apparently, it turned out to be the most successful film Disney had made in quite a while. I think I've made it clear that I'm not one of the film's strongest admirers. In fact, around the beginning, I might have even been a tad puzzled about all the hype. Nonetheless, it is pretty good family entertainment. I'm unfamiliar with the original fairy tale of the same name by Hans Christian Andersen, which this movie is based on, so I don't know how good this Disney effort is in comparison. As an animated feature from the Walt Disney Company, it's weaker than quite a few others in this category, but if you're a Disney fan, it can be very entertaining. It's definitely a lot better than "High School Musical", and probably certain other recent trash from the Disney Channel, which I haven't seen, and probably don't want to.