It's... Eh, alright.

Rating: 6/10 (20 February 2014)

While this IS the movie that started the Disney Renaissance, I feel that it was more due to the animation than the riveting story or characters.
First, the Good: the animation is spectacular. Why they switched from this to whatever was used in Pocahontas and Hunchback will always be a mystery to me because it is BEAUTIFUL. The songs are pretty good, though I've always found Part of Your World to be a bit, um, "whiney". Under the Sea is good, and Poor Unfortunate Souls is also good. Kiss the Girl WAS good until it was bastardized by female pop singers like Selena Gomez. Since then, it just hasn't been the same.
Then the Bad: a lot of scenes in this movie are rather boring. Maybe it's because I have a Y-chromosome, but I never found Ariel fawning over Eric or King Triton blowing his top to be that enjoyable. Again, the musical numbers are fun, but the scenes between them aren't very memorable in terms of dialogue and events, excluding the climax and that one scene of Ariel combing her hair with a fork.
Now, the Ugly: I never realized it before, but I can totally sympathize with people who hate Ariel. Why? Because she essentially sells her "voice" to the underwater version of the Devil in exchange for a shot at a getting guy. She does nothing to really help anyone else throughout the movie and doesn't spend much time thinking about things other than herself, boys, and human trinkets. At the end she gets her father turned into a... plant-fish-thing? And, despite all the trouble her raging teenage hormones have caused, she still gets what she wants.
THAT'S not a harmful message at all! If you enjoy the movie, fine, I can easily see why: it's a very colorful, very beautiful film. But in my opinion, it doesn't hold up against other Disney films like Aladdin, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, or The Great Mouse Detective, who may lack stunning visuals but more than make up for it in story and characters, especially the latter.