Starring Jodi Benson, Pat Carroll, Christopher Daniel Barnes, Samuel E. Wright, Buddy Hackett, Kenneth Mars, Edie McClurg, Rene Auberjonois, Will Ryan
Written By:
Directed By: John Musker, Ron Clements
Studio: Disney/ Buena Vista
Buy on Amazon.com link

I remember liking the Little Mermaid when I was younger but I forgot how much the singing irritated the hell out of me. But the movie comes to DVD with an all new digital transfer and lots of bonus features for the kiddies.

Little Mermaid is about the annoying teenager mermaid named Ariel, who wants to go out partying all night while her Father overlooks his kingdom. So I guess she sounds like Paris Hilton of the Seven Seas? Sometimes she sneaks up to the top of the ocean and finds strange human things and collects them. Her best friend is a fish and crab, which says a lot about her…She’s a loser. Anyway, one day she ventures at the top of the ocean and discovers this handsome lad who she wants to be with. During a bad storm, Eric’s ship is shipwrecked and she saves his life without him knowing. While all this is happening, the evil sea bitch Ursula wants to take control of King Triton’s kingdom. Plus she ends up suckering Ariel into giving her voice to Ursula, in exchange to be human and get freaky with the Prince. But the downfall to that is she can’t speak, so Ariel stupidly accepts her offer and becomes a human. And then all this crap goes down and there’s a big battle at the end between Ariel, Eric and fatty Ursula.

I tried to watch Little Mermaid but every freakin minute there was a stupid song. I don’t remember the movie having so many songs but it’s so annoying now that it’s almost unwatchable. “Hey Ariel, what time is it?” “It’s time to sing…I love clocks, I love rocks, and I love giant co…” Ok I’ll stop right there before this review gets out of hand. I think we can all agree that the only song worth listening to is the Caribbean flavor “Under the Sea,” sung by Samuel E Wright (Sebastian). If all the songs in the movie were that fun, I wouldn’t be complaining that much. But when the songs are slow and sappy, it just slows the movie down a lot! Especially if you’re a little kid; no kid really wants to see some slow song in a movie. They want to hear fast, fun songs where you can dance to! But enough of that, let’s talk about other things in the movie. The animation is great and one of the best 2D animated movies that Disney did. The DVD’s transfer is new and re-digitized, but to me, the movie still doesn’t look THAT great. Maybe I’ve seen too many Pixar movies where you can see the black heads on the digital characters face. But many of you who are buying this don’t really care that much about the detail in the picture. You just want to entertain your kids and keep them quiet for an hour and half.

There’s a whole other disc devoted to bonus features. There’s some very unfinished deleted scenes, there’s a great making-of featurette that’s broken into small sections, there’s some music videos, and plenty more. I enjoyed the featurette on the making of the storm sequence, and all the animators & other people are sitting around a table and talking about the sequence. I also liked watching the featurette on the Little Mermaid ride that never came to be. It’s neat seeing how the ride was imagined but it just never took off. I guess in the end, Disney did a musical live show instead which I’ve seen once or twice (parents dragged me to see it okay!). The extras are surprisingly good and worth the time to watch if you really like the film.

The Little Mermaid is a cute, singing animated musical and i’m just not a fan of the musical stuff. I enjoyed the parts in-between the singing but I can’t stand watching the singing stuff now. Anywho, I’d get this DVD if you like the movie because i’m sure Disney will stop selling it after awhile.

Features:
Never-Before-Seen Deleted Scenes
Exclusive Animated Short, The Little Match Girl
Treasure Untold: The Making of Disney’s The Little Mermaid
The Little Mermaid III Musical Sneak Peek
The Little Mermaid Virtual Ride: Inspired by an actual Disney imagineering ride.
All-New Kiss The Girl Music Video
And Much, Much More!

Audio:
ENGLISH: Dolby Digital 5.1
SPANISH: Dolby Digital Stereo
FRENCH: Dolby Digital Stereo

Video:
Widescreen 1.78:1 Color (Anamorphic)

Subtitles:
English

Favorite Scenes: The ending was cool…and you gotta love the song Under the Sea
Rating: G
Running Time: 83 minutes
Extras Rating:
Overall Rating: