The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning

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The Little Mermaid Ariel's Beginning mostly known as the last Disney direct to video sequel of Disneytoon Studios, the reasons why this sequel sucks is because of the following reasons i will give: 1)- This prequel to The Little Mermaid is very unnecessary since it does not explain anything from the first film and the TV series, aside from what happened to the mother and how Ariel and Flounder met, 2)- The Little Mermaid already had a prequel TV show back in 1992 called The Little Mermaid The Series which is at least more faithful to the original film than this film is , 3)- The premise of the music being banned in town is basically a rehash of Footloose but with underwater setting on it, 4)- Flounder was flanderized and acts very inconsistent with the way he is portrayed, he is all about being rebellious and jamming to music and he is nothing like the cowardly guppy he previously was in the first film, he can also be a little annoying on top of that his new voice actor Parker Goris doesn't sound anything like Jason Marinn the voice actor of the first film, 5)- The villain named Marina Del Rey was weak and laughable she has weak motives and a weak personality and feels like an inferior version of Yzma from The Emperor's New Groove, 6)- The death of Queen Athena is done in a very awkward way by making a cringeworthy sound effect instead of simply cutting to a black screen it would also make the human brain feel weird and a bit dizzy, 7)- There are no any new songs in The Little Mermaid fr with some of them being reworked versions of famous conga songs such as Jump In The Line, 8)- King Triton was flanderized from a stern but caring overprotective father with a heart of gold into a complete jerk to both Ariel and her sisters due to him banning music in Atlantica and treating them harshly throughout the entire film unable to let go of his deceased wife until the film's ending, 9)- While nice the cameo of Scuttle can also come across as unnecessary even though his voice actor Buddy Hacket died back in 2003, 10)- While nice the digital Ink and paint animation can feel very out of place in an unacceptable way such as the music box being computer animated, 11)- Ariel's motives feel weak as she wants to bring music back to Atlantica all because she is just bored of everything and she is even hardly ever interested in collecting human objects unlike the first film and the 1992 TV show, 12)- This movie ignores and retcons practically everything that The Little Mermaid already had and 13)- This is the worst 3rd installment and this was the last Disney direct to video sequel after John Lasseter decided to put an end to all upcoming sequels resulting the cancellation of Dumbo, The Aristocats, Chicken Little and Meet The Robinsons.

An effort was definitely made here, but the amount of cheese in this one was a little too extreme. Also, Triton is a huge baby in this one.

The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning (2008) ** 1/2 (out of 4) This prequel starts off with Ariel as a child and we get to see what happened to her mother, which leads her father King Triton to ban all music in Atlantica. We then flash-forward to Ariel as a teenager when she learns the power of music and wants to bring it back. This third film in the series is certainly a major step up from the second one but then again the second movie was so poor that it wouldn't be that hard to be better. This film here was obviously done on a low-budget and there's no question that the animation is far off from the original movie but, then again, it's at least better than the second film. One certainly shouldn't go into this movie expecting some sort of masterpiece but at the same time I thought it was mildly entertaining and worth watching. I thought the highlight of the picture were the characters, which were a lot of fun and that includes the rebellious Ariel. I found her to be quite fun throughout and we also got nice support from King Triton, Flounder and Sebastian. The story itself wasn't all that original but it too was at least entertaining. The music wasn't the greatest thing from Disney but the sequences were at least fun. As you can tell, there's really nothing ground-breaking with THE LITTLE MERMAID: ARIEL'S BEGINNING but it's at least mildly entertaining and worth watching once.

Ever since Disney's "sequels" department has been under new management, there has been a HUGE upgrade in quality. There have only been two animated releases so far, Cinderella III and The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning. I am not sure if any more sequels are in production. Consistent between both films is the very high quality animation. TLM:AB keeps CGI to a minimum and much effort has been made to keep the characters close to the original character models (and in many cases, character models have heavily improved over the original). This is probably as good as it will get without the original team of animators. What saves this film is the fantastic hand-drawn animation in the age of ugly CGI and lazy flash-drawn cartoons. I would go as far as to say that the animation here is on-par or higher than the original 1989 release (the original was plagued with off-model animation). Unfortunately, the story is only so-so. The plot is very weak but effort has been made to develop all of the sisters' personalities, which I really appreciate (they are believable sister to sister relationships). I think Disney recognised that without Alan Menken, the music for TLM would not have charm or beauty. Disney did the right thing for this film by keeping songs short and to a minimum. This film highly deserves a chance to be seen by many, unlike the rushed and horrible Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea.

*MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS!!* But it all goes downhill just after the introduction. Now, the original Little Mermaid is a great Disney film and it even informed audiences of the characters' current situations due to events we heard about, but never actually saw on screen (like how Ursula mentioned that she was kicked out of the palace for God knows what). When this movie was announced back in 2008, I was really excited to see if Disney would finally reveal all of these events. But, unfortunately, The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning does none of that. It's just an extremely awkward story with terrible songs (except "I Remember" was decent enough), a lame villain, and annoying slang and dialogue. The good - The animation and art are beautiful. The backgrounds of the sea, night club, and Atlantica look amazing. The colors also look less sloppy and rushed like they were in The Little Mermaid II. - Sebastian's character was pretty solid. I liked how even though he was a sour stick-in-the-mud, he still had a rebellious side of going against the ban on music. That was pretty awesome to see. - I really liked the first couple of minutes where Ariel's mother, Athena, is shown. So far, so good. But then the scene where she dies and we're supposed to feel sorry for her is just plain stupid. One minute, Athena saves one of her daughters from an approaching pirate ship and that's good, but then the next she goes after a music box that she could have just left behind, right? And then the ship CRASHES RIGHT INTO THE SIDE OF THE COVE, obviously killing her. My question is...what happened to the pirates after this? The bad - I really hated Triton's character in this movie. Which is a shame because he is actually one of my favorite Disney characters. But in this, he is unable to control his own feelings of loss and this inability causes him to make life miserable for his children by allowing no music in the kingdom. Doesn't this guy know that two wrongs don't make a right? I understand that he lost his wife, but that's no excuse to make the lives of others just as bad by not giving them the choice to do what they want. And what does music have to do with this? It was HUMANS that killed his wife, and they were never mentioned again after Athena's death. - It was dumb how the movie was mostly just Ariel and Triton bickering. They did this in the first movie, but even then they still were shown to have a loving relationship. Here, they don't have one at all. - The villain, Marina Del Rey, was boring. All she wanted was a stupid job while the better villain Ursula wanted to rule the entire ocean. I wanted Ursula as the main villain here, telling the story of why she was thrown out. That would have made more sense. - The dialogue was also very annoying. The band members say things like "Let it happen!" and "Bad little self". The original movie didn't include any of this, so why does this one? - The background music was okay, but the songs were lifeless. Marina's song sounded so rushed and using "Shake Senora" was unnecessary. "I Remember" was decent enough though. So, in conclusion, while this movie wasn't the worst of the Disney direct-to-video sequels (that would be Hunchback II), it's definitely not nearly as good as The Little Mermaid. 3/10