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The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning is the most inoffensive supplement to a Disney movie I've seen yet. I'm going to be honest, I don't have much to say about this, good and bad, which is kind of disappointing cause I would love to be able to laud it's greater features and shoot down it's lesser. This'll be my shortest review so far; I don't really have much to say on it but I will get this done. Thankfully it's more more refreshing compared to
The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea. Now I will say I have never seen
The Little Mermaid TV series, so whatever contradictions happened between it and
The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning I have nothing to say on, but I am aware that they exist.
The Good:
Characters - I could go on about how all of the old characters are on-model, but to be honest there isn't very many of them in this movie (understandably), but with what's there Ariel, King Triton, Sebastian, and all of the others seem to be consistent with their originals as much as they could be. My only gripe is Flounder, who is suddenly this music groupie, which I don't really remember him as in the original
The Little Mermaid. Ariel's sisters are also very cute characters that prove that this movie not only has something for girls, but something for
us guys too.
Onto the original characters.
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Starring down into your soul, you're instantly imagining
her precious lips pressing against your hardened body</center>
I want to take her
out somewhere to eat, if you know what I mean.
There isn't much to say on Queen Athena, though, other than she makes a better adult Ariel than Ariel in
The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea. She's playful, full of life, attractive, and cute. That's Ariel, not the failed copy we got in
The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea. There isn't much to say about her other than that, other than she serves her purpose in the movie's plot.
And then there's
this shit...
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OH MY GOD KILL IT WITH FIRE!</center>
Mygod, everything in this movie is perfect till this blight on the
Ideascape itself appears on the screen. Fortunately it's still not as bad as Morgana, and her assistance Benjamin genuinely provides a good way into humoring her very existence. This character tries too hard to be a villain, and while she's still a better character compared to Morgana, she's even more pointless. Her existence in
The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning is pointless and could be cut out of what could be an even more consistently good, character-driven movie. I have a feeling the same people who were responsible for
The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea thought this was a good idea.
Animation - The animation in this movie is freaking beautiful, it seems around the later years
DisneyToon Studios started really stepping up when it comes to animation as seen previously in example by
Bambi II and
Cinderella III: A Twist in Time.
The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning is the best yet, probably cause the setting gives them more opportunities and kind of forces them to animate well. Things such as the movements of the hair and tiny details such as that are beautifully animated, and really shine in this movie. All of the characters look on-model, and all of the new characters look like they could've appeared in
The Little Mermaid. I am 100% sure this animation is better than the animation in
Home on the Range and
Chicken Little. Take
that canon-only fans!
There are no errors, flukes, jankiness, nothing. It's just really smooth and believable.
Humor - This movie is pretty funny! As I said above, Benjamin provides good comic relief, but so does all of the other side characters. The Catfish Club Band are all funny and cool characters that, while still being on the trope of talking animal sidekicks, provide believable and funny comic relief amongst the madness that is going on in the story itself. Sebastian also returns to being a black culture stereotype!
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The resemblance is uncanny.</center>
Backstory - The backstory in this movie is really heartwarming, and is a good supplement to the original
The Little Mermaid. While I think it's a bit ridiculous that King Triton would ban music from Atlantica, the actual story behind it is good and convincing for the characters in question.
The Meh:
The whole movie is kind of pointless. While the above elements seem like I'm praising it on all ends, and for the fact that I have nothing
bad to say about it, doesn't mean I think it's the best thing ever. This movie is flawed in one major aspect: It's
really light on plot focus. A lot of stuff that should be talked about, such as Triton's hatred for humans, is kind of shunned out in favor of "music" which is the central theme of the movie. They should've just called it
The Little Mermaid: Electric Boogaloo Adventures. This movie is about mermaid teenage girls getting off on rebelling against their father's wishes by partying and dancing to music he doesn't want them listening to you. It's a movie mainly about having fun with some important backstory every once in a while. Ariel and Triton are good, character driven characters, but the character development is often shied by the humor.
Conclusion:
While I don't like this as much as I liked
Cinderella III: A Twist in Time, I can understand if someone were to. It's the most well-animated of the sequel movies I've seen so far, and actually supplements the original
The Little Mermaid better than anything I've seen yet. Someone could watch
The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning and be convinced that it falls in line with the original. Ultimately, however, this movie was kind of pointless, I guess you could say. It's worth watching if you're a big fan of the original like I was, unlike it's
other sequel.
6/10
Up Next: Mulan II