LITTLE MERMAID

1989, Walt Disney Pictures

Animated

Rating: G

Approx. 83 mins.

THE STORY:

Ariel, daughter of Triton, the king of the sea, is a mermaid with an insatiable curiosity for all things earthly. First, she defies her father by trawling shipwrecks for human artifacts, but soon she venturing to the surface hoping for sightings of humans. On one such excursion she finds Prince Eric who has been shipwrecked in a violent storm. She rescues him from certain death, then disappears back into the ocean leaving him with only the memory of her beautiful song. Despite having exchanged not a single word, the two are smitten.

When Triton learns of his daughter's disobedience and recklessness, he is furious and destroys all of the human relics she has collected. Angry and desperate to find her prince, Ariel visits the Ursula, the sea witch, who gives Ariel legs but at the cost of her voice. She has 3 days to get Eric to give her true love's kiss or her tail will return and she will become Ursula's slave.
Things seem to be progressing, which leads Ursula to jump in to sabotage the budding romance. She takes the guise of Eric's rescuer and puts him under a trance. The two are about to be married when Ariel and her underwater friends step in to stop the proceedings. Order is restored, Ursula is defeated, and Ariel marries her prince.

QUESTIONABLE LANGUAGE:

• Idiot 
• Tramp

VIOLENCE:

• musical number in which chef delights in gutting/ beheading/ stabbing various seafood victims
• Ursula dies when impaled by a sharp piece of broken wood

TEACHING POINTS:

• It is wrong to hate others just because they are different
• Karma is real

THE UPSHOT:

As it's a pre-2010 Disney movie, the chances of me liking it were slim. And I didn't. 

Ariel is a barely 16 year-old with a waist the same size as her neck who wears nothing but a scallop shell bra. She meets (if you can call it that) a handsome man, and decides to turn her back on her family, her voice (ironic) and her very identity for someone with whom she has never exchanged a single word. In fact, he was pretty much unconscious during their entire first fateful encounter.

The baddies-- Ursula and, to a lesser extent, the chef-- are overweight and old. Ursula is highly sexualised, with great attention being paid to her breasts and behind.

I am aware that Disney is paraphrasing Hans Christian Andersen, but I have issues with their execution. They could easily have made her a consenting adult, tempered the immediacy of her obsession, put her brain more in evidence.

Of course, my 4 year-old, who has already been wooed by the insidious cult of Disney, loved it.  

2/5