THE LITTLE MERMAID – The Blu Review

THE LITTLE MERMAID returns to your home theater again, this time in Blu-ray format and it’s a must-have for families, Disneyphiles, animation-lovers, music-lovers, and romantics with a soft spot for fairy tales and happy endings. It’s understandable that the good folks at Disney wanted to that ending to be a happy one. After all, in the Hans Christian Anderson source tale, the mermaid not only trades her voice for legs by having her tongue cut out… ouch!, but also loses the prince to another woman, so throws herself into the sea and dies (but at least she goes to heaven!).

With THE LITTLE MERMAID, released in the fall of 1989, a new wave of Disney films hit America both on the big screen nearly each year and in households on VHS (this was before DVD’s). This new generation of Disney movies was far from the old-fashioned Disney films of yesteryear – SNOW WHITE, CINDERELLA, PETER PAN, etc. Prior to 1989, Disney attempted to make hit movies for a new crowd but the ‘80s Disney films like THE BLACK CAULDRON and OLIVER AND COMPANY were never as big a hits as BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, THE LION KING, and the others that were produced after THE LITTLE MERMAID. Directors Ron Clements and John Muskers teamed up with musical lyricist and composer Howard Ashman and a talented cast of voice-over actors/singers to make this remarkable and fresh new version of the old fairy tale. THE LITTLE MERMAID was a blockbuster, Disney had risen itself from a long dormant period, and Disney movies were once again “in”.

The older side of me appreciates the mechanics of the animation in THE LITTLE MERMAID. Hand drawn animation is becoming a rarity these days and THE LITTLE MERMAID is one of the best-looking and most colorful films ever made. The character animation is superb, especially on Ariel. She spends a good portion of the movie silent, so the animators really lived up to the challenge of giving her face emotion. I especially like how they dare to allow her to look silly with her facial expressions from time to time. I especially love the villain Ursula: lusty, histrionic, and bad to the bone, she’s one of the most entertaining Disney villains, not to mention the most competent: she has henchmen who actually do her bidding correctly, and Ursula is so resourceful and calculating, she almost wins at the end! Most impressive, I must say! Pat Carroll deserves special praise. Her croaky Ursula voice brings to mind Lauren Bacall in a particularly foul mood. Samuel E. Wright gives Sebastian a delightful Caribbean accent and the late Buddy Hackett, with his nasally voice, as a seagull; c’mon, casting doesn’t get any better than that! Yet the real star is Jodi Benson as Ariel. Her sweet, Broadway-friendly voice is packed with feisty innocence and wistful longing. Like Judy Garland and “Over the Rainbow”, you can’t picture anyone else warbling “Part of Your World” (actually you can on this new Disney Diamond Collection Blu-ray – it has a new video of the song by Carly Ray “Don’t Call Me Maybe” Jepsen)

Filmed for 1.85:1 cropping, the 1080p, 1.78:1 image is free of dirt and other damage, and the vivid colors pop off the screen, but I can reassure videophiles that with the new Blu-ray release of THE LITTLE MERMAID, Disney has preserved a very slight layer of filmic grain and has respected the integrity of the original source materials. Edges are sharper, but not at the expense of the negative space around them, and the level of detail is much more than we’ve seen in previous releases. Now in combo pack with a regular DVD and Digital copy, the Diamond Collection Blu-ray set is full of bonus features:

@DisneyAnimation – Is an 11-minute look inside Walt Disney Animation Studios that follows a group of young Disney animators recounting how they started with the company and how much they love working there.

Deleted Character – shows 2 minutes of footage of “Harold the Merman”, a character ultimately not used in the film.

Under the Scene – 13-minute featurette where the filmmakwers talk about drawing Ariel and the other characters and the techniques they used to make them look natural.

Howard’s Lecture – is a comprehensive 16 minute featurette about lyricist Howard Ashman, who died in 1991 incorporating vintage footage.

Crab-E-Oke Sing-a-long – runs 15 minutes and presents five songs karaoke style. Deleted Scenes – 30 minutes of them!

Part of Your World – the aforementioned new video by Carly Ray “Don’t Call Me Maybe” Jepsen.

While the new bonus features are nice and immersive, the real reason to add this Blu-ray to your collection is for the superior picture quality. If you have an HD TV, you want to make the most of it. If you’re a Disney animation fan, then this is most definitely a required addition to your collection.