Review - The Little Mermaid: Return to the Sea

Rob Stoakes Reviews:

The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea
2000
Jim Kammerud and Brian Smith
Walt Disney Studios

Prologue

I try not to decide whether or not a film or book or game or zoetrope is going to be bad without experiencing it first, but there are just somethings that you just simply know are going to be terrible. I doubt anyone was surprised at how bad Manos; The Hands of Fate was, and who expected anything from Mortal Kombat Annihilation. I wish there was a name for them, but the only thing I can think of is an anagram, and TYAKWBB (Things You Already Know Will Be Bad) doesn’t have a good ring to it. But among all of these movies are ‘Disney sequels’.

For those of you fortunate enough to not know of the bad luck of Disney sequels, during the late eighties and early nineties, Disney started hammering out some of the most popular films in animation history and indeed cinema history, a period known as the Disney Renaissance. The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, Lion King, those films. If you haven’t seen or at least heard of any of the movies I’ve just mentioned, hello to you, Queen Victoria, for you are the only one. Then, in 1994, somebody had a very VERY bad idea, which was to go to the head of Disney “Well gee, let’s make a sequel to Aladdin, because that was a popular film so this one must be too!” before gnawing at his own shoes.

Actually, the reasoning wasn’t all that bad. After all, the first animated Disney sequel, the 1990 feature The Rescuers Down Under, was an underappreciated block of solid gold, so a second Aladdin must follow the same trend, right?

Yeah, the result, Return of Jafar, was so bad that it’s now almost a joke in of itself, and not even Homer Simpson could save it. Thankfully, it didn’t get a cinematic release; otherwise Disney would’ve lost all credibility it ever had and the film would be a bigger killer than the Spanish Flu. However, what it did do was sell, and it sold fairly well. So Disney kept pushing with the damn idea. The continued results were sequels, and, to Disney’s credit, they made films that were sometimes really good, like Lion King 2; Simba’s Pride (1998). However, they were sometimes disastrous, like Pocahontas 2: Journey to a New World of the same year. Mostly, though, they were just bland. And this 2000 sequel of The Little Mermaid is certainly no different. Let’s find out why, shall we?

Plot

The opening song, if it can be called that rather than matching music to pathetic acting, establishes that Ariel, her baby Melody and Eric, who was in the last film the world’s blandest love interest and is now the world’s most insignificant character, are meeting up with Ariel’s father, Triton, and all the fish and mer-people from miles around for a very important occasion. Triton giving her a necklace. Wow, I’m already glued to the screen. Then Ursula’s crazy thinner sister Morgana comes to oh come on, seriously? You’re not even trying to make a new villain. Sure, Aladdin 3’s villain was horrible, but at least they were trying to make a new villain. Either bring Ursula back or make a new villain, don’t just throw a rip off up. She even has the near same voice.

World’s Prissiest Reaction from the blonde in the background. “Oh my word, a big shark. Someone stop him, ahhhh!”

So Thin-Ursula threatens Triton with the death of Melody at the hands… er, fins, of her pet shark and apparently night club bouncer Undertone, who sounds more like Sebastian than Sebastian does. However, this falls through, so Ursula McKeith runs away threatening revenge on Melody. To protect her, Ariel says that Melody must not know anything about the fact that a magic-using green-skinned woman is trying to kill her… sorry, I seem to be reviewing Sleeping Beauty by mistake.

Cut to Melody’s twelfth birthday, where she lives in Gormenghast as made by Play Mobil.

Nobody knows where Melody is in the contrived ‘I’m a rebellious free spirit whose not satisfied with being royalty and am going when I am not allowed’ scene that was too be in every children’s film by law. Sebastian is being grouchy because he has to look over Melody by Triton’s orders and is too old to do it, and must have a good memory seeing as that he’s quoting what Triton said twelve years ago. Also, every other sea creature is having pleasant chats with her and playing with her, including Sebastian. It must be reassuring for Ariel that her wish to keep Melody’s identity and whereabouts completely safe was completely ignored.

So Melody finds that weird necklace, meaning that Orders-Skinny-Lattes-Ursula knows where she is and the plot just… stops. For ten whole minutes, nothing of any significance happens. There’s pacing, there’s character development, there’s padding and then there’s just plain old nothing happening. Melody doesn’t open the necklace, so she doesn’t ask any questions to anyone. She mentions a dream she keeps having, but is interrupted, and so nothing really happens. Even Sebastian being discovered doesn’t really impact anything; it just causes Melody to step into a freakish dream where everybody’s red and the Can Can plays. This is the film being arty, you see.

Walt Disney presents A Clockwork Orange. Has a ring to it, doesn't it?

So Ariel finds the necklace and makes the biggest cock-up ever with trying to hide the fact that, well, she’s hiding facts. Eric walks in somehow knowing everything that happened within…

OF COURSE! IT MAKES TOTAL SENSE!!!

… and convinces her to tell Melody the truth… just as Melody leaves to discover the truth, somehow managing to decide what to do, steal the necklace from Ariel using the ancient magic of bad editing, get out of the palace and find a boat within 15 seconds. Fast worker.

So Undertone, now shrunk down by magic, tells Melody that Stick-Ursula can tell her what’s going on. Immediately, Melody believes the talking piranha that knows who she is somehow and doesn’t tell her who she is himself. She goes Superman’s Fortress of Solitude to… um; redo Poor Unfortunate Souls from the original. Melody takes the fact that she’s a mermaid rather well, to be honest. I’d, you know, react.

Ariel becomes a mermaid to so she can find her, making the entire first film null and void. If Triton could make her human before, why couldn’t he have done it rather than Ursula, but I digress. Speaking of Ursula, Ursu-anorexia tells Melody to get Triton’s trident. Melody agrees, without asking for specifics, as, well, Melody’s as thick as a brick and has all the personality.
An underage bikini wearer, the gay man’s Brad Pitt and a racist stereotype. Thank you, Disney.

Then we meet some penguins, who are being stupid. A particular one, Tip, with his seal friend, Dash, are abandoned for trying to help and failing. These are quickly established as the Timon and Pumba of this picture, and say they’ll help Melody in her quest to steal from the King of All The Sea. For cowards, these guys are ballsy. So the trio-of-trollops gets to Atlantica and meet a love interest who appears for that moment and that moment only. Long story short, they get the trident and leave, though the necklace is dropped and blah de blah bloody blah de daa we’ve all been here before.

Ariel follows two stingrays to find Melody. Why? I don’t know, but it really doesn’t matter. They all get to Castle Greyskull and Ariel tries to stop Melody from giving the crazy geriatric the most powerful weapon on the face of the earth. So, basically, Ariel tries to do what a good look around would do. And she fails!

SHE... FAILS!!!

I’m not sure who the bigger idiot is. Melody for trusting the villain or Ariel for seeming less honest. Your own mother or a crzy witch you've known for little over an hour. It’s a difficult choice, I know.

So, Ursula-Played-By-A-Matchstick sticks atop a pillar of ice and let’s rip. You know, LIKE IN THE FIRST MOVIE! Eric arrives to attempt a rescue that is so laughably useless I nearly dropped dead after seeing it, and he gets trapped in a fishbowl along with Flounder and Melody. To rub it in even more, they get broken out by the idiot brigade Tip and Dash.

So Salad-Eating-Ursula now attacks Melody with ice blocks that will give her easy access to her, solely to be a level in the video game that will never be made. Triton gets the trident again and freezes Ursula-Crushed-Between-Two-Bricks in a block of ice. And everyone is hunky-dory, besides the viewer who is vomiting due to all the cheese!

Acting/Characters

The acting is… well, what do I say? At least they got Jodi Benson, the original Ariel, back, who at least tries to put emotion into the film. Everybody else is a cheap imitation of their original counterparts, though I use the word ‘imitation’ lightly, as none of them besides Subway Diet Ursula sound like the original. Flounder is the worst case of this. He sounds more like Shia LaBeouf than anyone else, and suffers from sinus congestion.

Not even the acting on its own merit is any good. The whole film has what I like to call Passions Syndrome. Whenever anything important is said, there’s a dramatic pause or an echo, as if the audience are idiots.

New characters aren’t characters, but simply plot devices. Melody is so flatter than a board, and Tip and Dash aren’t even worth a merit as they do essentially nothing besides do what a map would do. The only thing that matters with them is that Dash is the fat retard and Tip is the short-arsed smart one who’s just as stupid. A sensible, unfunny Ren and Stimpy, really. Everyone else is just a bit part, coming in and coming out instantly. Why? Who knows, who cares, the directors certainly didn’t so why should I?

Animation

I’ll give credit where credit’s due. The animation in this film is good, and I mean really good. Furthermore there’s a reason. It’s exactly the same as the original animation. You can just tell that the only thing they did to make Melody was make Ariel shorter, used the Paint Bucket Tool on her hair and rubbed out Ariel’s breasts and replaced them with clothes. And do I need to retread the ‘Morgana is a thinner Ursula’ joke? It rips off more of Disney than Avatar rips off Dances with Wolves.

Gandalf the Ripped invites you to join the navy.

Final Word

Have you seen The Little Mermaid? Congratulations, you don’t need to watch this. It’s exactly the same film. Actually, it isn’t, because The Little Mermaid had dignity. This is a bad film. Though, it’s worse than that. It’s bland. Its samey, boring and longer than it should be which is half an hour considering how much happens. The writing is stock, the characters are cardboard cut-outs and it’s an all around bad movie. It’s presentable, sure, but it has no life. It has no soul of its own; it has to steal from everyone else. It’s not even terrible, because at least terrible films have a soul. All memorable movies have souls, good and bad. Disney movies have souls. Batman and Robin had a soul. This film doesn’t. This film is a dead film. I don’t need to tell you this, but I will anyway. Don’t watch it. Just don’t. You don’t need to. Nobody does.