10 / 10
The Little Mermaid is the film that started the Disney Renaissance. The film was released in November 1989 after the studio’s animation division had been struggling commercially for over a decade. The film grossed approximately two hundred eleven million dollars worldwide on a production budget of approximately forty million dollars. The commercial reception was the strongest Disney animation had delivered in over twenty years. The critical reception was equally substantial. The Little Mermaid demonstrated that Disney animation could compete commercially and critically with the live-action productions that had been dominating American cinema. The 10/10 is honest. The film changed what Disney animation could be.
Ron Clements and John Musker directed. The two had previously codirected The Great Mouse Detective in 1986. They would later codirect Aladdin, Hercules, Treasure Planet, The Princess and the Frog, and Moana. The Little Mermaid is the production where their partnership reached the level that would define the Disney Renaissance. The directing approach combines Broadway musical theater discipline with classical Disney animation tradition. The combination produced a feature animation framework that the studio would use for the next decade.
The Production
The project entered serious development in 1985 after Disney leadership had been considering Hans Christian Andersen adaptations for several years. Howard Ashman joined the production as creative producer and lyricist. Ashman brought Broadway musical theater approach to the Disney animation department. He had cocreated Little Shop of Horrors and had extensive Broadway experience. His arrival reshaped how Disney was thinking about animated musical features.
Ashman partnered with composer Alan Menken. The two had worked together on Little Shop of Horrors. The Menken-Ashman partnership produced the score work that would define the Disney Renaissance period. The Little Mermaid songs were the first demonstration of what the partnership could deliver in animated feature production. The subsequent collaborations on Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin built directly on the Little Mermaid framework.
The animation development required substantial reference work for underwater sequences. Disney animators studied actual ocean footage, actual fish movement, and actual underwater light dynamics. The challenge was rendering convincing underwater environments in hand-drawn animation. The studio developed new techniques for depicting water, light refraction, and underwater character movement. The result is one of the most successful underwater feature animation productions ever produced.
The film also pioneered substantial use of computer-assisted background work. The undersea kingdom of Atlantica required environmental complexity that traditional background painting could not efficiently deliver. CGI elements were integrated with hand-drawn backgrounds to produce the necessary visual density. The technique was rare for Disney feature animation. Subsequent productions including Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin would expand on what Little Mermaid established.
The Source
The film adapts Hans Christian Andersen’s 1837 Danish fairy tale. The source is substantially darker than the Disney adaptation suggests. Andersen’s mermaid does not get the prince. The prince marries another woman. The mermaid is given the choice of either killing the prince to return to mermaid form or dying herself. She chooses to die. She turns into sea foam. The story ends in tragedy.
The Disney adaptation preserves the central character relationships and the magical transformation framework while substantially softening the tragic ending. Ariel marries Prince Eric. Ursula dies. The relationships between mermaid father and daughter and between mermaid and prince all resolve positively. The softening was necessary for the family audience the production was targeting. The softening also represents real reduction in what the source had been doing. Audiences interested in the broader Andersen material should pursue the source story. The literary content has substantially more philosophical weight than the adaptation suggests.
The Andersen source was also famously read as allegorical commentary on Andersen’s own unrequited romantic attachments. Andersen had complex relationships with both men and women that never resolved into the kind of conventional partnerships nineteenth-century Danish society expected. The mermaid character has been read as Andersen’s self-portrait. The unrequited love. The transformation required to participate in a world that does not accept her natural form. The eventual sacrifice that produces no romantic resolution. The autobiographical reading is one of the more interesting frameworks for the source material.
The Cast
Jodi Benson voiced Ariel. The performance is one of the foundational achievements of the Disney Renaissance. Benson was the first Disney lead voice actress to perform both speaking and singing functions herself without being split with a separate singing voice actress. The vocal performance combines theatrical training with the kind of youthful enthusiasm the character requires. Ariel is curious, willful, and genuinely engaged with the world above the sea in ways that previous Disney female leads had not been. Benson delivers the engagement fully.
Christopher Daniel Barnes voiced Prince Eric. The performance brings adult masculine register to a character who functions as the conventional romantic lead. Eric is more developed than typical Disney prince characters. He has dramatic agency. He pursues Ariel actively. He participates in the third-act battle against Ursula. The character is the second Disney prince given substantial dramatic content beyond the romantic plot, after the Beast in Beauty and the Beast two years later would receive even more substantial development.
Pat Carroll voiced Ursula the sea witch. The performance is one of the great Disney villain vocal performances. Carroll brings theatrical menace, comic register, and the kind of operatic vocal commitment that the character requires. Ursula is modeled visually and vocally on the drag performer Divine. The design choice was unusual for Disney. The character carries genuine queer cultural register that subsequent audiences have recognized and embraced. Howard Ashman as a gay creative producer brought this register to the production deliberately. The character is one of the more distinctive Disney villains as a result.
Samuel E. Wright voiced Sebastian, the Jamaican crab who serves as King Triton’s musical advisor and Ariel’s reluctant guardian. The performance brings genuine Caribbean vocal characteristics to the role. The “Under the Sea” musical sequence depends entirely on Wright’s vocal performance carrying the Calypso musical material. The character is one of the most enduring Disney supporting characters and has appeared in subsequent franchise extensions across three decades.
Kenneth Mars voiced King Triton. Buddy Hackett voiced Scuttle the seagull. Jason Marin voiced Flounder the fish. Rene Auberjonois voiced Chef Louis. The supporting voice cast depth is consistent with what the Disney Renaissance productions would assemble at higher levels in subsequent years.
For Writers
The Little Mermaid demonstrates the value of giving the protagonist active desire from the opening rather than waiting for circumstances to motivate the character. Ariel wants to be human before the film’s plot begins. The character collects human artifacts. The character watches human ships. The character imagines life on land. When she finally rescues Prince Eric, the desire intensifies but does not begin at that point. The opening establishment of active desire allows the rest of the film to dramatize Ariel pursuing what she already wanted rather than discovering what she wants in response to events. The lesson for writers is that protagonists with established desire produce stronger narrative than protagonists whose desire emerges from plot events. The desire is the dramatic engine. The plot events are the obstacles the character must overcome to achieve what the character already wants. Reversing this relationship by having the plot generate the desire produces weaker narrative because the audience does not understand what the character is pursuing until the plot tells them.
The Score
Alan Menken composed the music. Howard Ashman wrote lyrics. The songs include “Fathoms Below,” “Daughters of Triton,” “Part of Your World,” “Under the Sea,” “Poor Unfortunate Souls,” “Les Poissons,” and “Kiss the Girl.” The musical content is uniformly strong. “Under the Sea” won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. The Menken score won the Academy Award for Best Original Score. The recognition was substantial and validated the Broadway musical theater approach that the Ashman-Menken partnership had brought to Disney animation.
“Part of Your World” is one of the great Disney character songs. The song establishes Ariel’s desire to become human within the first fifteen minutes of the film. The lyrics articulate specifically what the character wants and why. The Jodi Benson vocal performance carries the dramatic content with full theatrical commitment. The song was almost cut from the film during early test screenings when young audiences appeared restless during the sequence. Jeffrey Katzenberg eventually demanded the song be cut. Ashman and Menken fought to keep it. Their position prevailed. The song has become one of the most recognized Disney character songs of the past four decades.
“Under the Sea” delivers the central comic musical setpiece. Sebastian attempts to convince Ariel that life beneath the ocean is preferable to life above. The animation deploys Caribbean musical performance imagery with hundreds of individually animated sea creatures performing choreographed musical accompaniment. The sequence runs approximately three minutes and contains some of the most densely choreographed character animation in 1980s Disney production. The song won the Academy Award for Best Original Song.
“Poor Unfortunate Souls” is one of the great Disney villain songs. Ursula explains her bargain to Ariel through theatrical musical performance that combines comic register with genuine threat. Pat Carroll’s vocal performance carries the dramatic content with full theatrical commitment. The animation deploys the kind of theatrical menace that the character’s design supports.
The Cultural Impact
The Little Mermaid generated commercial and cultural impact substantially beyond what Disney animation had delivered in over a decade. The film grossed approximately two hundred eleven million dollars in initial release. The grosses were strong but not record-breaking. The cultural reception was substantially more important than the commercial reception. The film demonstrated that Disney animation could deliver work that adults could respect rather than merely tolerate as accompaniment to taking children to the theater.
The film also reestablished the studio’s commitment to feature animation. Disney had been considering withdrawing from feature animation production in the mid-1980s. The commercial failures of The Black Cauldron and Oliver and Company had damaged confidence in the medium’s viability. The Little Mermaid’s success reversed the trajectory. The studio committed to expanded animation development. The Renaissance period followed across the subsequent decade.
The film established the template that subsequent Disney Renaissance productions would follow. The Broadway musical structure. The integrated comic supporting cast. The female protagonist with active desire. The villain who carries theatrical register beyond simple antagonism. The visual quality at theatrical scale. Beauty and the Beast in 1991, Aladdin in 1992, and The Lion King in 1994 all built on what The Little Mermaid had established.
The 2023 Live-Action Remake
Rob Marshall directed the 2023 live-action Little Mermaid. Halle Bailey played Ariel. Jonah Hauer-King played Prince Eric. Melissa McCarthy played Ursula. Javier Bardem played King Triton. The film was released in May 2023. The film grossed approximately five hundred sixty-nine million dollars worldwide on a production budget of approximately two hundred fifty million dollars. The commercial performance was disappointing relative to Disney’s expectations. The film became one of the less commercially successful Disney live-action remakes.
The casting of Halle Bailey as Ariel generated extensive controversy before the film’s release. Conservative cultural commentators objected to the recasting of the traditionally red-haired white character with a Black actress. The controversy was loud and protracted. Disney positioned the casting as racial progress. The reality was that the casting controversy obscured the more substantial production problems that the eventual film delivered. The casting itself was not the problem. The casting was the surface controversy that distracted from the broader production failures.
Halle Bailey delivered a strong vocal performance. The musical sequences worked. The acting work was adequate. The character’s dramatic engagement with the material reached competent levels. The Bailey performance is one of the stronger elements of the remake. The performance also could not compensate for the broader production problems the film accumulated.
The CGI undersea environments are visually disappointing. The photorealistic rendering of Sebastian, Flounder, and Scuttle produces uncanny valley effects similar to those that damaged the photoreal Lion King and Pinocchio remakes. The fish look like actual fish rather than like the stylized characters the 1989 animation had delivered. The animation cannot deliver expressive performances. The supporting cast suffers accordingly.
The film also added political content that the original did not contain. New songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda addressed contemporary concerns about consent and female autonomy. The added songs do not match the existing Howard Ashman material in quality or in dramatic integration. The film expanded Ariel’s backstory and added subplots that did not improve the dramatic content. The aggregate additions extended the runtime to one hundred thirty-five minutes, substantially longer than the original’s eighty-three minutes. The expansion did not strengthen the property. The expansion diluted what the original had delivered.
The Melissa McCarthy Ursula is one of the more interesting elements of the remake. McCarthy attempted to deliver the character with the kind of theatrical menace that Pat Carroll had brought to the original. The performance is competent. The performance is also unable to match what the original animation had delivered. The CGI tentacles cannot match the hand-drawn flow that the 1989 version achieved. The character reads as live-action approximation of the animated original rather than as a distinct version with its own creative identity.
The disappointing commercial reception may have accelerated Disney’s reconsideration of the live-action remake strategy. The Little Mermaid was one of several 2023 and 2024 remakes that performed below expectations. The cumulative underperformance contributed to the broader strategic withdrawal from the remake approach that produced multiple cancelled projects in 2025 and 2026. The Little Mermaid remake was the property that demonstrated the strategy’s commercial vulnerability. Subsequent productions including Snow White in 2025 confirmed the vulnerability with more dramatic financial losses.
For Writers
The 2023 Little Mermaid demonstrates the problem of extending runtimes to add political content that the source did not contain. The original ran eighty-three minutes. The remake ran one hundred thirty-five minutes. The added fifty-two minutes did not strengthen the property. The added minutes contained new songs that did not match the existing musical content, expanded backstory that did not improve the character, and political subplots that did not integrate with the source material. The aggregate dilution damaged what the original had delivered. The lesson for writers is that runtime should match the dramatic content rather than expand to accommodate political requirements. Properties that work at specific lengths typically lose effectiveness when stretched. The compression of the original is often the craft achievement. Stretching compressed work to incorporate additional content typically produces inferior versions even when the additional content has independent value. Trust the original runtime. The original runtime was usually determined by what the dramatic content actually required.
Craft Note
Craft Note
The Little Mermaid is the example case for what creative partnership can accomplish when major studios provide adequate institutional support. The Howard Ashman and Alan Menken partnership delivered the score work that defined the Disney Renaissance. Disney provided the institutional resources for the partnership to deliver at full creative capacity. The partnership produced one of the most influential musical theater frameworks for animated feature production in the medium’s history. The combination of partnership creativity and institutional support produced the foundation document of a decade of subsequent achievement. The lesson for writers is that major creative partnerships require institutional environments that allow the partnership to develop. Partnerships that develop without institutional support eventually fragment because the partners must individually pursue other opportunities. Partnerships that develop with institutional support can sustain across multiple major productions. Disney provided the support. Ashman and Menken delivered the work. The combination changed animated feature production for the subsequent decade. Identifying the right creative partners and securing the right institutional environment are two of the more important strategic decisions any creative professional can make. The Little Mermaid demonstrates what both decisions look like when they align correctly.
The Verdict
A 10/10. The Little Mermaid is the film that started the Disney Renaissance and changed what Disney animation could be. Jodi Benson delivered the foundational voice performance of the Renaissance era. The Howard Ashman and Alan Menken score work established the musical theater framework that the studio would build on for the next decade. The animation delivered underwater environmental work that subsequent productions have rarely matched. The film established the template for active female protagonists, integrated comic supporting casts, and theatrical villains that defined Disney animation through the 1990s.
The 2023 Rob Marshall live-action remake is one of the less commercially successful Disney live-action conversions. Halle Bailey delivered a strong vocal performance. The CGI undersea environments are visually disappointing. The supporting characters in photorealistic CGI produce uncanny valley effects. The added political content and extended runtime diluted the original’s compression. The disappointing commercial reception contributed to the broader strategic withdrawal from the live-action remake approach. Audiences interested in The Little Mermaid should pursue the 1989 animated original. The remake is one of the more visible examples of what the live-action conversion strategy could not deliver.
FAQ
How did this film start the Disney Renaissance?
Disney animation had been struggling commercially through the 1980s. The Black Cauldron and Oliver and Company had performed below expectations. Disney leadership had been considering withdrawing from feature animation production. The Little Mermaid’s commercial and critical success reversed the trajectory. The studio committed to expanded animation development. The subsequent Renaissance period followed across the next decade with Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, and other major productions building on what The Little Mermaid established.
Was Howard Ashman that important?
Yes. Ashman joined the production as creative producer and brought Broadway musical theater approach to the Disney animation department. He had cocreated Little Shop of Horrors and had extensive Broadway experience. His arrival reshaped how Disney was thinking about animated musical features. He continued through Beauty and the Beast and the early development of Aladdin before his death from AIDS-related complications in March 1991. His creative impact on Disney animation is one of the most substantial of any individual contributor of the past forty years.
Is the 2023 remake worth watching?
The remake is one of the less essential Disney live-action conversions. Halle Bailey delivered a strong vocal performance. The CGI undersea environments are visually disappointing. The supporting characters in photorealistic CGI produce uncanny valley effects. The added political content and extended runtime diluted the original’s compression. Audiences should pursue the 1989 animated original.
How does the Disney version differ from Andersen’s source?
Substantially softened in the ending. Andersen’s mermaid does not get the prince. The prince marries another woman. The mermaid is given the choice of either killing the prince to return to mermaid form or dying herself. She chooses to die. She turns into sea foam. The Disney adaptation preserves the central character relationships and magical transformation framework while substituting a positive romantic resolution and Ursula’s death for the source tragedy. The softening was necessary for family audience reception.
Why is Ursula based on a drag performer?
Howard Ashman as a gay creative producer brought specific cultural register to the character. Ursula is modeled visually and vocally on the drag performer Divine. The design choice was unusual for Disney. The character carries genuine queer cultural register that subsequent audiences have recognized and embraced. The framing produces a villain who is theatrically distinctive in ways that previous Disney female villains had not been. Pat Carroll’s vocal performance reinforces the theatrical register with operatic vocal commitment.
Did “Part of Your World” almost get cut?
Yes. The song was almost cut from the film during early test screenings when young audiences appeared restless during the sequence. Jeffrey Katzenberg demanded the song be cut. Howard Ashman and Alan Menken fought to keep it. Their position prevailed. The song has become one of the most recognized Disney character songs of the past four decades. The decision to retain the song is one of the more important creative choices in Renaissance era Disney production.
Why did the Halle Bailey casting generate controversy?
Conservative cultural commentators objected to the recasting of the traditionally red-haired white character with a Black actress. The controversy was loud and protracted. Disney positioned the casting as racial progress. The casting itself was not the production’s central problem. The casting controversy distracted from the broader production failures including the disappointing CGI environments, the uncanny valley supporting characters, and the diluting effect of the added political content and extended runtime.
Who voiced Sebastian?
Samuel E. Wright. The performance brings genuine Caribbean vocal characteristics to the role. The “Under the Sea” musical sequence depends entirely on Wright’s vocal performance carrying the Calypso musical material. The character is one of the most enduring Disney supporting characters and has appeared in subsequent franchise extensions across three decades. Wright died in 2021. The Sebastian performance remains his most enduring work.
How does this compare to other Disney Renaissance films?
The Little Mermaid is in the top tier of Disney Renaissance films alongside Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King. The Little Mermaid was the production that started the Renaissance. The subsequent films built on its framework with increasing scale and ambition. The Little Mermaid carries the foundational achievement that the others extended. The four films together represent Disney animation at sustained peak.
Why did the 2023 remake underperform?
Multiple factors. The casting controversy damaged advance word of mouth. The CGI undersea environments looked disappointing in marketing materials. The extended runtime did not appeal to general family audiences. The added political content did not improve the property. The aggregate produced commercial reception that was disappointing relative to Disney’s expectations. The underperformance contributed to the broader strategic withdrawal from the live-action remake approach that produced multiple cancelled projects in subsequent years.
Is the 1989 original still worth watching today?
Yes. The film remains essential viewing for anyone interested in Disney animation history or in the foundational productions of the Disney Renaissance. The animation has aged well. The musical content remains permanent cultural reference. The dramatic content engages active female protagonist material in ways that subsequent Disney productions have built on consistently. The film is appropriate for children of most ages. The runtime is compressed at eighty-three minutes. The film rewards repeat viewing across multiple decades.