Disney Plus-Or-Minus: The Little Mermaid

Early in his tenure as chairman of Walt Disney Studios, Jeffrey Katzenberg almost made a fatal mistake. At the now infamous Gong Show pitch meeting that resulted in Oliver & Company, Ron Clements proposed, among other things, an adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid. Katzenberg immediately vetoed the idea. For one thing, he wanted Disney to move away from fairy tales. Furthermore, Touchstone, Disney’s younger sibling offshoot, had just released Splash and was considering a sequel. The studio didn’t need any more mermaid pictures.

Fortunately, Katzenberg reversed course within days. If he hadn’t called up Clements and asked him to flesh out his concept, the Disney Renaissance might never have happened. Make no mistake, The Little Mermaid is a foundational film, every bit as important to the studio as Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs. The fact that it has now been somewhat overshadowed by the movies that came after it is unfortunate. If any Disney movie in recent memory deserves to be hailed as a classic, The Little Mermaid claims that title.

Clements wasn’t the first person at Disney to take an interest in The Little Mermaid. Walt himself had considered including the story as part of a proposed package film centered around the work of Hans Christian Andersen. He also spent time developing a biopic of the author, both in animation and live-action. Obviously, nothing came of those projects. As near as I can tell, the closest the studio ever got was a 1968 record, Walt Disney Presents The Stories Of Hans Christian Andersen, adapting four tales in audio form. The Little Mermaid was not one of them, however.

Ron Clements became interested in the story while he was co-directing The Great Mouse Detective with John Musker. At the time, the prevailing feeling at the studio was that fairy tales were squarely a thing of the past. Disney hadn’t made one since Sleeping Beauty back in 1959 and had not yet figured out how to monetize and market what would come to be known as the Disney Princesses line. Animated films in general now strived to focus on more contemporary genres. Plus, a new fairy tale would invite direct comparison to Disney’s classics. There was considerable risk involved in pursuing such a project.

Clements and Musker developed their take on the story into a 20-page treatment. But the project didn’t begin to build momentum until Howard Ashman became involved. Ashman had been part of the Mulligan Stew of songwriters contributing to the soundtrack of Oliver & Company. His opening number, “Once Upon A Time In New York City”, was certainly the most theatrical of the movie’s many songs. This time, Ashman brought his creative partner, composer Alan Menken, on board as well. Ashman and Menken’s Little Shop Of Horrors had been a huge off-Broadway hit and had been adapted into a film in 1986.

Musker, Clements, Ashman and Menken envisioned The Little Mermaid as a full-on Broadway-style musical whose songs would be integral to the story. Ashman in particular proved to be a key member of the creative team, earning a producer credit on the film. Music hadn’t been such a tightly-woven part of the development process at Disney since the Sherman Brothers had worked at the studio on such classics as Mary Poppins.

The Broadway influence carried over into the casting. Unlike Oliver & Company, which relied heavily on celebrity voices like Billy Joel and Bette Midler, The Little Mermaid’s voice cast was comprised primarily of stage veterans and character actors. Jodi Benson, the voice of Ariel, had been in a number of Broadway shows. She’d worked with Howard Ashman on Smile, a musical adaptation of the 1975 movie, where her big solo number was called, ironically enough, “Disneyland”. Smile was a flop, closing after just 48 performances, but Benson had made an impression on Ashman.

To voice Sebastian, Ariel’s crab guardian and court composer to King Triton, the team cast another Broadway veteran. Samuel E. Wright had taken over the lead role in Pippin from Ben Vereen in the early ‘70s. He’d also appeared in the musical Over Here!, written by none other than the Sherman Brothers themselves, and been nominated for a Tony Award for his work in The Tap Dance Kid. Early in 1989, several months prior to the release of The Little Mermaid, Wright and Benson appeared together in the musical Welcome To The Club. It was an even bigger bomb than Smile, closing after just nine days.

Perhaps the biggest challenge was finding the right actress to voice Ursula, the sea-witch. Ursula’s look had been inspired by cult performer Divine, the drag queen and frequent muse to independent film legend John Waters. Musker and Clements had conceived of the role with Golden Girl Bea Arthur in mind. When Arthur turned it down, the filmmakers considered several other possibilities before hiring another stage icon, Elaine Stritch. Stritch worked on the film for a while but she and Howard Ashman did not get along. Once it became apparent that their creative differences were irreconcilable, Stritch was replaced with Pat Carroll, another Tony nominee.

The animators embraced some modern computer technology, primarily for ships and Prince Eric’s carriage, but for the most part, The Little Mermaid is a last bow for some classic techniques of hand-drawn animation. It would be Disney’s last film produced using individual painted cels rather than digitally scanning the art. The effects animation required millions of individually drawn bubbles, only partially augmented by CGI. Musker and Clements even wanted to bring the studio’s old multiplane camera, originally developed back in the ‘30s, out of retirement. Unfortunately, the camera was in a state of advanced disrepair and those shots had to be produced elsewhere.

There was one more old-school technique Musker and Clements wanted to revive. Walt’s animators had relied heavily on live-action reference footage, some of which could get fairly elaborate. But the practice had fallen out of favor in recent years and the film’s budget didn’t allow for much. Clements and Musker decided to focus on just two characters, Ariel and Eric, and hired Sherri Stoner, a former member of the improv troupe the Groundlings and later an animation writer herself, and stage actor Joshua Finkel to perform key scenes in the barest of bare-bones studios. Their work helped inspire some of Disney’s finest and most subtle character animation in years. It’s a genuinely astonishing blend of vocal performance, physicality and visual artistry.

Despite the work and resources being lavished on the film, Jeffrey Katzenberg remained skeptical of its chances for success. He dismissively referred to it as a “girls’ movie” and was certain it wouldn’t do as well as Oliver & Company (which, to be fair, did seem like a pretty high bar to cross at the time). After a test screening failed to completely captivate its young audience, Katzenberg started demanding cuts. Specifically, he wanted to get rid of the song “Part Of Your World”, since that was when the little ones tended to get restless.

Musker and Clements defended the sequence, while Ashman essentially said over his dead body would he cut that song. By the time the sequence was completed with color and effects, Katzenberg began to realize maybe they had a point. As the movie neared the finish line, he also started changing his tune on its box office chances. Not only might it do as well or better than Oliver & Company, The Little Mermaid had the potential to be a bona fide blockbuster.

When the film was finally released on November 17, 1989, it received a level of rapturous critical acclaim that hadn’t surrounded a Disney movie in generations. For the past twenty or more years, even positive reviews of the studio’s animated output included the caveat that they weren’t as good as the movies made during Walt’s lifetime. The Little Mermaid was the first to have most critics admitting, “Actually, this one really is that good.”

Personally, I was a jaded 20-year-old when The Little Mermaid was released, so I might not have fit the demographic Disney was trying to attract. Granted, I was also a jaded 20-year-old who just so happened to be a huge fan of Little Shop Of Horrors and was a theatre kid, so I knew who Howard Ashman and Alan Menken were. And while I was a lifelong animation buff, I felt that my tastes had moved beyond princesses and happy-ever-afters. To me, making a lavish Disney cartoon felt like a step down from creating a cult musical about a man-eating plant from outer space. Twenty-year-olds don’t always have the best judgment.

At any rate, I was instantly smitten by The Little Mermaid. Twenty isn’t so far removed from childhood but when you are that age, it feels like a million lifetimes ago. This transported me back. I was swept up, charmed, captivated and delighted by every second. And because I was beginning to have a real awareness of how art was created, I could appreciate the exceptional animation and craft on display more than I would have as a child. Disney had been taking steps in the right direction for a few years with movies like Oliver & Company and Who Framed Roger Rabbit (which we’ll get to on the Touchstone side soon). But here, all at once, it felt like they had arrived exactly where they were meant to be.

Somewhat surprisingly, the movie only opened in third place on its opening weekend. This may have been the result of some leftover cautiousness on Katzenberg’s part. The film opened on 994 screens, less than half the number of that weekend’s number one movie, Eddie Murphy’s Harlem Nights. Its nearest animated rival, Don Bluth’s All Dogs Go To Heaven which opened on the same day, played on over 1,500 screens. It opened in fourth place with around $4.7 million, compared to the over $6 million made by The Little Mermaid.

994 screens is certainly more than a limited release intended to build word of mouth but it’s quite a bit less than the typical wide release strategy. The movie continued to add theatres as it got closer to Christmas but it feels like Disney still left some money on the table. I remember where I lived, unlike most animated movies which would scale back to matinee or early screenings, The Little Mermaid continued to add late shows so that adults could check it out without being bothered by rambunctious children. Even so, the movie was a phenomenal hit, ultimately earning more than $84 million on its initial release.

At the next year’s Academy Awards, The Little Mermaid earned three nominations: one for Original Score and two for Original Song, “Under The Sea” and “Kiss The Girl”. It was practically a foregone conclusion that the film would win both categories, unless the two songs canceled each other out. To the surprise of no one, “Under The Sea” prevailed in the Original Song category and Menken won for his first film score, beating out Dave Grusin, James Horner and John Williams (nominated twice, for Born On The Fourth Of July and Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade).

Since 1989, Disney has found several opportunities to go back under the sea. In 1992, Disney launched an animated TV series that served as a prequel to the film, bringing back most of the original vocal cast. The first of two direct-to-video follow-ups, The Little Mermaid II: Return To The Sea, arrived in 2000, with another, Ariel’s Beginning, released in 2008. A live TV adaptation aired on ABC in 2019 and, inevitably, the Disney Circle of Life ate its own tail with a live-action remake in 2023. We’ll deal with that whole situation when its time comes.

There is one other, more unfortunate trait that The Little Mermaid shares with the Disney classics of old. Like virtually every other movie that’s been discussed in this column that hasn’t been completely forgotten, The Little Mermaid has been subjected to retroactive criticism, mostly from people who use the word “problematic” a lot. Most, if not all, of it centers around the fact that Ariel must give up her voice in order to win a man. And sure, that’s a take. The problem is that it’s not entirely supported by the film itself.

Yes, Ariel does give up her voice after receiving some spectacularly bad relationship advice from an evil sea-witch. But it’s her voice that Eric loves in the first place. Once he meets her in human form and finds out she can’t speak, his immediate reaction is, “Oh, never mind. You can’t be the girl I thought you were.” Even without a voice, Ariel’s personality and headstrong passion and curiosity about the world shine through and that’s what ends up winning Eric over, not her looks and certainly not her table manners. The power of speech (or really, song, since this is a musical) does not represent agency or a sense of self in this movie. It never did and Ariel never for an instant gives up those fundamental qualities.

You could, I suppose, make an argument that the movie lacks any other strong, positive female characters. Ursula is clearly evil and designed to be the counterpoint to Ariel and her father. Ariel’s mother is non-existent except for a very passing reference to her death. The only other female characters are Ariel’s sisters who are so thinly sketched that I’d be hard-pressed to even say how many there are, much less what their names are, despite the fact that there’s a whole song which is literally almost nothing but a list of their names (for the record, there’s six and yes, I had to look that up). So, I suppose if you absolutely must be upset about something, that’s as good a place to start as any. Whether or not that absence makes a huge difference is entirely a matter of personal opinion.

Regardless of how the movie is viewed today, there’s no denying that The Little Mermaid represented a seismic shift in how Disney was viewed. John Musker, Ron Clements, Howard Ashman, Alan Menken and everyone involved with the film proved it was possible to marry modern tastes and sensibilities to Disney’s traditional style and impeccable artistry. In 1989, most of us hadn’t experienced an animated feature of this caliber that had been made in our lifetimes. And in retrospect, the truly remarkable thing is how quickly we would experience the same thing all over again.

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