THE LITTLE MERMAID (1989)

Taking over the Mouse House in ‘84, Michael Eisner quickly prioritized animation.  Reduced to anodyne cash-cows dribbled out every few years in a market Disney monopolized, they hadn’t delivered a showstopping moment since THE JUNGLE BOOK’s ‘I Wanna Be Like You’ two decades ago.  (That film the last animation to have input from Walt.)  Too late to do anything about THE GREAT MOUSE DETECTIVE/’86, Eisner gave credit to music mogul David Geffen for pointing at better song-writers for that quantum leap of difference, setting up a path for the very unDisney-like team of Alan Menken & Howard Ashman to confer a hip, Pop-pastiche/Off-B’way sensibility to the Buena Vista soundstages.  Regeneration immediately apparent with a score that included four earworm hits and one show-stopper in ‘Under the Sea.’  (At previews, the surprise, delight and applause was startling.  Only the projectionists’ inability to physically pause the film holding back encores.  Indeed, half the next scene obliterated by spontaneous clapping.)  Everything works in this one.  The sweetened Hans Christian Andersen story about a mermaid who falls for a human (see  Dvořák’s RUSALKA for an operatic take & appropriate tragic ending); a sidekick worthy of Golden Age Disney in Sebastian the Crab; the scariest villain since Maleficent in SLEEPING BEAUTY/’59 (with her own showstopper in ‘Poor Unfortunate Souls’); excellent character design/development (except for a friendly flounder who misses having both eyes on the same side of his flat head); and allowing co-directors Ron Clements & John Musker, who showed technical chops debuting on the otherwise disappointing MOUSE DETECTIVE/’86 (note the innovative work in its clock tower finale), to come into their own.

DOUBLE-BLL/LINK: After kickstarting the Disney Animation Renaissance, Clements & Musker’s next was second in the One-Two punch of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST/’91 and ALADDIN/’92 that consolidated the new era for a thirteen year run.  But as you’ve probably seen that one, try their overlooked directing debut on THE GREAT MOUSE DETECTIVE/’86.  OR:  See their near remake, now with ethnic diversification, in THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG/’09.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/07/the-princess-and-frog-2006.html