THE LITTLE MERMAID: Of Singing Fish, Rebellious Youths, and Dinglehoppers

The Little Mermaid (1989) – The 28th Walt Disney Animated Feature – Directed by Ron Clements and John Musker – Starring Rene Auberjonois, Christopher Daniel Barnes, Jodi Benson, Pat Carroll, Buddy Hackett, Jason Marin, Kenneth Mars, and Samuel E. Wright.

There is, of course, the automatic negatives that come with any Disney Princess film, and there are those who will automatically dismiss any of the Princess films out of hand. I don’t agree with that, but I understand it. The Disney Princesses can often be problematic but dismissing them out of hand is as stupid as embracing them without interrogation, and of all the Disney Princesses, it is THE LITTLE MERMAID’s Ariel that offers the most confounding characterization.

On the negative half of the equation, THE LITTLE MERMAID offers up the problematic figure of a love-stupid 16-year old girl willing to sacrifice everything for the affection of a guy she met once. All she really knows about Prince Eric is that he’s a handsome human, and this is enough for her.

On the positive side of the ledger, Ariel is an active character who owns her actions. She might be 16 and lovestruck, but Ariel (Jodi Benson) forges her own path in THE LITTLE MERMAID. She’s headstrong, forceful, and rebellious, but she’s not a bad person and she’s not sitting around waiting for her fairy tale prince to find her. She has an infectious personality and an adventuresome nature, and when it comes time to make her bargain with Ursula the Sea Witch (Pat Carroll), she puts her own life on the line. Of course, she is a 16-year old kid and doesn’t realize that while she’s playing a short game, Ursula is playing a long game, using Ariel to get to her father, King Triton (Kenneth Mars).

While it is ultimately unfortunate that Ariel doesn’t see that there’s more to life than getting Eric to fall in love with her, and while it is unfortunate that Disney simply affirms rather than complicates the typical fairy tale fantasy, I come down much more on the positive than negative side when it comes to Ariel. It’s important that kids dream of being something other than what their parents or society want for them, and whatever her faults, whatever the dangers of Disney tossing up another princess fantasy, Ariel is a well-rounded, likable character.

And so is THE LITTLE MERMAID. I really kind of adore this movie – it’s full of really great characters and fantastic songs. Watching it just makes me feel good, both for the film itself and what it represents, and that is decidedly part of its charm. MERMAID marks the beginning of the so-called “Disney Renaissance,” a period that lasts 10 films and 11 years and saw the company produce films that were both commercially and critically appreciated. Watching MERMAID now, it’s surprising how dated it looks – this is a classically created, hand-painted cel animation and it’s the last Disney film produced in this manner. It looks old and it looks amazing.

With Ariel at its center, MERMAID gives us two wonderful supporting characters in Sebastian the Crab (Samuel E. Wright) and Flounder (Jason Marin) the, er, tropical fish. (He’s not a flounder.) The latter is Ariel’s sidekick while the former is her father-appointed watchdog. Flounder is always willing to do what Ariel wants, while Sebastian warms to her over the course of the film. There is something dangerous about Ariel’s charm inside the film, as everyone (minus Ursula) eventually gives her what she wants. Triton gets mad at her, but eventually gives permission to marry Eric. Who’s a human. And Triton hates humans. Even Sebastian, who holds vehemently militant views on keeping Ariel in lockdown, succumbs to her charm when he’s given personal responsibility to watch her.

THE LITTLE MERMAID deals with the difficulties of being a single parent. Triton raises Ariel as a single parent (and king of the oceans). He’s got a bunch of daughters who all fall in line with his expectations, but Ariel is the baby of the litter and the most willing and likely to seek her own path. Eric, too, is something of child raised by a single parent. While both of his real parents are nowhere to be found, he is in the charge of Grimsby (Ben Wright), who takes a mothering role in Eric’s development.

While the story is simple and straightforward, the musical numbers are often highly choreographed and complex. They’re also utterly fantastic. MERMAID boasts five Disney classics written by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, and only two of them feature the same character. Ariel takes center stage in “Part of Your World,” which speaks to her desire to be part of the human’s world. “Poor Unfortunate Souls” is Ursula’s song, and its rhythm and lyrics would make it feel right at home among Danny Elfman’s songs for The Nightmare Before Christmas. “Les Poissons” is sung by Chef Louie (Rene Auberjonois) as he’s trying to make a dinner out of Sebastian.

The two showstoppers are both sung by Sebastian the Crab. The first is “Under the Sea,” his celebration of life underwater, sung to Ariel as he’s trying to convince her that “life is better, down where it’s wetter” instead of up on the surface. It’s a wonderfully designed piece by Disney’s animators, truly one of the highlights of the company’s long and celebrated history. I love how Sebastian puts on this big show for Ariel, and that she cuts out before it’s over. Sebastian’s other number is the less-heralded but equally fantastic “Kiss the Girl.” While there is something mildly creepy about Sebastian singing a song to put Eric in the mood to kiss Ariel, it must be remembered that Eric needs to do this to break Ursula’s spell and save Ariel from being turned into a creepy little emaciated polyp. Where “Under the Sea” is a massive set piece, “Kiss the Girl” has a subtler, quieter piece that speaks to the universality of music. “Under the Sea” has Sebastian backed by the denizens of the deep, who presumably have either been in his musical shows or are used to them. “Kiss the Girl,” on the other hand, has the deep-sea crab supported largely by shallow water species.

The one quibble I have with THE LITTLE MERMAID is that the film robs Ariel of some of her agency when Ursula takes her voice. She becomes a little too passive as she waits for Eric to kiss her. Luckily, Ariel does recover in time to help foil Ursula’s plan to marry Eric in her place (the witch tricked Eric by using Ariel’s voice) and she gets a full assist from Flounder, Sebastian, and Scuttle (Buddy Hackett), a seagull who’s been Ariel’s (usually incorrect) info guy about the surface.

Ariel foils Ursula’s plan to marry Eric, but the Prince’s kiss comes too late to save Ariel, which leads to a hurried finish that sees Ariel transformed into a polyp, then Triton turned into one to save her, then Ursula growing all monstrous, then Eric killing her, then all the polyps getting better, and then Ariel’s wedding. It’s a breathless final 20 minutes, and before we know it, Ariel and Eric are hitched. Her decision to go through with the wedding would have had more bite, of course, if Eric was the baker’s son instead of a prince, but that’s a tad too much realism for a Disneyfied fairy tale.

That’s a small, imperfect cherry on top of a very tasty sundae, however. THE LITTLE MERMAID isn’t one of my all-time favorite Disney films, but it’s not far from it.

SCROOGED: I’m Sure Charles Dickens Would Have Wanted to See Her Nipples

Scrooged (1988) – Directed by Richard Donner – Starring Bill Murray, Karen Allen, John Forsythe, Bobcat Goldthwait, Carol Kane, David Johansen, Robert Mitchum, Alfre Woodard, John Glover, Jamie Farr, Buddy Hackett, and Brian Doyle Murray.

There are lots of adaptations of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, but none of them scream the 1980s as loud as SCROOGED. Bill Murray, Karen Allen, John Forsythe, Bobcat Goldthwait, the Buster Poindexter guy, and the Solid Gold dancers all had a big decade, and they all come together in a rather entertaining comedy about a TV executive producing a live Christmas Carol broadcast who simultaneously has a Christmas Carol experience himself.

Frank Cross (Murray) is a complete dick, and runs his network like his own personal kingdom, despite the fact that it’s Robert Mitchum’s kingdom. He hates Christmas, hates subordinates, and hates himself. He drinks a lot and insults and bullies everyone he comes across. What’s nice about Murray playing the Scrooge character is his relative youth. Frank Cross isn’t a man at the end of his life, but in the middle of it. Ebeneezer not only knows he’s a jerk, but has suffered a lifetime of becoming increasingly miserable and isolated so his pump has been primed for a change. Cross is half his life from that moment; even though he’s been separated from his One True Love, Claire (Karen Allen), Frank is still a man climbing the social and economic ladder.

Despite being set in the present and despite not using the names of the Dickens’ characters, SCROOGED follows the general pattern of A Christmas Carol pretty closely – Frank is visited by a ghost of an ex-collegae, Lew (Forsythe), who warns him that three ghosts will visit him this night. The Ghosts come in expected order, and Frank is . The Ghost of Christmas Past (Johansen) is an incredible boor and cloaks himself in the garb of a taxi driver. (Not THE Taxi Driver, but a taxi driver.) As much as I dislike this character, the decision to start Frank off with a gruff ghost is a good one, as Frank needs someone who’s totally self-assured and doesn’t depend on him for anything. That’s the Ghost of Christmas Past – unshaven, bad teeth, cackling laugh … this is nearly as far out of Frank’s comfort zone as you can get. The connection between Past and Frank’s early days is pretty clear; Past represents the working class life Frank left behind. They witness Frank’s dad (Brian Doyle Murray) giving him a cut of meat for Christmas and while the ghost is appalled, Frank defends his father’s act as a good lesson.

There’s always a lot of weight placed on the Christmas Past ghost, as his visitation creates the back story for Scrooge. Past shows Frank his childhood, his early days as a low-level employee at the TV network’s Christmas party, happy times with Claire, and their eventual break-up, when Frank chooses his career (a dinner date with his boss, Lew) over dinner with their friends. Claire is heartbroken, but Frank is too career-obsessed to care. That they have this chat as Frank is in costume, playing Frisbee the Dog on a kid’s show, only serves to enforce the disconnect between Frank and Claire. It’s an absurd moment but it’s played perfectly straight by Allen and Murray.

And let’s just stop here for a moment to appreciate how awesome Karen Allen is as an actress. She’s plays off Murray as effortlessly and perfectly here as she does with Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Peter Reigert in Animal House, and Jeff Bridges in Starman. (Though, admittedly, it’s been awhile since I’ve seen that last one – feel free to call me out if I’m off-base.) All four of those actors require a different set of skills from Allen, and she usually only has a small amount of scenes to put those skills into action.

Christmas Past is followed by Christmas Present (Carol Kane), who continually smacks Frank around. She takes Frank to visit his brother James (John Murray), replacing the traditional role of nephew. The result plays the same, however; his brother laments Frank’s absence from his life and gets a trivia question about Gilligan’s Island wrong as Frank watches in disgust. (Not enough people give Dickens credit for his influence on Sherwood Schwartz sitcoms.) We also get a visit to his assistant Grace’s (Alfre Woodward) house, where he discovers that Grace has a kid who hasn’t talked since his father died.

Back to the network studio and we see Frank awaiting the visit of the third ghost as the live broadcast of A Christmas Carol (with Buddy Hackett as Scrooge) begins. Christmas Future gets only a quick appearance, sticking around just long enough to show Frank Grace’s mute son holed up in a mental institution and his own funeral.

Frank decides to change and his born again sequence is one of the greats. Murray plays it as much like a man coming off the rails as a man with a new focus in his life, really doing an outstanding job of walking that thin line between inspired and insane. He interrupts the live broadcast of A Christmas Carol to deliver a heart-felt plea for people to connect with their families. It’s a really great, really fresh version of the story, and Murray is completely convincing as a man unburdened by the weight he wouldn’t even admit he was carrying.

There’s plenty of great supporting work turned in by Bobcat Goldthwait, Robert Mitchum, and John Glover, yet for all of this, SCROOGED is merely a good movie and not a great one. One of the reasons why Scrooge is such a great character is because he is at the end of his life. He’s old, isolated, and bitter, and his trip with the ghosts reveals a man who’s life has gone wrong, and whose conversion speaks to the idea that it’s never too late to change. Frank Cross, on the other hand, is an unlikable lout in the middle of his life’s journey, drunk with power and not yet isolated from the world, and as great as Murray is, his descents into weepy territory don’t carry any weight to it. I’m not sure whether to laugh at the absurdity of his waterworks or feel empathy for his realizations.

I like SCROOGED but this was the first time I’d ever watched the entire movie in one piece; I enjoyed Donner’s film but I can’t say I feel any remorse at not having watched it previous to now. It’s a good movie but it’s ultimately a diversion rather than a film that sticks with me.

Be sure to check out the Holiday Review Index for all the Holiday-themed reviews to be found at Atomic Anxiety.