Thursday, June 26, 2014

The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea

The Little Mermaid 2 Poster.jpgThe Sequel Machine, er… I mean Disney… released The Little Mermaid II in 2000, taking place a decade after the original film. Focusing on her daughter, the film stars all the original voices, plus Tara Strong, Stephen Furst, and… Clancy Brown? The film has largely been panned by critics is considered one of Disney’s worst sequels.

Ariel’s (Jodi Benson) daughter, Melody (Strong), is presented to King Triton (Kenneth Mars). But Ursula’s crazy sister, Morgana (Pat Carroll), shows up and tries to take her hostage for the trident. Ariel then decides to hide Melody from her heritage.
She soon finds the evidence though and goes to Morgana to find out about herself.

In other words, it’s the exact same plot as the original, only flipped. Combine that with mediocre animation and subpar songs, it’s a terrible film that not only doesn’t deserve to exist, but could only be described as badly written fan fiction.
And when I say it’s the same plot, I mean exactly that. Melody has a passionate interest in the sea, but her mother fears for her safety and forbids her from going out in the water. Morgana makes her into a mermaid and she has a limited amount of time to accomplish a task before she can be one permanently. Are we trying to make a point about the apple not falling far from the tree or one about sins of the mother here?
The two new sidekicks, Tip and Dash, are just annoying as well. There’s no redeeming qualities about them and they serve no other purpose than to bumble around and inadvertently save the day.
This just takes the magic of the original film and its legacy and takes a massive crap on it. And they eventually thought it was a good idea to make a prequel…

#66

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