A return (successful, not just attempted) to Disney's animated heyday, or close thereto. It's doubtful that, as pure animation, the standard reached by Snow White and Pinocchio will ever again be equalled by human hand. (Whatever standard might eventually be reached by computers can never be so impressive.) But nothing here has been scamped in the way of essentials, and the salient details of a scene are the more sharply set off. If there is not quite the sense of intrepid advancement and pushing the limits, there is nonetheless a sense of retrenching amid mass retreat and disarray, and coolly making every stroke count. (Put another way: artistic heroism redefined for modern times.) Certainly The Little Mermaid is a return to the heyday in its borrowing of a standard-repertory fairy tale -- in this case one of Hans Andersen's, with its timeless and tireless themes of impossible romance and of parental rules and proscriptions in conflict with children's need for independence. And it is a return, too, in the reshaping of such tales to the new medium, with scenes coupled together as neatly and securely as freight cars, and with even the musical numbers helping to push the plot forward. This is the art of storytelling at its most urgent and spellcasting, most headlong and frugal. Written and directed by John Musker and Ron Clements. (1989) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.