The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea

“The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea” is an atrocious follow-up to one of the most beloved Disney animated movies ever, “The Little Mermaid.” The sequel, released in 2000, is pretty much a retelling of the original story, but has terrible animation, terrible music, and no originality. Ed Perkis said in his review, “As something to keep five year olds busy on a rainy afternoon, it’s barely adequate and is eclipsed even by the ‘The Little Mermaid’ television show they used to show on the Disney Channel.”

The story picks up not long after former mermaid Ariel (Jodi Benson) and Prince Eric (Rob Paulsen) have married and moved into his castle on the edge of the sea. Perkis mentioned, “They, as Syndrome in The Incredibles noted, “got bizzay” and have a baby daughter, Melody.” While Melody is taken out on the royal ship to meet Ariel’s side of the family, including her grandfather, King Triton (Kenneth Mars), she’s snatched by Morgana (Pat Carroll), the sister of Ursula, the sea witch from the first movie.

Even though Ariel is able to rescue Melody, Morgana promises that she won’t stop until she gets her revenge on Triton and Ariel says that everyone agrees to Melody never being allowed in the sea. Twelve years later, Melody, voiced by Tara Charendoff, who hasn’t been told the reason why the sea is off limits, glares at the sea in the same way Ariel glared at the land in the first movie, as something she wants to explore.

Actually, the whole movie is just Melody copying what Ariel did, only this time it’s Ariel playing the role of King Triton. Morgana not only behaves like Ursula, using magic powers to give Melody fins in exchange for Melody taking King Triton’s triton, but is voiced by the same actress. Sebastian (Samuel E. Wright) and a grown-up Flounder (Cam Clarke) are still around but get replaced as comedic sidekicks by Tip (Max Casella) and Dash (Stephen Furst), a penguin and walrus helping Melody steal the triton.

The re-hash of the story would have likely been acceptable for a satisfactory movie if the animation and music weren’t so choppy. Perkis said, “Oscar winners Howard Ashman and Alan Menken are replaced by kids music hacks Michael and Patty Silversher and the songs take about 40 steps downward as a result.” Although songs like “Under the Sea” and “Kiss the Girl” are Disney classics that will be remembered forever, no one would even be singing or humming “Here on the Land and Sea” or “Tip and Dash” after they watch this movie.

Perkis mentioned, “The animation is cheap television quality, with simplistic characters and backgrounds and a lot of blurry and dark shapes that make the movie unpleasant to watch.” The whole movie is just not worth the time or effort it took to put it into the DVD player.

I have to agree with Perkis when he said, “This is a weak effort, even for a direct-to-DVD sequel pumped out of the Disney television division. Ignore this re-release and use the funds to fill other holes in your animated movie collection.”

Everybody who has seen this movie can tell you that this one is nothing but a repeat of the first movie, which is not even original, but just a fast way for Disney to make a quick buck over people seeing the DVD on the shelves and running to the checkout line to buy it. This is a waste of time and money to watch that I will say just forget about this movie and don’t even bother watching it.

There is another “The Little Mermaid” movie, but is a prequel. I’m not going to be looking at that until “way” later in the month. Tomorrow I will be looking at another awful sequel to a beloved movie in “Disney Sequel Month.”