Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 The Little Mermaid is a story that Disney has decided to retell that was originally a Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale from, I believe it was 1837, that portrayed mermaids as sirens that would lure sailors to danger. And in the original Hands, Christianity Tale, he, it was about a story of a mermaid who basically gave up everything so that she could have human legs and love on land. Now that story sounds a little dark and foreboding a, at least a little bit. And Disney decided to take the idea of mermaids, which up until this point had always been almost like a siren type creature, or maybe even a little bit intense. They made it a lot sweeter. I mean, she is basically a Gen y character that is sassy and sweet and just kind of silly. But I wanna kind of get into a little bit more of this movie.
Speaker 0 00:00:58 This movie came out in 1989. It is the story of one of King Trenton's daughters. He has seven in all. His seven daughters are Aina, Alana, Adela, ACUTA, Arista, Arina, and Ariel. And the story that we're going to be talking about that the movie is based on is Ariel. Now she is a 16 year old Mermaid who has a definite attitude and wants to do things her way. She's rebellious. She basically, anything that King Triton tells her to do, she basically does the opposite. And she's got some friends that kind of help her along the way. Sebastian is more of kind of the king's assistant that tries to keep Ariel in check. And then she, of course, she has flounder who is pretty much her best friend in fish form. The whole kind of thing is, is that she swims up to the surface and she sees the ship and she falls head over heels, love at first sight in love with the princes on board.
Speaker 0 00:01:55 Unfortunately, because of a bad storm that they're in, the ship ends up going down and she saves the princes and manages to get him to shore. Well, as she's singing to him, as he's just coming back to consciousness, that memory kind of sticks in his head a little bit. So she kind of goes back and have anything, it's that she wants to live on land with him. She did. She would literally give up anything and everything to do so, but, and that's kind of where the story gets interesting. King Tritons sister Ursula is the sea witch. And so Ariel goes to her, wants to know what she has to do to get some legs, because I mean, honestly, the tail's not gonna work real well on land. But what, what Ursula wants an exchange for the legs is she wants aerial voice. And so she gives her the task of getting true love's Kiss from the Prince within a short period of time to basically to be able to keep her legs basically forever. And so the transformation happens. Ariel gets to go up on land, it becomes an adventure from that point of
Speaker 1 00:02:58 Her just kind of getting used to things on land and how much different it's from being in the sea. And she's trying everything that she can do to get Tru love's Kiss, but she's gonna need a little bit of help along the way because somebody that's watching her from down below realizes or sees that she's getting too close to achieving her goals. With the whole thing Kissing the Prince, they kind of throw a wrench in the, in the mix and cause, um, a hiccup in the whole story. And in doing so, they put aerial at risk for not only not keeping her legs, but also losing or King Triton losing her under the water. And so, uh, and so if you can imagine the story kind of gets a little bit twisty Kirby, and it kind of goes a little bit of a different direction than you might think.
Speaker 1 00:03:51 But it does have a happy ending. I, if you haven't already seen this one, I won't ruin the ending for you, but I will say that there is a wedding involved. You'll just have to wait and see of which, if they're gonna be above the water or underneath of it. So after all, one of the biggest songs in the movie is called Under the Sea, but I'll just let your imagination run with that one. But yeah, this movie, this one's gonna be a classic Disney cartoon. It's just, it's got a lot of fun. It's definitely aimed at more of the teenage crowd concerning Ariel is 16 and just very rebellious and you don't understand me and the whole teenage angst and now this kind of attitude that goes with that. No, daddy, you just don't understand me type attitude. And yes, I'm being overly dramatic just for the fun of it.
Speaker 1 00:04:37 I hope you can get a little bit of a laugh outta that as well as I can. But <laugh>, I did give the Little Mermaid a 6.5 out of 10 on the deputy scale. I also gave a rating of innocent and just as a refresher course in case you're unfamiliar with some of our <laugh>. Sorry about the crash. Some of my cats are in the office. You're with me. And we just had an avalanche of some stuff here in my office. But, so as it goes, the innocent just means that it's safe for 12 and below, or basically all ages approved and guilty means it's, would recommend it for 13 and above. Or if it needs further clarification than that, I usually go into a little bit more detail on that as it goes. But yeah, I would definitely recommend this when it's a lot of fun. It's gonna, you're gonna be singing the songs left long after the credits and everything you're done. But yeah, this is a character that Disney has brought forth that will carry on for years to.
