Le Secret de la Petite Sirène

This prequel was very enjoyable and charming. I don't think it isn't as good as the classic first film or the series(a childhood favourite of mine), but I do think it is an improvement over the rather average Little Mermaid 2:Return to the Sea. Here, the animation is breathtaking, beautifully fluid and colourful, and fairly true in terms of style to the original. The music, while not as catchy as Alan Menekn's score in the original, is still surprisingly delightful. I Remember was outstanding. And the voice acting is great, Jim Cummings is a worthy replacement of Kenneth Mars as Triton, and Jodi Benson(who also voiced Thumbelina in the Don Bluth movie, Ariel isn't the only role she's done, it's just the role she's best remembered by) is just amazing as Ariel, with a fantastic singing voice that makes me want to sing with her. Remember the song in the series' episode Wish Upon a Starfish, Daring To Dance, amazing song, amazing vocals that reduced me to tears. Marina-marvellously voiced by Sally Field- is an improvement over the bland Morgana, Sebastian is hilarious, there is nice character development and Benjamin is so cute. And the beginning with Ariel's mother brought some poignancy. However, the film is too short, the plot while a wonderful idea is rather so-so in execution and takes time to get going, and Flounder's voice was more teenage than innocent-sounding, the latter suited the character more. Still it is a very charming prequel and well worth the look. 7/10 Bethany Cox

Ever since Disney's "sequels" department has been under new management, there has been a HUGE upgrade in quality. There have only been two animated releases so far, Cinderella III and The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning. I am not sure if any more sequels are in production.

Consistent between both films is the very high quality animation. TLM:AB keeps CGI to a minimum and much effort has been made to keep the characters close to the original character models (and in many cases, character models have heavily improved over the original). This is probably as good as it will get without the original team of animators.

What saves this film is the fantastic hand-drawn animation in the age of ugly CGI and lazy flash-drawn cartoons. I would go as far as to say that the animation here is on-par or higher than the original 1989 release (the original was plagued with off-model animation). Unfortunately, the story is only so-so. The plot is very weak but effort has been made to develop all of the sisters' personalities, which I really appreciate (they are believable sister to sister relationships). I think Disney recognised that without Alan Menken, the music for TLM would not have charm or beauty. Disney did the right thing for this film by keeping songs short and to a minimum.

This film highly deserves a chance to be seen by many, unlike the rushed and horrible Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea.

I am a huge little mermaid fan since i can remember and i was definitely not disappointed it in this movie. It tells us how Ariel came to be and answered a lot of the questions we had in the first one like what happened to Ariel's mother and why King Triton hates humans. It also tells us how flounder and Ariel met but the one thing i did not like about flounder is that he beat boxed and was kind of out of character because he was a lot braver in this one which in the other ones flounder was always scared. I also liked that is showed us the different sides of the sisters because in the first and second ones we didn't really hear much about them only for brief moments but in this one we get to see their personalities. I also liked the music in the movie it was really great. Some of my favorites was Athena's song, Jump in the line, i remember, and i will sing. The only song i did not like was the one mistake because it didn't seem like a song to me just kind of a poem that Sally Fields talked through with background music. It was so cool to see Jodi Benson and Sameuel E. Wright returning as Ariel and Sebastion. I don't think you can have a Little Mermaid movie without them as the characters. All around good movie and i will watch it over and over again like i did the first 2.

The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning (2008)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

This prequel starts off with Ariel as a child and we get to see what happened to her mother, which leads her father King Triton to ban all music in Atlantica. We then flash-forward to Ariel as a teenager when she learns the power of music and wants to bring it back.

This third film in the series is certainly a major step up from the second one but then again the second movie was so poor that it wouldn't be that hard to be better. This film here was obviously done on a low-budget and there's no question that the animation is far off from the original movie but, then again, it's at least better than the second film.

One certainly shouldn't go into this movie expecting some sort of masterpiece but at the same time I thought it was mildly entertaining and worth watching. I thought the highlight of the picture were the characters, which were a lot of fun and that includes the rebellious Ariel. I found her to be quite fun throughout and we also got nice support from King Triton, Flounder and Sebastian. The story itself wasn't all that original but it too was at least entertaining.

The music wasn't the greatest thing from Disney but the sequences were at least fun. As you can tell, there's really nothing ground-breaking with THE LITTLE MERMAID: ARIEL'S BEGINNING but it's at least mildly entertaining and worth watching once.

The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning (2008) is the third movie in the Little Mermaid series, a prequel to The Little Mermaid (1989) and it was okay.

Positives for The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning (2008): It was nice to see Ariel back when she was starting to become the rebel she was in the original. The animation looks nice enough. The voice cast does a good job with their performances. The music is good enough for the movie. And finally, the movie has a good pace to the story.

Negatives for The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning (2008): The prequel sose of the story was really annoying. I always have the same problem with prequels as they tend to answer questions I wasn't asking and giving me answers I don't like. The reason for why music is banned in Atlantica is not enough to care an entire story. The new side characters are not memorable or interesting. And finally, the villain of the movie was remarkably forgettable.

Overall, The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning (2008) is a fine enough prequel that I won't hate rewatching, but it didn't blow me away.