Watch The Little Mermaid 1989

a charming Disney movie based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale of the same name.

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Story

Ariel, a sixteen-year-old mermaid princess, is dissatisfied with life under the sea and curious about the human world. With her best fish friend Flounder, Ariel collects human artifacts and goes to the surface of the ocean to visit Scuttle the seagull, who offers very inaccurate knowledge of human culture. She ignores the warnings of her father King Triton and his adviser Sebastian that contact between merpeople and humans is forbidden, longing to join the human world and become a human herself.

Intro lines

I'll tell you a tale of the bottomless blue / And it's, hey to the starboard, heave-ho / Look out, lad a mermaid be waiting for you / In mysterious fathoms below!

Characters with picture, description and voice of actors

Princess Ariel - The Little Mermaid (Jodi Benson)

Prince Eric - the hero (Christopher Daniel Barnes)

King Triton - the Sea King (Kenneth Mars)

Ursula - The sea witch, a Cecaelia (part human, part octopus) (Pat Carroll)

Flounder - a bright yellow and golden blue colored tropical fish (Jason Marin)

Sebastian - a red Jamaican crab, the servant of King Triton (Samuel E. Wright)

Scuttle - a seagull, friend of Ariel (Buddy Hackett)

Grimsby - Prince Eric's manservant and confidant (Ben Wright)

Carlotta - housekeeper in Prince Eric's castle (Edie McClurg)

Chef Louis (Rene Auberjonois)

Quotes

URSULA: What a lovely little bride I'll make my dear, I look divine Things are working out according to my ultimate design. Soon I'll have that little mermaid and the ocean will be mine...
SCUTTLE: The Sea Witch!

SCUTTLE: Whoa! Mermaid off the port bow! Ariel, how you doin', kid? Whoa, what a swim.
ARIEL: Scuttle, look what we found.
FLOUNDER: We were in this sunken ship, and dinglehopper and snarfblat

URSULA: That is, he's got to kiss you. Not just any kiss - the kiss of true love. If he does kiss you before the sun sets on the third day, you'll remain human, permanently, but - if he doesn't, you turn back into a mermaid, and - you belong to deal with kiss and voice

ARIEL: Daddy, I love him!
KING TRITON: No! Have you lost your senses completely? He's a human, you're a mermaid!
ARIEL: I don't know about humans

PRIEST: Dearly beloved...
FLOUNDER: Don't worry, Ariel. We're gonna make it. We're almost there.
PRIEST: Yes, um, do you, Eric, take Vanessa, to be your lawfully wedded wife for now you can talk

Songs orginal from soundtracks

Fathoms Below

Daughters of Triton

Part of Your World

Under the Sea

Poor Unfortunate Souls

Les Poissons

Kiss the Girl

Vanessa's Song

Production

Songwriter Howard Ashman became involved with the writing and development of Mermaid. At the same time, Katzenberg, Clements, Musker, and Ashman revised the story format to make Mermaid a musical with a Broadway-style story structure, with the song sequences serving as the tentpoles of the movie.

Trivia

Previous to The Little Mermaid, the songs for animated movies were written beforehand. With this film, composer Alan Menken and lyricist Howard Ashman worked alongside directors John Musker and Ron Clements throughout the whole storyboarding process so that the songs are an organic part of the movie.
More money and resources were poured into The Little Mermaid than any other Disney animated movies in decades. Aside from its main animation facility in Glendale, California, Disney also opened up a feature animation facility outside Orlando, Florida.
Before recording "Poor Unfortunate Souls", Pat Carroll asked Howard Ashman to sing the song one more time to get it right. He obliged, and as he sang he added little spoken ad-libs that Carroll then incorporated into her performance.
Songwriting team Alan Menken and Howard Ashman were brought to the attention of Disney Animation Chair Jeffrey Katzenberg by longtime colleague (and future Dreamworks co-founder) David Geffen, who was producing the team's off-Broadway musical "Little Shop of Horrors".
There are several shots of Ariel, forlornly sitting on a rock, in a pose reminiscent of the "Little Mermaid" statue that sits in Copenhagen harbor.
Disney artists had considered an animated movie of Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid" as part of the "Silly Symphonies" series, in the late 1930s, and illustrator Kay Nielsen prepared a number of striking story sketches in pastels and watercolors.
The wedding scene at the close of the movie marked one of the first use of Computer Animation Production System in a Disney feature. The rest of The Little Mermaid uses hand-painted cels. All subsequent Disney features have used CAPS instead of ink-and-paint.

Recommended For You

The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea 2000 (sequel of The Little Mermaid 1989, who tell us the story of Ariel and Prince Eric's daughter, Melody), The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning 2008 (prequel to the same movie about the youngest daughter of King Triton, and the beautiful kingdom of Atlantica).