Oh gosh

When I first heard about this I turned my nose up because of the whole set-up … a prequel to the original, which of course meant no Melody lol. A few months ago I saw a still from the movie posted to some IMDb message board or other and my interest seeing in the movie for all but disappeared because the moment in particular that they’d captured just looked atrociously drawn.

How fast those doubts can be swept away by the merest glance during the first few minutes here of a tiny tiny Ariel (no seashells, just a cute purple wrap, lol!) and all the other characters, and the animation, crucially, in motion. The animation here is spectacular ... and I’m not even gonna add to that ”... for a DTV sequel …”

Well, anyway, the tiny tiny Ariel doesn’t last ‘cos this is evidently all occurring pretty close to the start of the original. The story is nifty once it gets going – I actually laughed out loud when Ariel first stumbles across Sebastian’s underground music speakeasy, lol. Basically Triton has outlawed music in Atlantica and the movie is kind of Prohibition for kids about the importance of music. I guess Disney is getting a headstart on the neo-depression genre lol.

There are lots of cute references to the original, my fave being the jawdrop moment (if I remember correctly, this was also in the sequel when Melody tells Sebastian she sometimes imagines she has fins) – here it’s flipped around and it’s Ariel’s jaw that drops when she first seas goody-goody Sebastian breaking the rules by singing. Later we see the villainess Marina Del Ray mimicking the splash-up-on-the-rock moment that ended the “Part of Your World” reprise. There are some supersubtle gags for adults though, too, like “At-lant-ic-a!” when all the sea creatures find themselves locked away. The movie really has a surprisingly rebellious streak to it. Oh and also, almost making up for the absence of Melody (though her voice, Tara Strong, is here! hehe), at last Flounder is back to the cute version we fell in love with in the original, not the adolescent, voice broken, version that was about the worst thing in Return to the Sea LOL.

All in all I was surprised. I’d obviously rather see another Melody story than this but I can’t deny the animation is just leaps and bounds better than most Disney DTVs – though I’m cringing the more I hear about the Tinker Bell movie which basically sounds like Bratz meets Sex and the City with fairies, bah … I can’t wait to see the animation.

This is one of those movies that is just so engrained on me I find it impossible to write a real review of it, but my site would feel kind of empty without it, and I did just watch it for the first time in a long time (I tend to watch the sequel more, lol, trust me I’m slapping my wrists as I type …). Actually, I don’t know the whole movie here by heart as much as I thought I would – sure there’s no surprises anymore, but it’s the music that’s engrained on me more than anything else. I had the soundtrack on cassette, probably on its first release … it was practically glued into my walkman and may have been one of the few recordings I ever actually “wore out” by listening to so much (I definitely know I cut up the liner notes to cover my dormitory wall in pics of Ariel at the height of my crush on her, lol). I have memories, too, that instantly make me blush feverishly, of walking around school singing along to it out loud, lol.

Anyway, I guess that’s the kind of movie it is. It’s not one you can dissect and analyse – though I did, at college, and it’s sort of fascinating, FYI – it just gets inside you, from that first appearance of the mer-people to Alan Menken’s instrumental “Part of Your World”, the first glimpse of Ariel’s red hair bobbing up over the sunken ship bow to another version of the same theme, past the soaring song itself, the ultimate Disney “Want” song, and you’re still only 20 minutes in. You still have the reprise, Eric’s playing it on the flute on the beach, and of course, when Ariel loses her voice to wicked Ursula. There are a ton of great songs in this movie, but on this viewing I couldn’t help but focus on that one theme. This movie is really like a masterclass in how to make the most of a great theme without over using it. The runtime barely hits 80 minutes, yet that theme must occur at least 10 times throughout, always at significant moments, and it never even begins to grind.

I’d love to see this one on the big screen … I was about to say “again” there but I just realised I never did, Aladdin was my first and I didn’t see any of the re-releases till Mulan came out before Tarzan. And you know what, I guess Prince Eric isn’t quite as bad as I’ve always made him out to be … just (and I cringe to say it but I’m too tired of writing now to find a better way) very “male” ... which I guess is the point, lol.

Grrr Disney Cinemagic started dying on me while I was watching this today but I’ve seen it way too many times already so I’m still gonna post something about it. I really don’t know whether to call this a guilty pleasure or actually seriously call it a good movie – while just about everything here that isn’t Melody is flat, cheesy, ridiculous even, I really think Melody herself ranks up there with the best of the Disney Princesses – the dreaminess, the outcast quality, the look of course, the wanting in her eyes, the song – she’s one of my favourites anyway, if not my absolute favourite. I love it, mostly, anyway. At least they get the absolute worst – the sickeningly perky opening number (but I just have a major problem with Prince Eric lol) – out of the way quickly, and I could listen to “For a Moment” on a loop for the rest of my life, Tara Charandoff-Strong kicks butt. Maybe that song is the only reason I love the movie, I don’t know, it’s possible – it’s a good reason I think. The Tip and Dash song is fairly catchy too. It’s definitely one of the “surprisingly good” Disney sequels to me anyway, and I’ll watch it way too many more times yet.

Third time I’ve seen this movie and it looks like it’s going to get better with every viewing. I got completely swept away this time. Just three or four minutes in I found myself saying to myself, “wow I am really going to like this this time,” and I wasn’t wrong. Again I couldn’t help but wonder what it’d be like to see in a cinema with a big enthusiastic kid-filled audience. Even the “I do believe in fairies,” chant sequence had my heart leaping.

One of the things I didn’t like the first time I saw the movie was how much it “borrowed” from previous incarnations of the story. This time, though, I saw a director who wasn’t afraid of simply doing the stuff that’s been proven to work, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” style – originality be damned. The main scene that stands out to me is as Olivia Williams looks at the children’s empty beds, then again after they’ve returned, still not seeing them ‘cos she’s imagined them so often in her sleep. I have to admit, I haven’t read the book (or if I have, I’ve forgotten it), so I don’t know if this whole scene appears there, I’m guessing it is, but it’s still visually very similar to the same scene in Steven Spielberg’s Hook. But, y’know, it still sort of brings tears to my eyes, so no harm done I guess.

3rd May 2004:

I made the mistake with this movie the first time round of expecting both too much and something different. It’s by no means the worst movie of 2003 as I originally thought. But it’s still a pale comparison to the Disney version and Spielberg’s Hook. In fact, you could say, this is the Kill Bill of “Peter Pan” movies, a cobbling together of the various ideas that exist in movies, cartoons and TV series, adding the authentic feel of the original novel, punching in a pop theme tune and adding a few Harry Potter rejects.

For kids, it is perhaps so far the best movie ever… personally I’d put it low down in my favourite children’s movies ever, but it’s certainly up there because I’m convinced it would be a riot to see with a kid-filled audience, and I don’t say that often, only Disney’s Mulan have I been able to watch and enjoy with noisy excitable children. The new Peter Pan moves too fast for me… there’s such exquisite set-design, but no time at all to take it in, and such deep emotions, but no time given to them either… I’m sure this is my personal problem with it. Take the mermaids for example. They’re the most perfect mermaids I’ve ever seen in a movie, but you actually see more of them in the equally paltry glimpses on the DVD extra featurette. They’re beautiful at first glance, then almost repulsive, but yet they’re so exotic, it’s that old-time draw of evil thing that “real” psirens are all about. But it’s like a one minute scene. In fact, all the “Peter Pan” movies so far, and by that I mean Disney, Spielberg, and this, since I haven’t seen others, have really skimped on the mermaids. I remember the TV series “Peter Pan and the Pirates” had a whole episode where the mermaids tried to turn Wendy into one of them, can’t wait for that to turn up on DVD since I have such a vivid memory of it. But enough of my mermaid obsession…

There are enough fairly great moments to make a movie out of here, but like all the movies I’ve ever hated at first view, this one always shoots itself in the foot too soon after winning me over. The “I do believe in fairies,” scene is the ultimate case in point. The music is perfect, the dark moment and photography are perfect, the acting is even perfect, but WHY did the film makers choose to align the words, “I do believe in fairies, I do! I do!” to a rhythm akin to a football chant? It just goes on like one too many repetitions for me.

Then there’s the scenes that too closely resemble the movies that preceded it. These are powerful scenes (eg, mother wakes up and thinks she sees the children in their beds, but “she saw them so often in her sleep that she thought it was just another dream,”) but the almost total similarity to previous versions is far too much of a distraction.

But not everybody has seen Hook with it’s better score and the Disney version with its better songs and character designs… and plenty of young girls are going to swoon over Jeremy Sumpter, and plenty of older girls are going to continue to swoon over Jeremy Isaacs… and plenty of young boys, for that matter are going to… over the (I confess, and apologise for my comments last review) emerging beauty Rachel Hurd-Wood (I just didn’t appreciate till now that they’d cast a girl so perfectly perched on the borderline between girl and woman – those lips put me off too much, ugh…).

In short, it’s a particularly targeted film, and if you watch it either at the right time or with the right people, you might really get the intention.