--- title: The Little Mermaid at 25: How It Started Disney's Animated Renaissance description: Twenty-five years ago, the old Disney magic launched an animation revolution that bloomed with Pixar, DreamWorks and Disney's own 'Frozen' canonical: https://time.com/3589558/little-mermaid-disney-animation-renaissance/ author: Richard Corliss article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-11-17T21:39:55.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:00:20.910Z article:section: History og:title: The Little Mermaid at 25: How It Started Disney's Animated Renaissance og:description: Twenty-five years ago, the old Disney magic launched an animation revolution that bloomed with Pixar, DreamWorks and Disney's own 'Frozen' og:url: https://time.com/3589558/little-mermaid-disney-animation-renaissance/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4f6eea7ee880d4fa/698768df0b72e3673e6dbedd/little-mermaid.jpg?branch=production&width=1190&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1190 og:image:height: 669 og:image:alt: little-mermaid og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Little Mermaid at 25: How It Started Disney's Animated Renaissance twitter:description: Twenty-five years ago, the old Disney magic launched an animation revolution that bloomed with Pixar, DreamWorks and Disney's own 'Frozen' twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4f6eea7ee880d4fa/698768df0b72e3673e6dbedd/little-mermaid.jpg?branch=production&width=1190&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # How _The Little Mermaid_ Cued the Disney Animation Renaissance > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: The 10 All-TIME Best Animated Movies [Watch (HLS stream): The 10 All-TIME Best Animated Movies](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/2cDpG9PM.m3u8) (5:41)  _Published 2011-06-22. TIME movie critic Richard Corliss lists the ten best animated features of all time, from Finding Nemo to Pinocchio_ by [Richard Corliss](https://time.com/author/richard-corliss/) ## Richard Corliss Nov 17, 2014 9:39 PM UTC  Disney by [Richard Corliss](https://time.com/author/richard-corliss/) ## Richard Corliss Nov 17, 2014 9:39 PM UTC Ariel (voiced by Jodi Benson) has a cushy job: mermaid princess of her father Triton’s underwater kingdom. But she’s also a teenager, restless with wanderlust and fascinated by the “gizmos and gadgets” that have fallen from her sky — the water’s surface. She dreams of joining the magical creatures up on land and, this being a Disney animated feature, she dreams in song. In the Howard Ashman lyric put to Alan Menken’s tune, she sings: “Up where they walk, up where they run, / Up where they stay all day in the sun, / Wanderin’ free. Wish I could be / Part of that world.” At an early screening of _The Little Mermaid_, the young audience got restless during that opening ballad — some kids actually started fighting — and Jeffrey Katzenberg, the head of Disney Animation, considered dropping it. Writer-directors John Musker and Ron Clements had to remind Katzenberg that the very first Disney feature, _Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs_, began with a similar “I want” song, “Someday My Prince Will Come,” and that the bosses at MGM had wanted to drop [“Over the Rainbow” from _The Wizard of Oz_](https://tmpowa2.timeinc.com/OWA/redir.aspx?C=3KNOP1djTEiriAI1gS8Flb%5FdeeIb1tEIHDRCGBIGrxnOMUkN%5F-5juUxmz6pLm36VScyUknc%5F9dE.&URL=http%3a%2f%2fentertainment.time.com%2f2013%2f09%2f19%2foz-revisited-part-4-wheres-the-rainbow%2f) until smarter heads prevailed. Both of those numbers served their stories and became enduring hits. Why not stick with “Part of Your World”? So the song stayed in, as a declaration of its heroine’s hopes. And _The Little Mermaid_, which opened 25 years ago, on Nov. 17, 1989, realized its makers’ dream: recapturing the magic of classic Disney as destination entertainment to enthrall generations of moviegoers. More than two decades after Walt Disney’s death, and following a series of less-than-fabulous cartoon features, this was the picture that launched the Disney Renaissance that soared with _Beauty and the Beast_, _Aladdin_ and _The Lion King_. As I wrote in my most enthusi-woozy-astic tone in the Nov. 20, 1989, issue of TIME: --- > “” --- Many live-action filmmakers did try; they turned their adventure movies into special-effects showcases indebted to cartoons and comic books. The phenomenal critical and popular success of the Disney Renaissance features also prodded rival studios (including DreamWorks, which Katzenberg cofounded after leaving Disney) to start their own animation units and rake in the cash. That they did, making animation the industry’s most reliably money-making “genre.” In 2010, five of the 10 top-grossing movies were CGI-animated: Pixar’s _Toy Story 3_, Universal’s _Despicable Me_, DreamWorks’ _Shrek Forever After_ and _How to Train Your Dragon_ and Disney’s _Tangled_. But it all began with Ariel. Walt Disney had first considered the story in the 1930s, as one segment in a proposed omnibus feature of Andersen tales. Fifty years later, Musker and Clements freshened the idea for Disney’s first fairy-tale animated feature since the 1959 _Sleeping Beauty_. That meant reviving the long-dormant Disney notion of a questing young female (Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora from _Sleeping Beauty_) who battles for her life and honor against an evil older woman (the Queen, the wicked stepmother, Maleficient). Much later, this conflict of young beauty vs. middle-aged sorcery stoked the drama of Rapunzel and her crone captor in _Tangled_. Ariel’s subterranean nemesis, the sea witch Ursula (voiced by Pat Carroll), makes mischief aplenty; but the girl’s main challenge is finding her place in a hostile environment. She’s literally a fish out of water — an undocumented alien, if you will — who must acclimate herself to the strange customs of beasts who breathe through lungs, not gills. The one constant, ain the sea or on land, is true love, which Ariel discovers with the charming Prince Eric (Christopher Daniel Barnes). You may debate whether the Disney heroines fit the feminist standard, but they don’t live in a democracy. [Remember, they’re princesses.](https://time.com/3588178/disney-princesses/) _The Little Mermaid_ further harkened back to the classic Disney features by mounting a full musical score with songs that explained the characters and propelled the action. The movie was basically a Broadway musical, but animated and underwater. For the job of custodians and innovators, Menken and Ashman, who had written the off-Broadway hit _Little Shop of Horrors_, were a perfect choice. Menken could compose sumptuous melodies with a pop lilt, and the clever Ashman worked closely with Musker and Clements on the story. He suggested, for example, that Sebastian the Crab (Samuel E. Wright) be changed from a Jeeves-type English butler to a friendly Jamaican. From this decision came the calypso-inflected revel “Under the Sea” and the sweet samba “Kiss the Girl” — two numbers that broke out of the movie to become modest hits. One measure of a song’s mainstream success is an Academy Award. Disney had earned Best Song Oscars in 1941 for “When You Wish Upon a Star” from _Pinocchio_ and in 1947 for “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” from _Song of the South_. Then nothing — until _The Little Mermaid_ again changed the studio’s luck. In the past quarter-century, ten Disney tunes have won the Best Song Oscar: “Under the Sea,” “Beauty and the Beast” (Menkin and Ashman), “A Whole New World” (Menkin and Tim Rice) from _Aladdin_, “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” (Rice and Elton John) from _The Lion King_, “Colors of the Wind” (Menken and Stephen Schwartz) from _Pocahontas_, “You’ll Be in My Heart” (Phil Collins) from _Tarzan_, “If I Didn’t Have You” (Randy Newman) from Pixar’s _Monsters, Inc._, “We Belong Together” (Newman) from Pixar’s _Toy Story 3_, “Man or Muppet” (Bret McKenzie) from the live-action _The Muppets_ and the worldwide smash “Let It Go” (Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez) from _Frozen_. In some ways, _The Little Mermaid_ was old-fashioned. Rendered in the hand-drawn style, it was the last Disney animated feature to use cels and Xeroxing. Pixar and its CGI imitators soon made that rigorous process obsolete. The _Toy Story_, _Shrek_ and _Ice Age_ franchises taught audiences to accept movies that emphasized comedy, not romance, and to forget that a cartoon feature was supposed to sing. Not until the return of the Disney princess musical — _The Princess and the Frog_, _Tangled_ and _Frozen_ — did moviegoers re-warm to the old pleasure of leaving a theater humming as well as smiling. But the phrase “old-fashioned” means nothing to kids treated to their first view of a Disney classic like _The Little Mermaid_. Its humor and heart, not to mention its verve and impeccable craft, can touch any viewer today as it did in 1989\. How lucky we are that this timeless movie became part of our world. **_Read TIME’s Nov. 1989 review of_** **The Little Mermaid,** **_here in the archives:_** [Festive Film Fare for Thanksgiving](http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,959063,00.html) ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] Cartoons, film classics. At their best, animated features make live action movies look as lumbering as dinosaurs. [ INAUDIBLE ], squirrel! Now, no animated feature has ever won the Academy Award for Best Picture. But many of them lodge more securely in our hearts than any official Oscar winner. [ MUSIC ] Here now are 10 animation immortals. Aesthetically pleasing configuration of hair that humans go nuts over. [ LAUGH ] A dinglehopper. The Little Mermaid brought a renaissance to Disney films. A lightness of narrative, a blending of classic and contemporary design, and a sheath of catchy songs. [ MUSIC ] Really? Really? Oh yeah, he's travelled 100's of miles. He's been battling sharks, and jelly fish, all sorts of Sharks? That can't be him. [ CROSSTALK ] The directors at Pixar always fashion funny, poignant stories to match their georgous computer images. [ INAUDIBLE ] clown fish from the reef. It's my dad. He took on a shark. And with Finding Nemo, they hit the jackpot. A lost child Saga, told from the searching father's point of view. 'Kay, grab shell, dude! Grabbing! Waa! [ MUSIC ] When everyone else was going CGI. [ MUSIC ] Sylvan [ UNKNOWN ] kept making 2D films. He spent five years making the Triplets of Velveel. It's about an old woman who raises her grandson to be a Tour de France champion. There's a dog, some bicycle napping mafiosi and three old chanteuses whose diet consists entirely of frogs. They catch by tossing hand grenades into a nearby stream [ NOISE ] Vu guessed it, triplets, is terrific. [ MUSIC ] Director and Co- writer Pete Docter takes the radical notion of a animated feature about a mean old man. Ow. Who literally and figuratively learns to let go. And takes the audience on a journey in two directions, penetratingly inward and exaltedly up. Come along, boys! [ SOUND ] [ MUSIC ] Some people should probably skip South Park Bigger Longer and Uncut. Including many of the celebrities made fun of in the movie and anyone who's grossed out by the title Bigger Longer and Uncut. For the rest of you enjoy the flat- out funniest movie on this list. [ MUSIC ] Mom, dad, where are you? Hayao Miyazaki is the world's most revered master of animation, and this, Spirited Away, is his masterpiece. A movie about a haunted house with vengeful spirits, and about the little girl who was fully a match for them. Spirited away [ SOUND ] is traditional hand- made, handcrafted art, as personal as a new tomorrow painting, [ INAUDIBLE ] and its breadth and heart give it worldwide appeal [ CROSSTALK ] Walt Disney's fourth animated feature Follows the standard torture test Walt set up for young viewers. [ NOISE ] An elephant's frantic mother is taken away to a mad house after causing a stampede. And poor Dumbo is left alone in the world. [ NOISE ] Fortunately, also in the tradition of children's literature, Dumbo's deformity will prove an asset. He can fly. Whee. We did it. Nice, nice of you to drop by me humble abode. Yeah, my name is Bunny, Bugs Bunny, esquire. Alright, this is cheating. Including in this countdown a collection of shots. That were not made as part of an animated feature. Yet this medley of Chuck Jones cartoons from his post- war period at Warner Brothers has too much wit, melodrama, and sheer delight not be placed high on any list of animated achievements. What's up, doc? [ MUSIC ] Oh [ SOUND ] WALL- E [ SOUND ] A love story involving a trash compacter and a sleek lady robot, WALL- E is a movie that shows but doesn't tell. Many Pixar films are stories about adorable machines, and Andrew Stanton's WALL- E is the perfect culmination of this process. It brings you to a logical and thrilling romantic extension. Toy meets girl. [ MUSIC ] Pinocchio kids' stuff are you kidding? Walt Disney's third and perhaps greatest animated feature imagines childhood as an unrelenting series of nightmare. The movie taught moral lessons in the most useful way, by literally, scaring the poop out of kids. It's two big monsters. If you tell a lie, your nose will grow. If you take up smoking, or drinking, or shooting pool, you will turn into a donkey. Oh, what's happening. [ MUSIC ] But the story of a puppet who wants to be a real live boy, also serves as an allegory for the work of the Disney geniuses and all the great animators whose works are included here. We start with pencil and ink or pixels. Please let me in. And create vivid characters-- No. That live forever in our minds and hearts. 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