La sirenetta - Quando tutto ebbe inizio

This movie was remarkably refreshing and entertaining. The overall appearance of the film was pleasant. I really enjoyed the character design and animation; the film was very true to the original designs portrayed in the first Little Mermaid, and included just enough of modern 3d animation techniques to give additional depth to the 2d creations without spoiling its 2d nature. The story had a solid plot that supported other Little Mermaid films, as well as giving the viewer a touching glimpse of Ariel's mother and a deeper understanding of King Triton's character. The songs, while not as moving or masterful as Menken and Ashman's work on the first Little Mermaid film, were decent and fit in well with the overall theme of the movie. The movie flowed easily between the musical numbers and non-musical moments.

This is definitely one of those "Movie #3"s that rises well above the awful direction (plot, character, music, etc) that most sequels seem to follow.

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.

Cute, about the loss of the mother, the depression and coldness of the father, the serelepe sisters, a lot of adventure, it must please the little ones, I thought it was boring... The Little Mermaid 2 is still the best...

This prequel to the Disney film did well to show at the beginning what had happened to Ariel's mother, Queen Athena and even hinted at why Triton was always worried about Ariel, since she is quite similar to Athena. The good thing is also that it shows how Ariel met Flounder and how Sebastian became the musician in charge of the kingdom. Music is a theme that plays an important role here, as it serves to understand Ariel's passion for music and how it has influenced her to be the angelic-voiced princess we all know. Marina is not a villain at the level of Ursula, but a villain was necessary so that the whole conflict could be resolved. In the end this movie is pretty decent and I rate it 8/10.

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.