The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea
| The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Jim Kammerud Brian Smith |
| Written by | Elizabeth Anderson Temple Mathews Elise D'Haene Eddie Guzelian |
| Produced by | Leslie Hough David Lovegren |
| Starring | Jodi Benson Samuel E. Wright Tara Charendoff Pat Carroll Buddy Hackett Max Casella Stephen Furst Clancy Brown |
| Music by | Danny Troob |
| Distributed by | Buena Vista Home Entertainment |
Release dates | September 19, 2000 |
Running time | 75 minutes |
| Language | English |
The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea is a 2000 Disney animated feature film, a direct-to-video sequel to the 1989 animated film The Little Mermaid. In this movie, Jodi Benson reprises her role as Ariel, the "former" Little Mermaid. Like most Disney DVD releases, the title was discontinued several years after its release.
Plot summary
The Little Mermaid II begins some time after the events of the first film, in which the mermaid Ariel, Triton's seventh daughter, marries Prince Eric. A celebration is being held for Ariel and Eric's newborn daughter Melody (named for Ariel's love of singing) on a ship at sea, so that both humans and merpeople can attend. Ariel's father King Triton, presents baby Melody with a magic locket ("Down to the Sea"). However, the party is interrupted by the cecaelia sea witch Morgana, the sister of the deceased Ursula, who plans to gain control of Atlantica by stealing Triton's Trident. As Ariel knocks Morgana back into the sea, the sea witch swears she will avenge her sister's death.
Ariel decides to withhold all knowledge of the seaworld from Melody. She gives the locket back to Triton - who tosses it into the depths of the ocean - and has a wall built between the castle and the beach. Melody grows up in a controlled environment, wholly ignorant of her mother's nautical origins. But as Melody grows older she develops a liking for the ocean, and sneaks under the wall to swim, finding her locket. When she sees her name engraved on it, before she demands information from her mother, Melody disobeys Ariel. Fearing Morgana, Ariel turns the issue into one of disobedience and scolds her for going to the sea. In a similar fashion to Ariel's own actions from the first movie, Melody steals a small boat and runs away. She meets Morgana, who reveals Melody's background is marine, and uses her magic to make Melody a mermaid. Melody explores her newfound abilities as a mermaid, and has a strong feeling that she was meant to be part of the sea.
Sebastian alerts Melody's parents of their daughter's departure and they prepare search parties with the help of Triton. Eric convinces Triton to reverse Ariel's human transformation so that she can help in the search, and as a mermaid she swims away. Melody comes back to Morgana to thank her and is told she is only temporarily a mermaid - unless Melody can bring her a magic trident to make the spell permanent. Morgana indicates that the trident was stolen from her by an evil merman, and shows Melody an image of Triton. Melody decides to get the trident, and during her search meets Tip, a penguin, and Dash, a walrus, who join her.
While Melody's parents and grandfather search for her, Melody, Tip, and Dash sneak into the palace and steal the trident. The trident is discovered missing shortly thereafter, and it is realized that only someone of royal blood could have stolen it, as the trident could only be removed by either Triton or one of his descendants.
Ariel trails Morgana's pet rays and finds her daughter, where she pleads for Melody not to listen to Morgana. She admitted to Melody that she lied about her mermaid heritage to protect her from Morgana. Melody angrily refuses to listen, and gives the trident to Morgana - who traps Ariel in her tentacles and kidnaps her. She swims to the surface with a struggling Ariel in her tentacles, proclaiming herself queen.
Triton and Eric's armies arrive as Morgana conjures an ice palace for herself. Sebastian and King Triton confront Morgana and warns her to release Ariel. Next, Ariel rescues Eric from being drowned in the sea by Morgana's two pets, Cloak and Dagger. Below, after the sun goes down, Melody turns back into a human and begins to drown. However, Tip and Dash trick Morgana's shark Undertow into smashing the ice containing Melody, then pull her to the surface.
Using Triton's trident, Morgana forces all of the merpeople, Ariel, Flounder, Sebastian, Triton, Dash, and Tip to bow down to her. Melody (human and thus unaffected by the spell) climbs the ice palace by confronting Morgana and snatches the trident off of her, throwing it to an enraged Triton. He encases Morgana in a block of ice, which sinks underwater, along with a picture of Ursula.
Melody is reunited with her family, and Triton offers his granddaughter the option of becoming a mermaid permanently. Instead, she asks him to use the trident to disintegrate the wall separating her home from the sea. With Morgana defeated and Melody together with her family, everybody is happy. A party is held and the humans make friends with the merpeople once again (Here On The Land And Sea).
Voice cast
- Jodi Benson as Ariel
- Tara Charendoff as Melody
- Samuel E. Wright as Sebastian
- Pat Carroll as Morgana
- Rob Paulsen as Prince Eric
- Kenneth Mars as King Triton
- Cam Clarke as Flounder
- Buddy Hackett as Scuttle
- Clancy Brown as Undertow
- Max Casella as Tip
- Stephen Furst as Dash
- Rene Auberjonois as Louis the Chef
- Edie McClurg as Carlotta the Maid
- Kay E. Kuter as Grimsby the Valet
- Tress MacNeille as Mother Penguin and Baby Penguin
- Frank Welker as Max the Sheepdog
Continuity errors
- In the original film, King Triton completely destroyed all of Ariel's human objects. But when Ariel searches for Melody in the sea, she briefly visits the treasure cove and every one of her human objects are there, completely unharmed.
- Melody sails away from the castle in a sail boat, but has to sneak in and out through a broken bar in the wall.
- Sebastian claims that only Triton or one of his descendants could remove the trident. However, Urchin is able to remove it in Trident True.
- Melody, Tip and Dash visit Scuttle's rock, but Melody doesn't seem to recognize it, yet she and Scuttle seem to be friends in the beginning of the movie, though she possibly has never been to Scuttle's rock.
Double-Takes
There are many scenes in The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea which are noticeably similar to scenes from the first movie, The Little Mermaid and the television series. For example:
- The very first shot of the seagull flying over the ocean is similar to the same type of shot that opened the first movie.
- The scene after Triton starts the search for Morgana and creates a storm is similar to the storm in the first movie. Triton had previously created a storm in Island of Fear.
- Triton dropping the locket into the sea is similar to when the fish jumps back into the ocean in the first movie. Disney took advantage of this when they created the first teaser trailer for The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning.
- The fish who swims around telling people "Ariel's coming!" is supposedly the same fish from the original film.
- The shot of Melody shooting to the surface after searching for shells is exactly the same as the shot of Ariel after she was transformed into a human by Ursula.
- Melody sinking down to the bottom of the cave where the locket lies is similar to shots of Ariel while singing "Part of Your World".
- Sebastian unintentionally reminds Melody about her party the same way Scuttle unintentionally reminds Ariel about her concert.
- There is a couple at Melody's party who look strikingly similar to Ariel and Eric. The dress the girl is wearing even looks like Ariel's mermaid tail.
- Melody's pink party dress is similar to the dress Ariel wore after coming to the palace.
- While Louis chases Sebastian, Sebastian hides under a piece of lettuce, just as he did in the previous movie.
- Melody "deliberately disobeyed" Ariel, just as Ariel did to Triton.
- There is a full moon when Melody sails off to find out about the locket. There was a full moon on Ariel's second day of being a human. Also, Melody uses a small boat, similar to the one Eric takes Ariel in during the "Kiss the Girl" sequence.
- Sebastian panics and reports Melody's actions to Ariel, just as he panicked and reported Ariel's actions to King Triton.
- The first verse of "For A Moment" is similar to the song Ariel sings of wanting two tails (in Wish Upon A Starfish), "Daring to Dance".
- Melody does a "flip-twirl" type of movement while singing "this is more than my thoughts ever thought it could be". Ariel does the exact same flip while singing "ready to stand" during the "Part of Your World" sequence.
- When Morgana tells Melody to "enjoy those fins... while you can", the screen fades to black, while her eyes stay their original white, and her tentacles tap each other. This was done previously in the first movie, before Ursula says "she may be the key to Triton's undoing".
- The melody of "Titanic Tip & Daring Dash" is similar to the background music of Urchin's dream sequences in the episode Marriage of Inconvenience. Additionally, Tip performs synchronized swimming with some other fish during the "Titanic Tip & Daring Dash" sequence. This is what Triton had originally planned for Ariel to do in the previously mentioned episode, "Marriage of Inconvenience".
- Melody pushes Dash out of a hole. This is what Ariel does to Flounder during the shipwreck scene in the first movie.
- Rather than growing to an enormous size as Ursula did, Morgana raises the ice platform she stands upon.
- Scuttle torments Morgana to help Ariel escape the same way he did Vanessa to help Ariel reach the wedding boat in time.
- As the sun sets, Melody changes back into a human just as Ariel turned back into a mermaid in the first movie when the sun set.
- By the end of this movie, Triton had created three rainbows. Once at the end of the original movie, the second time at the beginning of this movie, and then again at the end.
- Melody doesn't understand how the sea could be bad just as Ariel didn't understand how the human world could be bad in the first movie. In this movie, Ariel seems to think of the sea the way King Triton thought of the human world. This could go to hint that Triton had a bad experience with humans prior to the events in the original film which led him to forbidding all sea creatures from going up to the surface or making contact with the humans just as Ariel did with the sea, when Morgana threatened to hurt Melody and Ariel forbade Melody to go into the sea to keep her safe.