The Little Mermaid

The Little Mermaid is, essentially, an experiment.
With its release in 1989, it kickstarted the "Disney Renaissance," being the first in a series of animated films with extremely high production values. Music, animation, and writing are all at their highest in these films, but to separate those three qualities would be a mistake, as they're expertly blended into a single experience that has no equal.

The Little Mermaid, being the first in this new line of films, is not necessarily up to the same animation standards as the Disney films that would immediately follow. A new animation coloring technology known as CAPS (Computer Animation Production System) was experimentally used on a few scenes of the film, but the majority of TLM was completed with traditional hand-drawn coloring, causing the picture to seem somewhat grainy in comparison to the later films that were completed entirely using CAPS. While this cannot be held against TLM, it still would have been nice to have the entire film in CAPS, as even the most recent DVD release does not make the picture any clearer.

However, the sheer level of detail in the hand-drawn animation is astounding. It was estimated that over a million bubbles were drawn for the film, without exaggeration. Every character moves through the water realistically, which is a very impressive feat. It's quite obvious that the animators studied the movement of human bodies underwater (especially hair) for this film, and their effort should be applauded.

The music of the film is quite literally astounding. The score echoes the underwater theme very well, and sounds just different enough to differentiate it from other European-based fantasy stories.
The actual songs themselves generally annoy me on many levels, though the main theme, "Part of Your World" is refreshingly less embarrassing, if perhaps still too quirky and girly for my taste. However, I can still acknowledge the songs' high quality, even if I personally don't enjoy them much.

The story is simple, yet contains many odd elements that are actually quite jarring. First of all, perhaps more from a visual perspective rather than story, is the fact that Ariel is a sixteen-year-old girl wearing very little clothing throughout most of the film, and is quite literally prancing about naked in one scene. While this is logical considering the plot, it's also quite unsettling considering the character's age. Were she either a bit younger or a bit older, she could have been too innocent or too mature for it to matter, but that in-between stage is highly problematic. While I'm completely willing to overlook the lack of clothing for plot's sake, I'm not entirely sure that the film's "camera angles" were done in completely good taste. Many have made the argument that The Little Mermaid is oversensualized, and, sadly, I'm not entirely sure I disagree with them.
Second of all, the story involves a teenager that essentially is rewarded for being rebellious. The message of the film is that of "following one's dreams," but in this case the protagonist chases her dreams by defying her father's wishes and engaging in witchcraft. While the negative consequences of her actions become apparent toward the end of the story, it seems rather odd.



The characters aren't extremely deep, but not completely shallow either.
Ariel herself is seemingly very shallow at first, falling literally for the first young male she sees. Furthermore, she seemingly devotes her entire life to him, rejecting everything she has for a man she doesn't even know. Luckily, he turned out to be a good guy.
Prince Eric seems to be a bit more mature than Ariel. Rather than simply falling for the first girl he sees, he very specifically waits for the moment when he meets the right one. It seems as though he has something specific that he's seeking after, rather than following a simple whim. His actions in the final battle of the film are actually quite remarkable. He is quite determined and dedicated, fighting with all his ability to protect his beloved. While it does seem odd that he would be in love with her so quickly, it does make sense to an extent, since he had essentially dreamed of her for his entire life, and was therefore in love with her before he actually met her.

As an aside note, Eric's maneuver with the sunken ship and the whirlpool is quite possibly the best action move I've ever seen in an animated film. I vividly remember being four years old and thinking how ironic it was that Ursula had become the ultimate supernatural power of the sea, yet, through misuse of that power, allowed Eric to steer the sunken ship and use sheer physical force to overcome all the magical power in the oceans. Effectively, her dark actions came full circle in the whirlpool, bringing about her own death.
Of course, I was only four, and didn't even know what the word "ironic" meant. I guess it should have been obvious at that point that I'd be a literary analyst and writer.


All in all, The Little Mermaid is not without its flaws, but is ultimately a great spectacle that shouldn't go unnoticed.


Rather than give TLM a star-rating here, I'll wait until the rest of the Disney reviews are done, and compare them all together in a separate post.

From Russia With Love

From Russia With Love is a nicely-done story of mistrust, double identities, and loyalty—all done with an overdramatic flair for sex and assassination.

In this new adventure, Bond is tasked with bringing in a supposed Soviet defector and her decoding device, unaware that the entire mission is a SPECTRE trap!

This is a definite improvement over Dr. No, and a nice step forward for the Bond series. It's interesting that instead of another over-the-top megalomaniacal villain like Dr. No, here we mostly get Cold War-era spy adventure, complete with the usual Soviets vs. Western Allies setup. Of course, the twist is that SPECTRE, the same organization behind Dr. No, have completely orchestrated the entire thing.

The new primary Bond girl, Tatiana Romanova, is interesting. She's in the femme fatale role, yet plays it perhaps a bit more on the damsel in distress side. She is, after all, there to essentially be nothing more than Bond's princess, seducing him with her sexual openness and vulnerability. However, she's not written entirely as a one- or two-dimensional character, which is nice. There are moments where one can glimpse her inner thoughts and see the conflict within her as the true nature of events start to unfold. She's definitely more than eye candy—though eye candy she is, nonetheless.


Bond himself is largely the same character we knew before, though we get to see more of him. It's especially nice that his attitude reflects the audience in respect to how he reacts to Romanova's appearance. He doesn't necessarily trust her, and at times rolls his eyes at her attempts to lie to him.

The action in this film is significantly improved from Dr. No. We actually get multiple full-on action scenes, complete with Bond fighting a helicopter. YEAH.


While this might not be the best Bond film of all time, it's certainly decent fun as a Cold War spy action film.

6/10

Dr. No

This is the very first James Bond movie; the one that set the standard for all the rest. And that's about the only great thing about it.

The first hour of the film is essentially made up of Bond doing detective work, trying to find out why an MI6 agent and his secretary were killed in Jamaica. Once Bond narrows down the culprit to the mysterious Dr. No, the rest of the film takes place on Dr. No's island, where all manner of dangers await.

The second half is pretty entertaining, for the most part. It's where all the action is, really. It's not particularly stellar, but it's fine. The first half, however, is excruciatingly boring.

While I can appreciate the idea of Bond basically playing detective for the first half, it just seems entirely too low-key, slow-paced, and honestly boring. Maybe it's the fact that the lighting and color palette stay almost identical for 90% of the scenes, or maybe it's the fact that there's way too much extra footage that needed to be cut, but something about the way the movie's shot and edited just seems monotonous.

It occurs to me that the vast majority of the movie's plot is made up of stuff that would be glossed over entirely in a modern Bond film. They probably would have just skipped straight to MI6 saying "There's this doctor guy doing evil things on that island. Bond, you go check it out." Thus, in modern terms, only the last half of the movie is actually important. And really, aside from Bond's introduction, there isn't a single thing that's important to the plot (or any of the characters) in the first hour that couldn't be skipped over just to get straight to the island.

Normally the reasoning people bring up is "well, it was the sixties, everything was like that," but plenty of other films and TV series from that era can actively hold my interest. Heck, watching Doctor Who's "An Unearthly Child," which was made in black and white on a budget of a paper clip and two rolls of toilet paper, totally captivated me the entire way through.

For me, at least, Dr. No just doesn't hold up as an entertaining movie. It's not bad, it's just... there. I enjoyed watching it, but more in the sense of being able to go "ah, so that's where that came from." For the most part, I came away from it informed, not entertained.
I'd give it a 5 out of 10 in a modern scale, though if historical significance is a factor and production values are "adjusted for inflation," I might give it a 6 or 7.