It’s the Same Case, Do the Same Thing

I don’t think we expect much from Disney sequels. The company famously brings out their A-Team (sometimes maybe even including Mr. T) to put together an animated, cinematic masterpiece, but then once that is done, they send those guys off to go make some other amazing film and they bring in the B- and C-listers to handle the extended universe. “You all did great on Beauty and the Beast, guys. Really just top notch. Now go over here and make a film about a street wise pickpocket while we give your labor of love over to the rejects from the television department and let them make all the sequels you might have wanted to make but are now too valuable to waste on those lesser works…”

And, in fairness, it’s not like Disney assumed sequels to their masterpieces would make massive money. One of the few times they tried to make a sequel, The Rescuers Down Under, it languished in theaters. Disney didn’t want to tarnish their platinum brand with potentially fatal sequels, so they sent the continuations off to direct-to-video hell where they could potentially make some money back, but if they bombed, no one would care. And when The Return of Jafar became a license to print money, the House of Mouse went all in on cheaply made, direct-to-video fare for all of their characters in the Disney Princesses stable.

So no, expectations were not high for a sequel to The Little Mermaid release 11 years later and straight to video. As with most Disney Princess adventures, audiences really had to wonder how much more story there was to tell. The sea witch was dead, the girl was granted a pair of legs to enjoy her time on land. All the rifles over the fireplace were fired, every story beat met. The characters had all learned and grown and moved on. What more could be done? Enter The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea, a film that boldly decides to do the exact same story again, except this time the heroine goes to the sea instead of coming from it.

It’s been one year since the end of the last film and Ariel and Eric are welcoming their daughter, baby Melody, into the world. They introduce the girl to Ariel’s father, King Triton, and everything seems to be going well… that is until another evil sea witch, Morgana (voiced by Pat Carroll, who also voiced Ursula), comes along and threatens to kill little Melody. Although she’s fought back by Triton’s magic, Ariel decides that the only way to keep Melody safe, and out of the clutches of Morgana, is to forbid the girl from ever going into the sea.

Years later, on the eve of Melody’s twelfth birthday, we catch back up with the girl who has been forced to surreptitiously go swimming in the ocean when no one is looking. She spends her days swimming in the shallows, collecting treasures from the sea, while forgetting to actually do her royal duties. But after her birthday party goes horribly wrong (in part due to Sebastian accidentally pincering the hand of the boy trying to dance with Melody), the young girl flees to the sea to try and figure out who she really is. And that’s when Morgana strikes, offering the girl a simple deal: she’ll let the girl be a mermaid for three days, and if the girl can steal King Triton’s trident and bring it back, Morgana will make the transformation permanent. Now all Melody has to do is decide what the right action would be…

A Disney Princess sequel, for the longest time, was considered bargain-bin storytelling, so it was no surprise when Disney didn’t put much effort into these sequels. Still, even by that low measure, The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea is pretty dreadful, and that’s because it’s barely even a full sequel. It’s, functionally, a carbon copy of the previous film, with the land/sea equation flipped on its head. Ariel lived in the sea and dreamed of being on land, and she got to go there for three days based on a pretty terrible deal she made with a sea witch. Melody lives on land but dreams of the sea, and she gets to go there for three days based on a pretty terrible deal she makes with the sea witch’s sister, who is also a sea witch. Like, you could place one move over the other and see the tracing lines. It’s really bad.

This is lazy storytelling, and it’s an issue because it absolutely robs the movie of any kind of tension. Because every plot beat is exactly the same you know how everything is going to play out. There’s the willful disobedience of Melody, the parental overreaction from Ariel (cast into the Triton role for this family dynamic), the adventure off in the sea where Melody has to perform a task or risk becoming a pawn of the sea witch. Hell, just making the sea witch Ursula’s sister is also lazy storytelling because instead of building her up and giving her much needed character development, the movie can say, “she’s just like Ursula, so treat her as such.”

As an adult watching this film I was absolutely bored by what was going on. I can’t help but think little kids would have been too because while we tend to think kids will watch anything, even little ones have their limits. Bright and colorful cartoons won’t make up for a dreadful story that carbon-copies something they’ve already seen. All you have to do is watch a kid when they’ve seen something enough times, see them get bored and wander away, and you know that something doesn’t work. The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea is that kind of film.

Not that the lazy storytelling is the only knock against it. While this film isn’t as poorly animated as Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas, it still is a notable step down from the artistry of the original The Little Mermaid. The characters don’t look as good, the motion isn’t as fluid, the hair looks stiff even in the water, and it all appears flat and poorly shaded. This is cheap animation done quickly, and while we have seen worse (as noted) we’ve also seen much, much better.

On top of that, the music is also terrible. The film opens up with the jarring “Down to the Sea”, sung by the whole company of characters, and you quickly realize most of these people should not be singing. It’s followed by a number of weak tracks, like “Tip and Dash” and “For a Moment”, along with poor covers of far more famous songs, like the Beatles’ “Octopus’s Garden” and Arrow’s “Hot Hot Hot”. I feel bad for all the performers having to sing these songs because, good or bad, they at least deserve better material.

And that’s really where I stand with the whole of this movie. While We have seen worse offerings from Disney on the sequel front (I’d say even Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck It Ralph 2 was worse, even if it was better animated) this one is still a bottom-barrel release. Disney can do much better (and they eventually did with the likes of Frozen II and Zootopia 2), but they hadn’t gotten to that phase with The Little Mermaid, and this sad sequel is the result.