Visually striking, catchy songs, beloved heroine, handsome prince...this story should have it all, and it should have captivated my hopelessly romantic sensibilities to the point of adoration. Yet, of all the Disney movies out there, this one....
I can't stand it. It makes me sick.
Now, I've got nothing against mermaids. I love them, really. No, really - their graceful beauty, mystique, and their utter inaccessibility to an air-breathing bipedal monkey like myself puts them on the same pedestal as, say, gorgeous movie stars. But this movie takes Ariel, one of these lovely entities - the most lovely, talented and bravest one of all, according to the setup - and topples her down to the most helpless of movie damsels, the one who simply cannot live her life in her castle and her family, but must reach toward the inaccessible...in this case, the world of air-breathing bipedal monkeys.
And why? Not just because of the stuff we have, but because she sees one that's kind of a Baldwin and decides to sacrifice everything just so maybe he'll notice her. For Chrissake, she goes to a sea witch and undergoes major body adjustment in the hopes - the HOPES - that he'll fall in love with her. Yeah, all that fascination with humans, their stuff, their world - it's all wrapped up in the snuggly package that is Prince Eric. And she can't do it on her own - no, she has to have some crab follow her around and give ol' Eric pokes in the right places. And still, it's not enough. No, he's gonna marry the girl he *thinks* saved his life because her singing voice is kind of nice, never mind the hot piece of fishy ass right in front of him. You remember her - the one who gave up everything for him.
But instead of being filled with the appropriate righteous rage, Ariel still just can't live without this guy who kind of digs her but is marrying some stranger with a nice voice - well, just because. Somehow it all works out that she stops the wedding and gets her voice back and Eric suddenly says "hey, there's this hot piece of ass who *also* has a nice voice, ooooh, I better go get me some a' that" and goes after the witch and kills her and holy cow, suddenly he's in loooooooove. And all Ariel had to do was get kidnapped by said witch - Jeebus, she could have just done that and saved herself some pain and suffering.
Yeah, I really dislike this movie, and it makes me kind of sad that my daughter is so interested in Ariel - to me, the *least* inspiring of all the Disney "heroines", even less so than Snow White. Hopefully this will pass (it usually does) and she may form her own conclusions about Ariel. Until then....I'll keep pushing the Wonder Woman.
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