The Little Mermaid: Synopsis

Resurfacing at theaters for the first time in eight years, Walt Disney Pictures' enchanting animated musical fantasy, "The Little Mermaid," has been impeccably restored to look and sound better than it did at the time of its initial release as it returns to the big screen to delight moviegoers of all ages. The film, which is the Studio's 28th full-length animated feature, originally made its debut in 1989 and swam off with a pair of Academy Awards" -- a Best Song Oscar" for "Under the Sea" and another statuette for its richly entertaining underscore. Audiences around the world and critics alike embraced this fun and fanciful adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen classic, which represented the Disney animation team's first adaptation of a fairy tale since "Sleeping Beauty," thirty years prior.

Adding to the excitement of this reissue of "The Little Mermaid" is an extensive restoration that used the latest innovations in digital technology to make the film look and sound better than ever before. To improve the visual content, the entire film was digitized so that cel dirt, paint crawl and other imperfections on the original camera negative could be electronically painted out. All of the film's original soundtrack elements were also overhauled and digitally remastered to allow a much broader range of stereo sound. As a result, the film will be available for the first time in four different sound formats including six-track digital stereo as compared to the four-track analog limitations of the original release.

Disney's version of "The Little Mermaid" takes moviegoers "under the sea" as it follows the animated adventures of a bubbly and fiercely independent young mermaid named Ariel, who longs to be part of the human world. Determined to meet her dream prince, she impulsively strikes a "bargain" with Ursula, a devious seawitch, to trade her voice and fins for a pair of legs and a chance to "land" her handsome human Prince Eric. Going against the advice of her mighty father, King Triton, and her guardian crab, Sebastian, Ariel finds herself in deep water as she quickly discovers that silence is not so golden and that there's something fishy about Ursula's deal.

At the time of its initial release in 1989, critics hailed "The Little Mermaid" as one of Disney's most entertaining animated features and placed it in the same league as many of the Studio's all-time classics. Moviegoers turned out in record numbers, making it the most successful animated release up to that time. The film's universal appeal and box office success helped to launch a renewed interest in the art of animation and marked the beginning of an unprecedented new era of productivity and creativity at Disney Feature Animation. Since that time, Disney has gone on to produce such delightfully diverse animated favorites as "Beauty and the Beast," "Aladdin," "The Lion King," "Pocahontas," "Toy Story," "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" and "Hercules."