The story begins with the happy royal family of Atlantica, King Triton (Jim Cummings), his lovely Queen Athena (Lorelei Hill Butters), and his seven beautiful young princesses, his favorite being the spunky redhead, Ariel (Jodi Benson), who looks just like her mother. One sunny day, as the royal family and the other mer-people are frolicking on the coral reef, tragedy strikes. A pirate ship approaches and as they all scramble under the water to safety, Athena hesitates and goes back to grab the lovely music box Triton had given to her as an anniversary gift. This decision costs Athena her life as the ship crashes into the reef. Distraught that his beloved wife is gone, Triton throws the music box far into the ocean and demands that music be forbidden in his kingdom.
Fast forward some 10 years and the kingdom is in a very dark place. Triton's daughters are young ladies now and are under the watchful eye of nanny, Marina Del Ray (Sally Field), who just can't seem to keep the girls under control. They aren't bad, just unruly, and ever since Athena' death, King Triton has become such a tyrant, allowing no fun, especially not on the coral reef.
One day, as Ariel is doing community service for disobeying her father, she meets a young fish named Flounder who starts playing music on the coral tubes. The shark police immediately show up, but Ariel defends Flounder to her dad, saying her cleaning them made the musical sounds. She later secretly follows Flounder, where she finds him entering an underground music club. And who should be the lead singer? Why, Sebastian (Samuel E. Wright), of course! Ariel later shares the information with her sisters and they all go to the club to have fun. But since Marina was searching for a way to unseat Sebastian from his post so she could nab it, she follows the girls and finds just what she needs to have Sebastian imprisoned, along with the rest of the Catfish Club band!
Once in power, she will stop at nothing to destroy Sebastian and Ariel and keep her new post. Can the group escape and find a way to change King Triton's mind about music? Of course, it's a Disney movie! Marina and her evil electric eels get their come-uppance and the kingdom of Atlantica once again is a place filled with love, happiness and music! If you want to know just how it happens, you'll have to watch for yourself.
The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning is a sweet little movie and for a straight-to-video title, it's pretty darn good. I really enjoyed seeing a hand-drawn animated movie again. Yes, CGI is beautiful, but sometimes I just long for the classic look and softness of hand-drawn animation and you get it here, albeit with a nice bit of post-processing. Special features includes a couple of interesting deleted scenes, the musical numbers from the movie so you can sing-a-long with them, a game where you can get to know Ariel's sisters, plus a bonus game you can unlock to find out which mermaid sister you are most like, and finally, two featurettes - one on the making-of and another on the Broadway production of The Little Mermaid, which was really interesting.
Overall, this is a good pickup for the kids, because they'll not only love seeing how their favorite mermaid got her start, but youngsters will also get a little bit extra out of the games and sing-a-long music scenes, and it's just an all-around fun little movie.
