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Howard Ashman: "The Little Mermaid"

*Howard Ashman won his first Oscar--Best Song--for "Under the Sea." Fair enough, but one could easily hand him an Oscar for "Kiss the Girl" (also nominated), "Poor Unfortunate Souls," or his masterpiece, "Part of Your World." I'm just saying.

*"The Little Mermaid," like its follow-up, "Beauty and the Beast," is a celebration of intellectual curiosity. Ariel, a little gay boy in disguise, would wish to devour the world. What does she want to do on solid ground? Talk to people. "Ask them my questions and get some answers...What is a fire and how does it--what's the word?--burn.....? When's it my turn? Wouldn't I love to *explore* the shores up above?" Clearly, this is echoed with (bookish) Belle's: "For once, it might be grand...to have someone understand...I want so much more than they've got planned...."

*A reason "Mermaid" works so well is that its heroine and villain are well-matched. Ursula is dynamic and smart. (After Ursula, the idiocy of Gaston is a bit of a let-down.) Watching "Mermaid," you understand precisely where Ursula is coming from. It *would* be irritating to see your kingdom usurped by your superficially perfect brother. A grand feature of "Poor Unfortunate Souls" is that it's a very intelligent (though smarmy) "pitch"--a seductive way of speaking to Ariel. The witch is wicked--but delightful.

*When Ursula exits stage right, the story sags a bit. I find the verbal playfulness of Flounder, Scuttle, et al. a bit exhausting. I'd like to think, if Ashman had been in charge of the book, some of the hokey humor would have been cut.

*One thing the movie does especially well is its transitions. We are quickly introduced to the Prince's land-dwelling world in the first moments, and we expect we might follow this Prince, but then something shocking happens. A man almost catches a fish and loses it--and then the strong-willed camera decides to follow....the fish! It's the nameless fish that introduces us to the real meat and potatoes of the story: Ariel's aquatic world.

A similarly clever transition happens when the eels first confront Ariel. They tempt her: "Come with us, and you can have your Prince." Ariel says no, sensing that Ursula is a dead end, or worse, and the eels pretend to understand. But as they leave, they *deliberately flick a shattered sculpture of the Prince's dreamy face into Ariel's field of vision* ....They know that this act will lure Ariel toward Ursula....A gap between speech and thought! Subtext! This movie was my storytelling Bible for at least two or three years.

More later. With love from your nearly-forty-year-old Disney-addict correspondent! Ta ta.

P.S. Famously, in the first song from "Beauty and the Beast," Belle loses herself in a book. What you might have forgotten is that Ariel *also* races through storybooks--at a pivotal moment in "Mermaid"'s First Act.

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