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There are so many I don't know where to begin. On the
feature disc there is a Little Mermaid art gallery featuring
stills. The gallaries are visual development, Kay Neilson
artwork, character design, storyboard art, backgrounds and
production. Any one that you choose, you can pick one of
the pictures and see it on a larger scale.
There is also a sing along of four of the main songs
( Part of your world, Les Poison, Under the Sea and Kiss
the Girl.) There is also a music video of " Kiss the girls"
permformed by Ashley Tisdale of the Suite life of Zach and
Cody.
The last on this disc is a few sneak peaks for upcoming
films like Cinderella 3 and the release of the 25th anniversary
of Fox and the Hound. There is also audio commentary with
Ron Clements and John Musker (co-directors/writers ) and
Alan Menken (composer). I thought the commentary was engaging.
It was like three old friends getting together and reliving
a great moment in thier lives. It was full of personal moments
and storys. I thought it was strange though that there would
be moments of silence in the commentary and I couldn't hear
the movie underneath. They pointed out tiny details that
we, the viewer never would have caught. Such as missing
shadows that were left out due to time and money constraints.****
On the special features discs there are 10 deleted
scenes in original black and white. Each scene is introduced
with audio commentary by the directors leading into a more
back story never told in the movie. Fathoms Below was sung
as a full length song telling a story of King Tritan and
his sister Ursula and thier power struggle. Of course in
the version that was released there was never any mention
of Tritan and Ursula being related, only that she had been
banned from the kingdom for eternity.
There is a song called "Silence is Golden" which was
replaced by "Poor Unfortunate Souls". I think that was a
great move, "Poor Unfortunate Souls" did a much better job
of villanizing Ursula. There was a seven minute short called
the Little Match Girl told only in music. In the "Treasures
Untold: the making of the Little Mermad" we are introduced
to producers, writers, animators and a large cast of other
people from the movie. Along with the creators reliving
thier favorite moments there were interviews with film industry
greats like Franz Oz and Leonard Maltin. It was also fun
for me to see Jodi Benson, the voice of Ariel, in human
form. ****
In the featurette "The story behind the story" we are
introduced to the original story of the Little Mermaid.
Disney originally produced the Little Mermaid as a short
featurette in the 40's. It wasn't until a transistional
time in the 80's the story was adapted into a full length
film. Lucky for the viewers Disney writers changed the ending
because in the Hans Christian Anderson version the princess
not only doens't get her man, she dies and washes out to
sea in the form of sea foam.
From the Disney theme park there is a virtual 3-D ride
of the Under the Sea Adventure, as well as behind the scenes.
I wasn't too impressed by this, obviously the ride was intended
for children but having been to Disneyworld myself it didn't
seem up to the quality of some of the more well known rides
that they are famous for. The scenes and the songs also
were not in sequence with the film.
Rounding out the second disc was Disneypedia which
compares charecters from the movie to their real life sea
counterparts. To make it more kid friendly they throw some
animation from the movie in it. I did expect to see more
games for the kids but there was lots of information for
a fan of the film. The featurettes are full of fun information
and if you ever wanted to put a face to the voices the resemblences
are striking.
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