The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea (2000)

The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea is in my opinion, one of the worst direct to video sequels ever made.The Bad: 1. The characters are not as likable as they were in the original. Melody is an atrocious character. I think she is an infantilised version of Ariel, in terms of both personality and appearance, also very annoying and unlikable, Ariel plays as a boring and generic mother figure, Morgana is a pale imitation of Ursula, and Eric goes from a fairly likable character to a boring character, Flounder plays as a boring and generic father figure, King Triton served no purpose in the film and Tip and Dash are a blatant rip-off of Timon and Pumbaa, the list goes on. 2. The music, both the score and songs are terrible. Unlike the original, where Alan Menken provides a beautiful film score and some good songs, with Part of Your World being the best song in the original. 3. The story is way too similar to the original, only differences being story told in reverse and being dumbed down for younger audiences.The Good: 1. The only characters in this film I like and am interested in are Sebastian and Undertow. They both give me a chuckle. 2. The animation is at least pretty good, but that is not saying much. Ariel is still very beautiful, just like in the much superior original and prequel and television series, her character design has always got a good balance of youth and maturity, and that is the reason why I think she is gorgeous. Keep in mind that I said "beautiful", not "hot", since "hot" has a sexual connotation to it, which I do not like or condone the use of the word and think it is inappropriate. And this is coming from a male who is a supporter of gender equality. Just because I commented on one female character's appearance does not mean I condone anyone to catcall other women, which I don't, because it's wrong. But I digress. 3. The voice acting is solid, with Jodi Benson reprising as Ariel, Kenneth Mars as King Triton, Edie McClurg as Carlotta, Samuel E. Wright as Sebastian, Buddy Hackett as Scuttle, Rene Auberjonois as Chef Louis and Pat Carroll as Morgana as returning talents, all do a decent job. New talents include Tara Strong as Melody, which is OK, I guess, Clancy Brown as Undertow is hilarious, Max Casella as Tip, Stephen Furst as Dash, Cam Clarke as Flounder, Rob Paulsen as Eric and Kay E. Outer as Grimsby all do a solid job. Not enough to save the movie, sadly. 4. The best part about this film is that it is much better than any of the English-language dubs of Studio Ghibli, which are highly nationalised versions of Japanese animated films, as well as capitalising on the fame of Hollywood movie stars, the salt in that particular wound. But with The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea, being a direct to video film at least keeps it true to its identity, as well as trying to entertain me, even if it fails to do so. Also, watching it in English, the original language, has international cohesion to it, which is a good thing, but that is not enough to save this movie, unfortunately. So overall, watching Studio Ghibli films in the English dubs is much, much worse than watching this movie. This movie still sucks, nonetheless.Overall, this an awful direct to video sequel that I do not recommend to anyone. Watch the original film, prequel or television series. They are much better than this pile of garbage.

Love 'em or hate 'em, most of the Disney direct to video films which are often sequels are worse than the originals. Beginning in Aladdin's sequel, The Return of Jafar, lots of them are poor quality and are made to cash in. Ironic as Walt Disney didn't like sequels with this quote he once said, 'I do not like to repeat successes, I like to go on to other things.' Then would he be disappointed with this string of supposedly sequels? Of course.One of the worst sequels Disney has ever made is The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea. This is a low quality sequel to the beloved and high quality 1989 film, The Little Mermaid. Not only was the original a commercial success in the box office and met with critical acclaim from critics and audiences but also saved the animation industry which had been in a decline for some while sometime after W.Disney's death in 1966.The film's narrative is almost the opposite of the original. Instead of Ariel wanting to come to the human world as a mermaid, in here, Melody wants to come the the mer-world as a human. Ariel is a dull hollow shell of herself here. Yes, she is no longer the main character but there was no need to suck out her personality and put it to an irregular fashion to her daughter.Eric sounds different and has little dialogue in the film. Melody is not that likable. Sebastian is not quite the same he was in the original, in fact, he doesn't appear as regularly now. Why is Flounder, now a father, even fatter now? Being overweight does NOT make you look older. Scuttle rarely appears as well.The new characters included are not very good. Morgana is rubbish at magic unlike her dead, skilled at magic sister Ursula, in fact, she even 'takes' a potion of Ursula's magic. She copies her; She does wriggles her tentacles while everything except her eyes fade to black, the same her obese sibling did in the original film. Besides, she is not a very practical villain. You don't immediately go and threaten to have a beloved person dead for something important. That's like if you held someone at gunpoint for the bank's money in real life. Morgana then realizes she needs to manipulate an idea for the trident like Ursula did.It's like she wants to be like her sister. Despite envying her as she was their mother's favourite. Morgana is determined to be only be her mother's favourite by having her hands on the trident. The final battle from her evil doings i.e. making an ice fortress with anyone bowing down before her wasn't very comfortable but hardly that scary. Ursula's final battle was possibly the darkest Disney ever produced. The enormous, powerful Ursula controlling the ocean like a sinister god with the menacingly dark colours at night scared the living daylights of quite some people and they also feared the obese cecaelia alone. Her much thinner sister is only a faint trace of her wickedness.A penguin and walrus named Tip and Dash seemed Artic equivalents to Timon and Pumbaa in both appearance and personality. Undertow is not needed especially as a grumbling piranha. Morgana's minions which are manta rays Cloak and Dagger are silent but not intimidating. Ursula's minions which are eels Flotsam and Jetsam who are also dead, were possibly intimidating by their irregular voices and hideous look like their master. The French Chef, Louis was his name? Still wants to cook Sebastian. Man, really. As he said, he's old(er) and too small for a meal.Grimsby and Carlotta never(if not rarely) speak as well as barely them appearing in the whole film. Triton looks younger and why did he did nothing when Morgana kissed Melody? The animation is poor quality. It's bright,garish and quite a rough frame rate. I don't like it when there's that smooth visual thing by rough frames that is also probably present in The Return of Jafar. The original was much better, possibly one thing that built its success. Compared to the labour of hand drawn and painted cels, this is merely digitally coloured ink and coloured done with little effort. Although the film's animation is not as bad as the 1992 TV series with the same name which is indeed poor at times.The songs are childish and possibly forgettable. I can't sit more than 6 seconds on one continuously. The original film had a good variety of songs as well as better ones. From a Calypso music themed 'Under the Sea' which won an Oscar to a spirited music like one 'Part of Your World' particularly the last reprise of the latter.Fortunately, most of the original cast reprised here. This was also Buddy Hackett's final voice-over for a film, who plays the often absent Scuttle here and in the original, d.2003. Eric's original voice-over hasn't reprised and he sounds embarrassingly different. The others are fine though Ariel sounds deeper as she is now grown up and all. Morgana sounds like Ursula as it was the same voice-over as both the cecaelia sisters, Pat Carroll.Another sad thing is this was released on my birthday. I got good news and bad news about the Disney's direct to video films. The good news is Disney will finally end production to them. The bad news is some more will be made i.e. Tinkerbell prequels. Why is it CGI whereas Peter Pan is traditional yet set after them?Well, that's about what I could say. This is not a good film. It is indeed better off never made and is needless like most of Disney's DtV films Watch if you're a die hard TLM fan and rent it instead of buying it unless you want it to fill your collection.

I loved the characters much more in this movie than the original! Although the animation had brighter colours and a brilliant storyline, the thing that let me down was the songs. In the first movie the songs were really catchy due to the work of Alan Menken and that's what I loved about the film but in the second movie there weren't as many songs and most of them were love songs. The characters were much better including the villain who was a skinnier version of the first movie's villain, and i thought using Pat Carroll's voice for this character was a really wise choice and it would've been nice if she had taken part in the third movie because she has an extremely powerful voice for a villain and it may have been nice if she did Marina Del Ray, but Sally did a great job anyway!This movie wasn't better than the original due to the songs and the running time but was a bit better than the third.

Well, most of these great movies from childhood managed to make amazing sequels to them. I grew up most of my childhood life watching "The Little Mermaid" and it still is my favorite movie. When I heard they were going to release the sequel to it, I thought it was going to be a total mess. But when I did get the movie, I wasn't disappointed at all. I was really looking forward to hearing Jodi Benson (Ariel) voice, because she's really got a gorgeous voice. But it's like Ariel is all grown up, she's got a child, Eric still sounds cute, Sebastian still so comical, Melody is much like her mother, King Triton has a gentle side. It was actually almost unique that they put Pat Carroll who previously done the voice of Ursula, and was the voice for Morgana, Ursula's sister. I wasn't ever disappointed, and I love mermaids too, so this movie made my day, when I was having a rough one, and I fell in love with it. So I'd really recommend this movie to all those who like sequels, and that you won't get disappointed.I rated this movie with 8 stars, because it was genuinely made, the cast was awesome, and I love Jodi Benson. There were some scenes that didn't make sense, but it still is worth a look...