“My first movie obsession. I was four when this came out. My parents particularly encouraged this because I started taking swimming lessons around that time, so I was their little mermaid. But oh, the obsession gets worse.
Back home, its common practice to hire immigrants (legal or otherwise) as housekeepers and babysitters. We typically had one at any given time. Problem was, they always had trouble pronouncing my name since there’s no “”aw”” sound in Spanish. I grew up dealing with a variety of mispronunciations. At one point before I learned to accept it, I would ask them to call me Ariel (which sounded similar to how Sebastian pronounces it) instead.
I think most of the kids in my generation grew up with this movie. I cant even begin to count how many times my theatre friends have spontaneously burst into “”Part of Your World””. Its a film that I know I can reference in a crowd and not be met with blank stares. It’s such a golden standard for kids films. The story is fun and fanciful. The music is absolutely fantastic. The characters are so quirky and lovable.
Since I dont feel I really need to ellaborate too much more on the cinematical merits of this beauty, I’ll share a couple more antecdotes. Cause that’s what I do. I was watching this with the BFF recently. It was on DVD so we had the subtitles on. During the opening sisters song, he remarked “”Oh hey, now I know all their names”” “”Oh yeah, what were they?”” “”Ummmm they all started with A. One was Aquafina?””
Closing story/cautionary tale. One night I’m at karaoke with a buddy of mine. We decide to play a bit of a game. Sing along when someone’s singing. Waterfall (which basically means chug or drink nonstop) during the instrumental breaks. We learned the hard way that “”Under The Sea”” has the longest instrumental break EVER. Because of that one song, we killed an entire pitcher in less than fiften minutes. Best worst idea ever.”