The Little Mermaid is easily one of my favorite Disney animated features of all time as it combines a fantastic story, good humor and great songs such as "Under the Sea" and "Part of Your World." This two-disc DVD dives deep into the making of The Little Mermaid with a 45 minute behind the scenes documentary showing you just about every angle of the film and how it was made. One of the more interesting things you will learn is that the story was actually being worked on in the early 1040s (1941 I believe), to the point that artwork was drawn and storylines were being worked out. This little fact bleeds into another feature called "Storm Warning" as we sit down with the fellas that worked on the special effects for the film, and by effects I mean pretty much everything that is not human. From drawing thousands of bubbles to creating the high seas action you will step into the Disney Vault and see what it takes to create rain on screen, a little more interesting than you may think.
Disc two's special features continue with a selection of deleted scenes that all feature original storyboards as none of the scenes were actually finished. Something I did not know about the movie was that it was based on a story by Hans Christian Andersen written way back in 1836 (read here). A short 11 minute featurette discusses the adaptation as it had to remove some gory details and a bit about the man himself. There is also a selection of art galleries, an early presentation reel and the original theatrical trailer. Rounding out the second disc is the animated short "The Little Match Girl" based on the Andersen short story "The Little Match-Seller" (read here), and then finally the kids can dive into a few DVD games and a Disneypedia feature based on the sea life in the movie.
Disc one is where we have our feature film, which is fully restored and looks fantastic, along with the new audio mix, which continues to be impressive even if The Little Mermaid doesn't take as much use of it as did other Disney releases such as Aladdin. The first disc also carries an audio commentary with writers/directors Ron Clements and John Musker as well as composer Alan Menken, a new version of "Kiss the Girl" performed by Ashley Tisdale, a video in which no one actually kisses the girl and then finally a Disney song selection which allows you to play the songs individually or select an option where you can watch the feature film and have the lyrics show up on screen along with the song.
Overall, this is another home run for Disney as they continue to do their classics right by giving us special editions without a ton of fluff pieces. Not only that we don't get a group of several documentaries, each with something interesting. Instead everything is put together in a nice little package. Next year looks like it is going to be just as impressive as Disney will offer Peter Pan (March 2007) and Jungle Book (October 2007) as their next additions to the Platinum Collection and I can't wait.