There is a lot to say about what makes this film great, but it speaks for itself how this is the movie that started the Disney Renaissance.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Apr 4, 2025

This wondrous feature-length cartoon has all the color and wit, the joyous fluidity and buoyant self-confidence of the Disney Golden Age of Animation. At times, it's so rhapsodically charming you find yourself laughing out loud in sheer delight.

| Dec 13, 2024

Every once in a while a movie so special, so lovely, so exciting, funny, charming, entertaining and heartwarming spins out from Hollywood's celluloid web. It's a moment to cherish, a moment to embrace. The Little Mermaid is worth embracing.

| Dec 13, 2024

Close your eyes and listen a moment. Something extraordinary is taking place... The Little Mermaid is a small step for animation, a giant leap for movie scoring.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 13, 2024

There is more art in The Little Mermaid than hangs on many art gallery's walls. There is certainly more fun in it than in any other film in town.

| Dec 13, 2024

The Little Mermaid is a pure delight -- a joyful cruise to a fantasy land that the whole family can enjoy together.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 13, 2024

The songs are topping: They draw you in, and as you pay closer and closer attention to the story, the darker aspects of the fairy tale seem to take root in your imagination.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Dec 13, 2024

The story is lightweight and sometimes flawed; the animation, on the other hand, is brilliant.

| Dec 13, 2024

The Little Mermaid is not without its charms. But it doesn't live up to its billing as a return to the classic Disney fairy tales.

| Original Score: B- | Dec 13, 2024

Only the terminally misanthropic will feel any discomfort in allowing this sparkling wave of a film to wash them away.

| Dec 13, 2024

For an adult, The Little Mermaid is much like a first-grader's school desk: awkward, confining, not a little uncomfortable.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 13, 2024

The movie offers wit and honest delight, both rarities in children's entertainment. The best of animation has combined with show-business savvy, making The Little Mermaid the most entertaining animated feature since Yellow Submarine.

| Dec 13, 2024

Hans Christian Andersen's timeless story makes the movie enduring, even on first view. The Little Mermaid is as close as Mickey's empire has come to offering a worthy successor to the greats: Snow White, Pinocchio, Bambi and Cinderella.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Dec 13, 2024

Laced with sentiment but without a trace of sentimentality, it's the studio's most effortlessly charming film in more than a decade.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Dec 13, 2024

Hans Christian Andersen might not recognize his original story in the new Disney version of The Little Mermaid, but he'd be having much too good a time to care.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Dec 13, 2024

The songs of Howard Ashman and Alan Menken... are marvelous and memorable. Their reggae song "Under the Sea" is quite fantastic.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 13, 2024

This time we mean it: The Little Mermaid marks the studio's return to tiptop, classic animation. It's a swirling delight full of color, music and primal emotions, spiced with humor and terror.

| Dec 13, 2024

Seriously, this is a good comedy adventure for viewers of any age. Getting the short straw to take the kiddies should be no chore.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 13, 2024

The rather predictable love story is buoyed by the very fine animation and the good score by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken.

| Original Score: 2/3 | Dec 13, 2024

If not quite of a piece with Snow White, Pinocchio and other Disney animation classics it recalls, it nevertheless can bear comparison to them, which is saying something.

| Dec 13, 2024