The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea

Astonishingly bad on virtually every level, The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea picks up more than 10 years after the events of the original film and follows Ariel’s headstrong daughter (Tara Charendoff’s Melody) as she agrees to procure King Triton’s magical pitchfork for Ursula’s evil sister, Morgana (Pat Caroll) – as the young girl is hoping to abandon her land-locked existence for a life under the sea as a mermaid. It’s a storyline that possesses more than a few similarities to that of its predecessor, with the movie, as a result, suffering from a superfluous feel that grows more and more palpable as time (slowly) progresses (ie every inch of this thing feels utterly and hopelessly needless). Filmmakers Jim Kammerud and Brian Smith attempt to compensate for the lack of plot by suffusing the proceedings with a number of time-wasting sequences, with the best and most desperate example of this involving the two wacky characters that Melody meets and befriends on her journey. (It doesn’t help that these characters, a penguin and a walrus, are uncomfortably similar in just about every way to The Lion King‘s Timon and Pumbaa.) It’s finally impossible to envision even the most ardent of Little Mermaid fans embracing this disastrously perfunctory sequel, with the movie’s place as a shameless cash-grab obvious right from the word go.

* out of ****