‘SPOILER ALERT’

dinglehopper

The movie opens up with a group of sailors throwing harpoons into the sea, as they try to capture a mermaid. Prince Eric, who is also accompanying his men on their voyage, screams at them to stop and points out that they are throwing harpoons at a shark, not a mermaid.

Sure enough, when his men take a closer look, they find that the prince is correct. One of the sailors tells the prince that it is the coral moon, a day when the sea King, Triton, gathers his daughters, and prepares them to lure innocent men into their traps. However, the prince barely pays any attention to the tales, and tells the sailor that these stories are only myths.

Then, he climbs up to the hull of the ship, and tells his men that they need to make sure that they can make it to port in time.

Just then, his mother’s advisor, Grimsby starts reprimanding him for being so careless and asks him to get down from the hull, before he gets himself killed. As Eric climbs down, the ship jerks, causing Grimsby, who had also climbed up to the hull to assist the prince, to slip.

Although Eric manages to catch him at the last moment, a telescope slips out of his hands, and falls into the ocean below.

Meanwhile, deep under the sea, the sea King’s daughters gather around him to celebrate the coral moon. However, his youngest daughter, Ariel, is missing. Seeing this, the King orders Sebastian, a crab who is also his advisor, to find his daughter and have her join them.

At the other end of the ocean, Ariel finds the telescope that Prince Eric had dropped into the sea. She picks it up and then turns towards the shipwreck graveyard.

There, she spots a new shipwreck and starts to swim towards it, but her best friend, Flounder, tells her that it is not safe. However, Ariel enters the shipwreck and tells her to keep an eye out for sharks if he does not want to accompany her.

Inside the ship, Ariel finds a fork and is fascinated with it, because it looks similar to her father’s trident. Then, she uncovers a mirror and is busy staring at it. All of a sudden, a shark emerges from behind. Before the shark can get to Ariel, she starts swimming away, while also making sure that Flounder is safe.

When the shark refuses to leave them alone, Ariel comes up with a plan and swims back inside the ship. She uses her reflection in the mirror as a distraction, and successfully manages to trap the shark. Then, Ariel and Flounder use this opportunity to get out of the shipwrecks.

While Ariel tries to calm Flounder down, Scuttle, a seagull who is a self-proclaimed expert on human stuff, appears in front of them. A curious Ariel sees this as the appropriate time to ask her what the fork is called, and what it is used for.

Scuttle pretends to know what it is, and tells her that it is a dinglehopper, a tool that humans use to style their hair.

Ariel tells her that she would love to see humans styling their hair with the dinglehopper, but Flounder reminds her that her father has forbidden her from going to the surface.

Hearing this, Scuttle tells Ariel that humans are not too bad, and don’t harm most things. Before Ariel can give her an answer, Sebastian calls out her name, and reminds her that she has missed their annual meeting for the coral moon.

Contrary to what the sailors believed, the coral moon is the one day in the year that the sea King gathers his daughters from the seven seas, so that they can give him updates about their seas. As soon as Ariel is reminded of the meeting, she immediately swims back to the palace, to meet up with her father.

At the same time, we see Ursula, a sea monster who resides in the darkest depths of the ocean, overhears Ariel’s conversation with Scuttle. She realizes that this could be her opportunity to take down the king, because she had been banished by him, for using black magic to overthrow him.

Back at the palace, Ariel sits in front of her father, who reprimands her for being irresponsible once again.

Flounder tries to make the situation better, by telling the King that they were getting chased by a shark, which is why they are late. This ends up making the situation worse, and the King scolds Ariel for straying away from the palace and going to the shipwrecks, although he had explicitly told her not to.

Ariel tries to argue with her father, but he does not want to hear her reasoning, and reminds her that her mother, the Queen, was killed by humans because she got careless.

Shortly after, Ariel gets upset and leaves the palace. She heads to her hideout where she keeps the treasures she finds from shipwrecks.

Ariel begins to wonder what humans are like, and daydreams of discovering more about them. She is wallowing in her self-pity, when she hears loud booming from the surface. Curious, Ariel starts to swim towards the surface to check what is going on.

During this, the King assigns Sebastian as Ariel’s bodyguard, and asks him to keep an eye on his daughter. Just as Sebastian arrives in front of Ariel’s hideout, he notices her swimming upwards and decides to follow her.

As soon as Ariel breaks through the ocean’s surface, she discovers the sailors dancing on their ship and setting off fireworks, in celebration of the prince’s birthday.

She watches as everyone sings along, but Grimsby takes Prince Eric aside and begins reprimanding him. He reminds the prince that he needs to separate himself from his crew, and act like a future King. But Eric is not pleased to hear this, and argues that he does not want to be trapped inside the palace walls, and he feels like he is meant to do greater things.

When Ariel, who had been listening in on the conversation, hears Prince Eric voice out her exact sentiments, she begins to develop feelings for him.

Suddenly, the Prince notices that a storm is fast approaching them, and asks his men to prepare themselves. However, despite their efforts, the ship crashes into a large stone, causing the lanterns onboard to fall over. The ship quickly catches fire, and the sailors are left with no choice but to abandon their ship.

As everyone gets on the lifeboats, Prince Eric is about to jump, but he accidentally slips and falls off the ship. As soon as he falls overboard, he loses consciousness and begins to sink to the ocean floor.

Ariel manages to save Eric and gets him safely to the shore. When she sees that he is able to breathe again, she jumps back into the water and watches, as his men come over to rescue him. The scene changes to Ursula, who is laughing at how easy Ariel has made everything for her, by falling in love with Eric.

By the time Ariel goes back to the ocean floor, Sebastian catches up with her. He tells Ariel that he has seen her out of the water, and warns her that the King will not be pleased.

He then shows Ariel why life under the sea, is much better than anything she sees outside. While Sebastian is busy singing a song and playing with other fish, Ariel disappears.

Back at the palace, Grimsby informs the Queen that her son has been insisting that a girl had rescued him, and orders him to find her.

At that point, Prince Eric enters the room and tells the Queen that despite everyone telling her that her son had been hallucinating, he is sure that he had seen a girl next to him. The Queen brushes his claims aside, and forbids him from going on any future voyages, because the sea King holds a grudge against them.

Meanwhile, under the sea, the King Triton and all of his daughters gather around a wrecked ship. The King angrily claims that humans are destroying their coral reef, with all the ships they have been wrecking. He tells his daughters that humans will kill all of them, if they have the chance.

Ariel tries to argue with her father, but he cuts her off saying that humans have no respect for anyone but themselves. Feeling hurt, Ariel tells him that he has no respect for balance either and leaves.

Seeing her outburst, her sisters think that Ariel is being emotional because she has fallen in love with a merman. When the King hears this, he calls Sebastian to his palace.

When Sebastian gets there, the King asks him if he has noticed that Ariel has been acting strange. Sebastian avoids giving him an answer, but as the King continues to pressure him, he breaks and confesses that Ariel had gone to the surface to rescue a human.

The King is taken aback, since he was expecting to hear that Ariel has found a merman, that she has fallen in love with.

On the other side of the sea, Ariel tells Flounder about her plans to go back to the surface to meet Eric.

Just then, King Triton shows up at her hideout and expresses his disappointment with her. He angrily tells her that her obsession with humans needs to end. In his anger, he uses his trident to destroy everything that Ariel had collected from the shipwrecks. Before he leaves, he warns Ariel about going to the surface again.

A devastated Ariel sits with her broken treasures, and cries. Seeing this, Sebastian starts to feel bad and tries to apologize to her, but she tells him to go away.

Just as Flounder and Sebastian leave her alone, Ursula uses her magic to appear in front of Ariel, and starts luring her into her lair. She tells Ariel that her father had lied to her about Ursula being evil, but she only wanted to help others.

Since Ariel is feeling helpless at that moment, she agrees to meet up with Ursula in her lair. When Sebastian and Flounder notice Ariel leaving, they begin to secretly follow her. After several minutes of swimming, Ariel arrives at the dark depths of the ocean, where Ursula is banished and enters her lair. There, Ursula offers to help by turning her into a human.

Ursula tells Ariel that the only condition is that she needs to marry the prince within three days, for her to remain human permanently. But if they don’t marry, Ariel will turn back into a mermaid, and will belong to Ursula. In exchange for giving Ariel legs to be able to walk, Ursula will take away her mermaid’s siren, which means taking away her singing ability.

At first, Ariel is uncertain about the deal, and claims that she does not want to take the deal, knowing that her father will not approve of it.

However, once Ursula reminds her of the King’s threat, Ariel changes her mind and gives Ursula one of her scales, so that she can conjure up a portion. Ursula starts working on the potion, and asks Ariel to sing. Soon, Ariel’s tail transforms into two legs, and she loses her voice.

Now that Ariel is fully human, she is unable to breathe underwater, and rushes to get to the surface. Flounder and Sebastian accompany her and push her to make it to the shore.

Meanwhile, Ursula begins to celebrate her win over King Triton, since she has added an extra spell in the potion, that will make Ariel forget that she needs to marry the prince.

On the other hand, the three friends don’t make it far, when a fisherman’s net catches them. As the fisherman unloads the net, he discovers Ariel among the seaweed, and assumes that she had gotten lost in the ocean due to another shipwreck.

He immediately takes her to the shore, where he hands her over to a woman named Lashana, and tells her that he had found Ariel stranded in the middle of the ocean.

Lashana helps Ariel walk to a room, where she is given a bath and given clean clothes. Another girl named Rosa appears and tells them that Prince Eric is still looking for the woman who had saved him, giving Lashana the idea to fetch the prince, so that he can meet her.

Ariel excitedly waits for the prince to see her, but when he arrives, she is disappointed to find that he does not remember her.

This is when reality begins to hit Ariel, and realizes that she might have made a sacrifice only for the Prince to not recognize her. The prince leaves, after telling her that she can stay in a spare room at the palace.

As she is left alone, Sebastian joins Ariel in the room and reminds her that she needs to marry the prince, if she wants to remain human, but she does not register his words. He realizes that Ursula has put a spell on her.

Sometime later, Ariel falls asleep, but gets woken up when Scuttle arrives in the room, and gets into an argument with Sebastian.

While the two of them are busy fighting, Ariel disappears once again. She makes her way down the palace hallways and begins exploring. She soon finds herself in front of a room and goes inside.

Ariel discovers that it is filled with strange items, and begins to touch everything. She then picks up a small mermaid figurine and inspects it, just as the prince walks in. She hides behind a shelf, but the prince notices her.

He tries to make her feel comfortable, by telling her things about the world and everything that he has collected during his voyages. Ariel is excited to hear this, since she is fond of collecting treasures left by the sailors as well. He even offers to take her on a tour, but they are interrupted by Grimsby, who reminds the prince that they’ll send out carriages in the morning to look for his mystery girl.

However, Grimsby realizes that the prince is developing feelings for Ariel, and offers to give them one extra carriage, so that he can give her a tour.

Eric takes Ariel to the mainland, and she excitedly explores the markets. When she is offered food and a fork with it, she begins to comb her hair with the fork, just as Scuttle had told her.

After a day full of dancing and exploring, the prince takes Ariel towards a lagoon.

Elsewhere, Sebastian, Scuttle, and Flounder come up with a plan to get the prince to marry Ariel. At the lagoon, they create a romantic setting for them. However, just as they get close to each other, Ursula’s stingrays tip their boat over, causing the romantic moment to end abruptly. Under the sea, a frustrated Ursula casts another spell, and turns herself into a human girl.

Back at the palace, Grimsby escorts Ariel to her room, while the prince goes out to the beach. All of a sudden, he hears someone singing in the far distance, and he runs after the voice.

To his surprise, he finds a beautiful young woman sitting on a rock, singing the mermaid siren song. The next morning, Scuttle wakes Ariel up and announces that she heard rumors about the prince’s engagement.

Ariel rushes outside to find Eric, assuming that he is going to marry her, but she is disappointed to find that he is with another girl. Eric seems to be in a trance, and when Grimsby asks him if he is sure he wants to have a public announcement, he is unable to give an answer.

Seeing the Prince with another girl, Ariel disappears again, while Sebastian and Scuttle search for her. Sebastian instructs Scuttle to look for Ariel, and asks Flounder to inform the King about everything that has happened.

As Scuttle searches for Ariel, she hears Ariel’s song, and flies down to a room at the palace. She discovers that the girl is Ursula, who has lured the prince using Ariel’s siren song.

Scuttle rushes back to find Ariel, and tells her that Eric is being tricked. Hearing this, Ariel runs back to the palace, and just as the Prince is about to propose to Ursula, she knocks her down.

Ariel manages to get her voice from Ursula, and tells Eric everything. Eric is about to propose to Ariel, but the sun sets, and Ursula turns into her real form. She tells Ariel that she is too late, and takes her into the ocean with her.

In her lair, she is confronted by King Triton who asks her what she wants, in exchange for his daughter. Ursula takes this opportunity to take the King’s Trident, and gets crowned as the ruler of the seven seas. She then uses Trident’s power to kill Triton.

Before she can kill Ariel as well, Eric jumps into the water and drags Ariel out with him. However, they don’t get far as Ursula grows in size and uses her newfound powers to create a tsunami.

She tries her best to kill both Eric and Ariel, but Ariel steers one of the shipwrecks that had floated onto the surface, towards Ursula.

As the ship collides with her, it takes her down to the ocean floor. Ariel then grabs her father’s Trident and uses it to revive the King. With the power once again restored, Ariel and Eric are separated, as she no longer has legs.

Several weeks later, the King realizes that Ariel is unhappy under the sea, and decides to grant her wish of turning back into a mermaid.

She reunites with Prince Eric, and the two of them get married, ending the divide between Merpeople and humans.

Shortly after, all of the mermaids and the King show up in support of Ariel and Prince Eric, as they embark on their new journey together.

The Little Mermaid.