A childhood cartoon for a generation or two. Everything is done beautifully, close enough to the text of Andersen's fairy tale, whole, touching. But there are nuances...
- The heroine asks the sisters why they come back from the surface so cheerful. They're not answering. I'm also wondering why.
- Has the dolphin ever been to the surface? He should take a breath every 10 to 20 minutes.
- Cruise ship! With women! In Arctic waters! In the place where another ship has just sunk (it has a statue of a prince at the same age). At a time when the Middle Ages were just over. I don't believe it!
- You come up in a random place in the Arctic, and right in front of you, the Danish prince swims. Lucky luck.
- Couldn't explain it to the mute man? But a minute, mute can shake your head and you can get enough answers to a yes/no. She could draw. She could gesture to rebel to talk about the savior, could point a finger at herself.
- A month later, the prince decided to name his girlfriend.
- Why is the cat talking? Well, it's a fairy tale, and fish talk here, too, but it was part of the sea lore, and the cat is a separate subject. Then you have to explain it, too.
Someone will say that you can not fix such moments, because it would break the fairy tale. But the thing is, the job of a good writer and director is to connect the two. The encounter with the ship could not be accidental, if the marine inhabitants already discussed that a beautiful ship sails over them for a couple of days, but the sea is restless. And then the mermaid could meet this ship intentionally. Would that hurt the fairy tale? In addition, fidelity to the original here is still limping: there was no dolphin or cat in the fairy tale, but there were sufferings on the acquisition of an immortal soul.
Thus, it is clear that the authors of the cartoon undertook to finish some moments from themselves, but they were completely unnecessary, but where the repair of the plot was needed, did nothing. If a character doesn’t do something obvious in the story, then you can at least explain why he couldn’t. If there is a surprising coincidence, then you need to explain why it happened. The fairy tale at least says why the nun turned out to be a princess - she received an education in the monastery, then it was done so, and this moment was even removed from the cartoon.
The review is over, the assessment of a beautiful, sensual, but leaky fairy tale is 7 points. And I definitely like it more than the slick Disney makeover.
And then just thinking. The biggest plot hole is that the mermaid rushed to the ground, gave everything at once, with no plan B and no guarantees. But she could first swim to the prince, having a voice, build at least some relationship, and only then sacrifice her vote for the move. At the same time, it would be a marriage of royal families, it would be possible to maintain the partnership of Denmark with the sea kingdom. So there is more stupidity in the actions of the heroine than sacrifice. She killed herself. Unfortunately, this hole is plot-forming, without it there would be no fairy tale.