The Disney Sequel Marathon: “The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea” (2000)

Let me start out by saying that I went into this movie with every intention of giving it a fair shake. I’m one of those people who firmly believes in the value of taking cultural texts on their own terms, and I also happen to believe that even the most debased and “bad” films have something redeeming about them. It’s the entire reason that I started rewatching the Disney sequels from the ’90s and ’00s, in the hope that revisiting some of them might give me some new perspective on what I had previously derided (with some exceptions) as total trash.

However, it has to be said that The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea is really where the sequels began to take a turn for the worse. While both Aladdin sequels were entertaining and at least mostly internally consistent and The Lion King II was a genuinely enjoyable movie that came at somewhat close to the grandeur of the original, this sequel is truly a bastardization of the original, full of nonsensical plots, far too much slapstick, and internal inconsistencies that are truly mind-boggling.

The film begins with Ariel taking her baby daughter Melody to meet her father, King Triton, as well as the rest of the people she has known in her former home under the sea. However, the festivities are interrupted by Ursula’s sister Morgana, and…