The Little Mermaid 2: Return to the Sea : 3 of 5

As WEBmikey readers know, I love Disney movies and I'm a big fan of The Little Mermaid. Disney has a new habit of making cheaper sequels for direct to video release, and this was my first experience with that type of production. Well, the animation is better than Saturday morning, but just by a hair - basically this movie is nicely-scripted with better than OK songs, but animated with lots of corners cut. The story is pretty fun, though, about Ariel's daughter Melody wanting to be a mermaid (a reversal of the original, of course) and they managed all of the original voice talent, too. A new Timon and Pumba-esque team called Tip and Dash (a penguin and a sea lion) add quite a bit, and Tip the penguin sports an excellent character design. No tears in this sequel, but the story kept me interested. Too bad it couldn't have had a bigger budget, but I'll take what I can get when it comes to Disney!