Beauty Meets Cutie

First off, let me just say that I absolutely love the movie "The Little Mermaid." So incredibly adorable!!! I also love Hans Christian Andersens original story, it is so beautiful. The thing is, I love them separately. Each is unique. The problem is the screen writers shouldn't have tried to base the movie off the book, or at least said that that was were the original idea came from but not the story line. I mean come on, because, you know, a little kids story where a mermaid gets her tail cut in half and then ends up dying is really my idea of a bedtime story, but maybe that's just me (heavy sarcasm). Sure, you could argue the story lines are pretty much the same, a young mermaid falls in love with a human prince, and the antagonist has more or less the same character flaw, being in love blinds them from reality, but all other details are totally different.
On the other hand, I love the subtle details they added into the movie from the book. Like the statue of the prince in her "garden," I didn't catch it at first, but it was a total "AH HA" moment when I did. I didn't like how she actually collected human artifacts though, in the book, the statue was the only thing she had, but in the movie, she sings a whole song about everything she has. I also thought that her sisters should have played a bigger part in the movie. In the book they cut off their hair in the end to save their younger sister, but in the movie, all they do is sing a little, and quite badly if I do say so, during the introduction. They seemed to have replaced the sisters with the king, because he is barely mentioned in the book while he plays a big roll in the movie. I also like how the girl the prince fell for in the book had a beautiful voice, which is why he didn't fall for the Little Mermaid. The same thing happened in the movie, when Ursula uses Ariel's voice to lure in the prince.
While reading the story, I couldn't help but dislike the prince. Obviously the girl who found him on the shore didn't save him, she just happened to be the first one in her group to reach him. All he remembered her for was her beauty, he knew nothing of her personality or dreams. He knew the Little Mermaid, he knew her personality as well as her beauty, and he loved her. He knew how much she loved him, still, instantly upon seeing the other beautful princess, he forgot all about the Little Mermaid.