1989 is a HUGE year in movies! Comics like Billy Crystal, Steve Martin and Robin Williams are making the biggest movies of their lives with When Harry Met Sally, Parenthood and Dead Poets Society. Spike Lee is making his mark with Do the Right Thing, We know Tom Hanks hasn’t moved into his serious phase of acting yet because he makes two goofball movies in one year with Turner and Hooch AND The Burbs. The first Batman film hits theaters, the last Indy movie comes out (or so we thought), River Phoenix is still alive, so is John Candy. Morgan Freeman drove Miss Daisy to the academy Awards and played mean Joe Clark both in the same year. The Griswald’s destroy Christmas, John Cusak wins love via radio, Wynona and Christian kill the Heathers and Kevin Costner built a field. It’s the year of Steel Magnolias – a movie I can practically quote backwards and forwards. And the year Sammy Davis Jr made his final appearance on screen, and Savion Glover made his first.
But as important as all of those above films are, a monumental event happened in 1989 that not only changed the face of animation, it changed the game entirely! Disney was in a slump, limping along with The Great Mouse Detective, Oliver and Company and The Black Cauldron while Don Bluth entertained far better with The secret of Nimh, The Land Before Time and Anastasia.
But in ’89 the directors of The Great Mouse Detective brought together magical team of Howard Ashman and Alan Menken and The Little Mermaid was born. I remember seeing it on the big screen with my mouth open. Jodi Benson singing “Part of Your World”, animated Ariel swimming, swirling to the top of her grotto, one tiny hand reaching up to the fractured light shining down through the water – and then her face as she slowly floats back down and away, finishing out the notes of that now infamous song. This film solidified my decision to be an art major and made me more determined than ever to work for Disney someway, somehow.
It was a whole new world (no pun intended). Every movie from this point on was a gorgeous palette, a Broadway level musical and a beautifully staged piece of theatre rather than a plain old feature length cartoon. Less than two years later their second feature Beauty and the Beast would be nominated for an academy award! There was no going back. Every film became an event that my friends and I looked forward to as much as the next Star Wars film.
- But before that, there was The Little Mermaid. Below are the other 9 movies I chose from 1989…
- Tim Burton’s Batman
- Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
- Parenthood
- Tap
- Heathers
- Dead Poet’s Society
- When Harry Met Sally
- Turner and Hooch
- Steel Magnolias
