Disney Announces Plans to Ruin 'The Little Mermaid'

Good news: Disney is re-releasing The Little Mermaid to theaters. But I’m going to have to stop you before you rush to the nearest bathtub to do your best impression of Ariel doing a half-pushup on a rock while a wave dramatically crashes behind her (unless I’m the only one who used to practice pretending to be Ariel in the bathtub; in which case, ignore!). This re-release of The Little Mermaid will be part of a Disney “Second Screen” experience, which sounds like the most irritating fucking thing in the history of ever. Nostalgic Disney audiences, prepare to have the shit annoyed out of you.

The neurotic hive-inducing Disney Second Screen experience a terrible new idea from the Mickey Mouse-eared thinking cap wearers at the Walt Disney corporation. Here’s how it works: moviegoers are instructed to download an iPad app prior to attending a particular screening of a particular beloved film. During the film, viewers are invited — nay, encouraged — to take out their iPads and follow along with the moviegoing experience by fiddling with a fucking app, thus polluting the eyespace of people who just want to watch the goddamn movie with that garishly hypnotizing gizmo glow. If you’re too poor or snobbishly Luddite to buy your child a piece of electronics that costs hundreds of dollars, well, tough harpoons, Davey Jones. You still have to deal with everyone else staring glassy eyed at an Apple product during the one 90 minute public event where it’s considered impolite to technologically express a desire to be elsewhere.

This is among the worst ideas I’ve ever heard, and I once snuck onto a Notre Dame football practice field the night before a game to play tackle football with a small group of my friends, some of whom were on the men’s boxing team, and got a concussion. This is among the worst ideas I’ve ever heard and I watched a TED talk about how implanting chips into the human brain is the wave of the future. This is among the worst ideas I’ve ever heard and I once followed the advice of a woman’s magazine and dyed my very-dark-brown hair blonde because I thought it would make boys like me more. THIS IDEA IS BAD.

If your kid is so incapable of focusing on a delightful, action and music-packed romp for 90 minutes that they must have a series of Flounder-themed video games to distract them, then maybe your kid doesn’t deserve to enjoy The motherfucking Little Mermaid. Fuck your kid.