It's a fun movie that I liked as a child, but it's nothing like the original. "The Little Mermaid" (1836) is a novel about unrequited love. It does not have a happy ending.
Disney had to completely change the story to make Ursula the villain. How is she even the villain in the first place? Ariel willingly sought her help, and they made a trade.
Here is a comparison between the Anderson story and the film. Just about everything is changed, especially the ending.
A synopsis of the story; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Mermaid
What do you expect?
You can always trust Disney to rip off all meaning of a story, then replace it with useless romance, action and sugarcoating every message that still remains, and then twist the resulting mess to fit their agenda, and profit.
It's amazing how faithful some movies are, though, considering all this. For example, "One Hundred and One Dalmatians" (1966) (NOT '101 Dalmatians', by the way!), is in some ways even better than the original book, which has a lot of useless stuff and goes to weird and wild directions sometimes.
It's not even all that 'cutesy', when you think about it - and it has an amazing atmosphere in some points, something that has been lost a long time ago. Just look at the 'Twilight Bark' scene from beginning to end, and admire the silent beauty of the starry sky. Nowadays, this kind of slow-paced atmosphere would never be allowed anymore, no one has time to admire the stars in silence (relatively speaking, anyway - there's no music constantly bothering you).
In any case, Disney always mangles the originals, removes important messages, and especially turns 'sad endings' to 'happy ones', because that's profitable. People don't want to go to movies to feel bad, they want to feel good. In this kind of a world, who can blame them..?
Weren't most fairy tales originally meant to be morality lessons and not always have happy endings.? That came later when the stories were adapted to kid stories.
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