Allen
Bauer is a fruit wholesaler who is unlucky in love, fresh from being
dumped by his girlfriend to to a lack of attention and inability to
commit. He decides he wants to get away from it all and return to
the place where he felt free, which is also the place where he
almost drowned as a young boy only to be saved by an equally young
mermaid. Upon trying to get to the island, he falls overboard once
again (he can't swim) only to be saved by the same mermaid. Later,
she finds his wallet and takes a trip to New York to try to find him,
and when they are together they fall in love. Problems ensue when
she still hasn't told Allen she is a mermaid, she must return to the
sea within a few days or die, and a pesky scientist out to make a
name for himself by exposing to the world who she really
is.
A charming
but not very intelligent romantic comedy that delivers on
entertainment if you can suspend your disbelief, not in the fact that
there is a mermaid in the story, but in the contrived situations and
one-dimensional characters. The two stars and their performances are
the only things that make the film ultimately work, but a stupid
subplot involving Eugene Levy and some uninspired attempts at easy
humor nearly sink the film from the get-go. The weak script
mystifyingly was nominated for an Academy Award. Still, it's not a
bad little time-killer, but not the quality you'd expect from
director Ron Howard.
Back to
Qwipster's Movie Reviews
<