1/31/2007 - Mermaid Movies
Hopefully, you will be able to read between the lines of my reviews and get an idea if you will like the movie or not.
- Ineo Gongju
- A Korean movie from 2004 whose English titles are The Little Mermaid and My Mother the Mermaid. Foreign mermaid movies are kind of strange. This film is a fantasy but the fantasy is not where you think it might be. Really, there are no mermaids as such. (This is the case in a surprising number of mermaid movies I haven't included here.) The title mermaid is really a pearl diver. I have read somewhere that women who dive in other to derive income or sustenance from the sea are one possible origin of the mermaid legends. This may or may not be true.... The point is that such women are called mermaids and are usually the strong, self-reliant type. Getting back to the movie, the fantasy comes in when a young woman visits the island where her parents met and somehow passes through a timewarp. She ends up meeting, and befriending, her mother as a young woman. This is a revelation for her because the mother she knew was an angry, unyielding monster.... The woman she meets on the island is hopeful and full of aspirations. This is a movie about the changes that life forces on us. How events shape our characters - not always for the better. In a way it is like the dark side of "Back to the Future". It is not your typical escapist fantasy but a movie of deep feeling and compassion.
Sea People
John (Hume Cronyn) and his wife Bridget (Joan Gregson) are mer-people, or Sea People, living on land in a village in Nova Scotia. Amanda (Tegan Moss), a lonely teen-ager, one day "saves" John whom she sees jump off a bridge into very cold water. John shows her that he can swim just fine and doesn't mind the cold. Amanda, however, is freezing and he takes her to his home to warm up. There Amanda begins to suspect that John and Bridget are not your average human beings. They eat algae, drink seaweed tea and sleep in large tanks of icy water.
This is a charming little family film in the Disney mold but very well done. Most of the credit goes to the cast, writer and director. Like most good mermaid movies it has few special effects. Primarily aimed at teen-agers and children adults will enjoy it too.
SPLASH
I am a sucker for romantic comedies and was not disappointed with this one. It was an early vehicle for Tom Hanks, Daryl Hannah (the mermaid), John Candy and Ron Howard (the director), and they all do their jobs well. Only bad point is that the mermaid is so passive. Take a look at the folk tales on this site and you will see that mermaids are movers and shakers. I suspect that the writers didn't do much research into mermaids before writing the script. It would have been nice, too, if they had added a touch of the mystical to her character. There are a couple of hints of the mystical but they are never developed or emphasized. All in all, though, it is one of the most enjoyable mermaid movies around.
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