Director: Richard Benjamin
Cast: Cher, Bob Hoskins, Winona Ryder, Christina Ricci
Have I Seen it Before: Never. It’s been one of those movies which Lora counted as her favorite and put an APB on picking it up if I ever found it on one of my prolonged DVD hunts. Coming up short, I eventually caved and ordered off of Amazon. Not how I normally like to procure my movies—there is something in the hunt I always enjoy—but here we are.
Did I Like It: There are some comedies which are powered entirely by how we feel about spending time with the characters. The story is meaningless, basically, but if we like the characters, everything works out okay for us the audience.
Here is the plot of Mermaids: A single woman and her two daughters move to a new town. The oldest becomes infatuated with a local boy, and kisses him. Because of this, the younger child falls into water and is injured. Everyone survives.
Not much, right? And that’s compounded by the fact that the majority of that synopsis takes place in the last thirty minutes or so, and doesn’t include Lou (Hoskins), one of the lead… because he has very little impact on the film itself. But the characters are quirky enough, and likable enough, and performed well enough, and there’s more than a few deep, sustained belly laughs in the film (“We’re Jewish…”) that everything works out okay for me. I enjoyed my time with them, and in all honesty, I screened the film about a week ago, and I haven’t been able to get Jimmy Soul out of my head most of the time. That has to count for something, right?
But one thing that continues to bug me, aside from parsing out Jimmy Soul’s lyrics. Why the hell is film called Mermaids? I mean, yes, I get Cher’s costume… And the fact that Christina Ricci is intermittently a good swimmer… But aside from that? Winona Ryder is pointedly un-Mermaid, and it feels like she is the main character.
Maybe someone else can explain it to me real slow.