Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
My kids give it 5 stars, September 2, 2008
There's lots of mermaid movies these days. We rented this one with Ariel's new cartoon, and the kids loved it. The premise: a American professor, a classicist, at Oxford is sent on a leave of absense to a romantic, Greek island to complete his research or lose his position. His young daughter accompanies him, and as is in most of these tales, Mama is deceased. But they love each other and have lots of fun wherever they go(some similarites to "Nim's Island"). On the island, the daughter is befriended by a beautiful "goddess", aka, mermaid, and they swim and frolic and chit-chat about life, love, being human and helping her dad with his work and perhaps his lovelife. Meanwhile, Dad struggles to translate an ancient, Greek parchment, and is beseiged by a local matchmaker and her girls. A crusty fisherman(Alki David, who also wrote, directed and overacted in the movie) and his cute son seek to discover and capture the mermaid.
From an adult perspective, it has it's Ok moments, but jumps much too much back and forth between what is reasonable, and what is totally loony. But overall, it wasn't boring for us, and we enjoyed our children's reactions.
It's filmed in England and Greece; the actors deliver for their silly roles: Billy Zane plays the father as a goofy, afraid of the water, but caring nerd; Amber Savva(daughter Serena) is super. There's lots of slapstick and pre-adolescent humor; the camera work is beautiful with the underwater and island scenes; we liked the music, especially with the first mermaid encounter, shot like a music-video.
And what about the mermaid? She convinced my two pre-school girls that they exist. Woo-hoo. The actress(Kelly Brook, who starred with Billy Zane in another island movie, 'Survivor Island' and share an off screen, bumpy relationship) is a bit stilted but pretty. I guess that's appropriate for goddess-mermaids. The costume's less revealing than Darryl Hannah's. Plus, there's no language, no sex, and only mild peril.
As a 'big person', I'd give it a 2 to 3 stars mainly because the story's so eclectic and unpolished. (Some reviews really trashed this flick.) But for the kids, it's a definite 5 stars! And we, as two disparaging adults, can sit through most of it without snoozing or total, brain cell atrophy and share our kids' laughs.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Cute for mermaid fans, March 19, 2009
My daughter loves mermaids so we got this one for our collection. It is cute. She liked it, but didn't love it like Aquamarine. Worth watching.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Be Your Own Judge, February 18, 2009
I bought this film because I'm a huge mermaid fan. To be honest, it's not really that great a film. I'm usually not one to deliver overly negative and opinionated views, but I think it should be said that the film isn't very well put together. All of the plots and sub-plots are kind of herky-jerky, and their isn't really a lot of depth by way of the character development. It also seemed kind of interesting to me that "Nereid," the Greek Sea Goddess had a British accent. While the mermaid was indeed beauiful and nicely designed, it just wasn't enough to help the story. There also wasn't enough background information on the legend of the Nereides (in my opinion). There is so much to the legend of the Nereides, (not to mention all the other greek gods and goddesses of the seas) that is unmentioned. If you're a mermaid fan then I'll recommend this DVD because of the fact that it has a mermaid in it. However, if you're looking for a REALLY GOOD live-action mermaid film, then I highly recommend Splash (20th Anniversary Edition)
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