Mermaid Got Married
Its been a very long time since I saw the Tom
Hanks film Splash but from what I vaguely recollect Mermaid Got Married
seems to clearly be inspired by it - though "inspired" might be much too
strong a word for in truth this is a fairly pale imitation. It captures
some of the narrative aspects of Splash but very little of its emotional
core. Nevertheless, it has some typical Hong Kong movie charms, an excellent
soundtrack (Faye Wong sings a few songs I believe) and for fans of either
of the main actors Ekin Cheng and Christy Chung it will have some appeal.
Throw in an early co-starring role for Takeshi Kaneshiro and solid ones
for Kent Cheng, Yuen King, Dennis Chan, Lau Siu-ming and Teresa Mak and
its an easy and extremely unchallenging way to spend 90 middling minutes.
Now for those who wince at the mere idea of spending
90 unnecessary minutes with Ekin - take heart that back in 1994 when this
film was made he had not yet begun to settle into his stern and immovable
visage mode that began with the Young and Dangerous series in 1996. This
is not to imply that he does a lot of emotive acting in this film but
he is genial enough and comes much closer to being a wimp than being a
wonderboy. He gets beaten up by just about everyone including Teresa
Mak and becomes a bit of a helpless puddle in the films one moment of
crisis but the flowing hair is always present and accounted for.
Of course Christy Chung has her detractors as
well and a combination of Christy and Ekin in close proximity sounds like
it is desperately close to a thespian black hole but Christy brings so
much enthusiasm and cheerful zest to her role that it is almost contagious
and in truth who can resist a woman with a splendid tail like hers. Fish
tail that is. Other than her long golden tail Christys eyes will suck
you in like a chocolate milkshake on a hot summer day. They are pecan pie
warm and as cloudy and mysterious as the Milky Way and this film never
tires of close-ups of them and not so surprisingly neither did I! At
any rate, what little fizz this film has is almost totally provided by
Christy and her moonstruck eyes.
As a boy Ekin falls into the ocean and almost
drowns but is saved by a large fish. Jump ahead twenty-years and he is
now a young man looking for a job as a teacher. The problem is that he
is so good looking that no school wants to hire him in fear that there
will be some funny business with the girl students. Finally he convinces
Kent Cheng to hire him as a P.E. teacher and sure enough the young girls
are soon swooning in their gym shorts. Teresa Mak in particular takes a
gander at Ekin and her young heart beats out the tom tom rhythm of love
much to the annoyance of Takeshi.
Well, Ekin somehow manages to fall into the water
again and almost drown but amazingly this big fish appears once again!
Who would have thought? Of course this is actually only half a fish the
other half belongs to Christy. She saves him with a giant pearl that she
slips down his throat but then realizes that she needs it back to live
in the ocean. On land she transforms into a two-legged lovely and goes
looking for him. She manages to join the school as a student and is soon
giving Ekin her best wet fish kiss. The fact that Ekin is romancing a supposedly
high school student is almost as scandalous as his new found fish love
or would that be guppy love, but no one seems to think either a bit perverse.
Things dont go as swimmingly as you might imagine between a boy and his
fish though when a group kidnaps her in order to display and later dissect
her.
My rating for this film: 5.5
DVD Information:
Distributed by Tung Ah
The transfer is generally ok - clearly nothing
special was done for the dvd release but it is fairly clean and sharp.
Letterboxed
Cantonese and Mandarin language tracks
No extras
The subtitles are burnt on Chinese and English.
