The Mermaid (2015)

I saw this movie was coming to the local art house cinema awhile back but didn't pay much attention to it because it didn't seem like the kind of film I would just naturally want to go and see. Then a week or two back I ran across on article on Vice stating that since its release last year The Mermaid has become the biggest success in the history of the Chinese box office, earning 2.7 billion Chinese yen or around $500,000,000 American dollars. Now I was curious, especially given that the films basic plot description, that it revolves around a businessman falling in love with a mermaid, made it sound essentially like a remake of the 1984 Tom Hanks/ Daryl Hannah comedy Splash. While having now seen the film I can tell that the plot is actually quite a bit different then that of Splash, leans heavily on themes of ecological destruction, and is in fact a Stephen Chow action comedy. Yes Stephen Chow, the same guy who made and stared in Kung Fu Hustle and Shaolin Soccer, now the films enormous success made more sense to me. Elaborate action set pieces, excellent comic timing, gages that often build to almost tear inducing levels of  comic absurdity, and special effects that I can only assume are intentionally meant to look bad. Chow's on his A game here and even manages to work in more self critical social commentary then you'd expect out of a film made in Red China, as well as give his film probably the most coherent emotional core of any of his pictures to date, though granted we are talking about a Stephen Chow picture here so its not anything too deep, its a man falling in love with a mermaid for central committees sake. Still if you like Chow you'll like this and if you've never seen a Chow picture before, well be prepared for a live action cartoon. ***