The Mermaid

Over all, I liked this movie.

I rarely watch Chinese movie. I actually watched this one because of its box office.

The movie is definitely a good comedy. You will laugh a lot and sometimes it will be difficult to stop!

Specially the scene in the police station.

But the special effect & visual graphics is very weak what will annoy you.

Not to mention the underwater scene(s).

Story is not that deep but you cant complain because its a comedy movie.

But you will definitely be entertained.

In this environmental activist comedy from Stephen Chow, mermaids whose environment is being destroyed by an evil developer plot to kill him, using a pretty mermaid as bait. The complications are unsurprising.

While lacking any comical martial arts, the movie still has Chow's usual slapstick humor and weirdness. This includes a very funny scene of a series of hapless assassination attempts, a goofy singing duet, and a cool special-effects driven scene involving splashing water into objects. Some scenes are a bit too dumb, but overall this is a reasonably amusing movie, although nowhere near as funny as Chow's masterpiece, Shaolin Soccer.

The plotting doesn't make much sense. The developer unconvincingly shifts from fairly cartoony awfulness to general sincerity, and the mermaids are, weirdly, more concerned with vengeance than with fixing their problems. But within its silly, slapsticky world, this isn't a huge problem.

What is a huge problem is the shift into violence towards the end. It's both upsetting and nonsensical; a classic example of a movie that makes its villains evil to the point where they do terrible things that not only don't benefit them, but that would seemingly work against their interests. This whole part of the movie is pretty terrible, and to some extent ruined it for me.

One last note. I had a dual audio version of this, and started off watching the English dub. I'm not someone who automatically rejects dubbed movies, but I strongly suggest that you do not, under any circumstances, watch the English dub of this, because it is horrendously bad. I think it's a shame that a successful director's biggest hit of all time doesn't rate competent English actors. If I were rating this based on the dub, I would take another star off. It's an embarrassment.

Ruthless land developer Liu Xuan is planning reclamation project for Green Gulf. He's using powerful sonar to drive away dolphins. He takes on Ruolan as his business partner. The playboy Liu Xuan calls up cheap floozy Shan after being ridiculed by Ruolan. Only they don't know that Shan is actually a mermaid. She is part of a community being driven out by Xuan's sonar. Shan is told by Brother Octopus to assassinate Xuan. After many failed attempts, Shan wins over Xuan with rotisserie chicken. Shan is conflicted about killing him but a conflict is inevitable.

This is Stephen Chow's very broad brand of comedy. The museum mermaid is hilarious. There are some funny bits with Shan. There are lots of funny with a good helping of environmentalism. However, there are some uncomfortable violence especially the climatic battle. Chow is obviously heavily influenced by documentaries such as The Cove. It's awkward to have such vicious violence trying to coexist with the broad cartoon comedy. There is a difference between cartoon violence and brutal horror violence. He needs to cut down on the horrifying.

This year's Chinese New Year is packed with Festive Films, from Monkey King 2, Vegas to Macau 3 to Mermaid.

After watching all 3 of them, I have decided to only write a review for Mermaid because it is the only one worth the effort and time.

The great thing about Mermaid is that while it is a comedy that brings the whole family together, it manages to bring in an underlying plot that teaches us important values about ecosystem and a life lesson about money and materialism.

While not on par with Chow's masterpiece like Kung Fu Hustle or Shaolin Soccer, Mermaid is better than Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons. The slapstick style of comedy of Chow is evident throughout the movie, and the laughter by the audiences can be heard echoing throughout the cinema halls.

A number memorable scenes provide some of the biggest laughs – such as when Shan made numerous botched attempts to assassinate Liu Xuan with various means and weapons from the sea.

Newcomer Jelly Lin is the latest in a long line of "Stephen's Girls". Chow has the knack of discovering an illustrious list of talented actresses that include Karen Mok, Cecilia Cheung, and Vicky Zhao. Lin is the latest muse to channel Chow's range of rubber-faced physical comedy and deadpan delivery of killer lines. Jelly Lin is reportedly cast from auditions with over 10,000 hopefuls.

While this film will not play extremely well with critics, it undoubtedly will have a good word-of-mouth as it is an entertaining movie with the right balance of humour, touching moments and good acting.

After watching so many movies is this Chinese New Year, I can say that Mermaid is easily the best movie of them all.

I look forward to Stephen Chow's next movie, and the opportunity for him to step in-front of the camera once more.

Stephen Chow is one of my favorite directors in China, I have seen many wonderful films directed by him like KongFu Hustle, ShaoLin soccer.

An outstanding characteristic of Chow's film is tricking of comedy ( I don't know how to describe that style accurately).

However, this film, The Mermaid, is very different compared to the other two mentioned above. To conclude it in a sentence, that is a wonderful mixture of comedy, love, science fiction and environment.

Environmental protection is heavy point of this film, but unlike many other directors, Stephen Chow shows it in another way, which is love and comedy.

This film inherit many characteristics in Chow's old films, like 'XiaoQiang' and 'WangCai' and so on. Though Language comedy has intrinsically regional difference, many tricks can be conveyed from the simple actuation.

Stunts seem to be an fatal drawback of Chinese films, may be investment is the major problem. But stunts in this film is very nice, e.g. the tail of octopus and arresting of the mermaid under water.

Overall, this is a wonderful movie which will catch heart of a very general range of audience. I strongly recommend it.