In a sentenceA mermaid is sent to kill a billionaire with poisoned sea urchins and mostly stabs her own colleagues
Liu Xuan (Deng Chao), a self-made tycoon with a taste for parties and no interest in dolphins, has just bought Green Gulf, a protected stretch of coast he intends to drain and build on. His partner Ruolan (Zhang Yuqi) has supplied the money and the sonar that clears the bay of anything with fins. What neither of them knows is that a colony of merpeople lives in a wrecked ship in the gulf, and the sonar is killing them. Their leader, a half-octopus called Brother Eight (Show Lo), picks the one mermaid who can pass for human, Shan (Lin Yun), teaches her to walk on her folded tail, and sends her ashore with a card, a skirt and orders to seduce Liu Xuan and murder him. Her first attempt involves poisoned sea urchins and a theme-park restaurant.
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Stephen Chow turns The Little Mermaid into an assassination comedy, and for an hour it is as silly and as precisely timed as anything he has made. Then it remembers it is an environmental fable, turns grim, and the two halves never shake hands.
Stephen Chow has taken the oldest mermaid story there is and given the mermaid a knife. In The Mermaid, a tycoon buys a bay, the merpeople who live in it decide to kill him, and the one they send is a girl who has only just learned to walk. Chow writes and directs and, for once, stays behind the camera. The result is 94 minutes that are a joy for about sixty of them and a puzzle for the rest, and we recommend it on the strength of the sixty.
The joy is mostly Lin Yun. She plays Shan with the stiff, rolling waddle of someone whose feet are a disguise, and she holds her face in a smile of fixed terror that she clearly believes is seduction. Deng Chao’s Liu Xuan has never been refused anything, and he treats a woman trying to poison him as the most interesting thing that has happened in years. Their first date, in a roast chicken restaurant inside an amusement park, is the film’s best stretch: Shan produces poisoned sea urchins from her handbag, misses, misses again, and the urchins end up in the head of Show Lo’s Brother Eight, who has come along in a wig to help. Chow builds the sequence like a man stacking plates, one on top of the last, and does not stop when any sensible director would.
Bruce Yu gives the merpeople a home in a beached hull, lit green and gold from inside, with the fish-folk slung from the rafters like laundry. Choi Sung-Fai shoots the bay above water in flat postcard blue and the tycoon’s world in glass, chrome and white leather, so that Shan always looks as if she has walked into a showroom. Jack Tang Man-To and Cheung Ka-Fai cut the gags the Chow way: hold the shot a beat past the point where it feels safe, then hold it one more. The music by Wendyz Zheng and Raymond Wong is cheerful and old-fashioned, and when Deng Chao and Lin Yun sing a duet to each other with his bodyguards swaying behind them, the song does more to make the romance believable than the script does.
The scene we will remember is in a police station. Liu Xuan, having survived the date, tries to report an attempt on his life by a mermaid, and two constables, Wen Zhang’s Mo and Lee Sheung-Ching’s Shi, take down his description and begin to draw. Each sketch is wronger than the last, and each is presented to him with complete professional seriousness. We laughed until it hurt, and we laughed because Chow never once cuts to anyone acknowledging the joke; the constables are simply doing their job, and their job is to draw a fish with a woman’s head.
The trouble is what the film does with its message. Chow wants us to care about the dolphins, and he is right to, and the way he goes about it is to stop the comedy, show us what the sonar does, and start it again. The gear change grinds every time. Zhang Yuqi’s Ruolan is given nothing to play but greed in heels, Kris Wu turns up with a water jetpack for one gag, and Tsui Hark, as a rival tycoon called Uncle Rich, is on screen long enough for us to notice him and no longer. Then the last half hour takes a turn we will not describe, except to say that it is not funny and does not seem to want to be, and that we sat through it with our shoulders up around our ears.
We laughed for an hour and then we winced for twenty minutes, and we are still not sure Chow meant us to feel both. In Kung Fu Hustle (2004) he could put slapstick and real pain in the same frame and make them one thing; here they take turns, and the pain is asked to carry a lesson the jokes had already taught.
See it, with subtitles and someone who likes to laugh out loud. Treat the roast chicken restaurant and the police station as the main event, and when the weather changes, remember that it is a short film and the weather was lovely while it lasted.
Most critics like The Mermaid, and none dislike it: six of the twelve reviews are positive and the rest mixed, with nothing worse than a shrug. The praise gathers in two places. First is Stephen Chow’s slapstick, which the reviews describe as inventive, cartoonish and often funny, the sequence in which the mermaid repeatedly fails to kill her target being the one most often picked out. Second is Jelly Lin, also credited as Lin Yun, whose comic performance several critics call the film’s discovery, and whose chemistry with her co-star is noted more than once.
The reservations are nearly as consistent. Several reviews say the final act turns serious and loses the playful energy that carries most of the running time. Others find the environmental message either too blunt or too thin to match the comedy. The Los Angeles Times adds that some jokes do not survive translation. The spread is wide, from three-star shrugs to The Playlist’s outright rave.
Lee finds the film an enchanting, delightful comic fantasy despite its cruelty and familiar story. She particularly praises Jelly Lin’s winning performance and the chemistry between the leads.
Read the full review →Tsai finds the film original, inspired and entertaining, despite some jokes and cultural references getting lost in translation. He singles out its blend of crass, macabre humor and big-hearted environmental fable as especially appealing.
Read the full review →The review calls the film one of Stephen Chow’s most accessible and best in years, despite a tonal shift that weakens its climax. It praises Lin Yun’s comic performance and the inventive slapstick sequence in which Shan tries to kill Xuan.
Read the full review →The standfirst presents the film as wildly imaginative and inventive. It singles out Stephen Chow’s cartoonish slapstick as reaching new heights.
Read the full review →Kerr finds the film charming, witty, and timely, despite its unsubtle environmental message and predictable storytelling. She especially praises Jelly Lin’s breakout performance and the cast’s ability to sell the material.
Read the full review →The critic finds the comedy brisk and enjoyable, but says the film’s ending disrupts its tone. They praise Chow’s sight gags and Jelly Lin’s comic presence.
Read the full review →
Kung Fu Hustle · not reviewed yetChow at full stretch, where the cruelty and the sweetness share a single frame.
SplashThe mermaid-in-the-city comedy done gently, with Daryl Hannah learning English from television.
The Lure · not reviewed yetPolish mermaid sisters sing in a nightclub and eat people; stranger and sadder than it sounds.
Ponyo · not reviewed yetMiyazaki’s fish-girl comes ashore and the sea follows her, with no sermon attached.
Okja · not reviewed yetBong Joon-ho’s creature fable swings between farce and horror, and mostly keeps its footing.
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