Charles Herold (cherold) 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 it's 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.

Bryan Roderick (Bryan_Roderick) Mei Ren YuThe Mermaid is written and directed by Steven Chow. I was unaware that going into this movie. To be honest I knew nothing about this movie other than the English title and that it was a Chinese film. You might recognize Steven Chow's earlier work: Kung Fu Hustle and Shaolin Soccer. I'm beginning to understand why this movie made half a billion US dollars.The store is about a group of near humans who want the business that is endangering their homeland to go away. Sound familiar? It's the same premise as Avatar and Furn Gully. Once you get past that it's much different, tonally. This is a goofy comedy that hits it's mark sometimes and on others is just bizarre.Lin Yun plays Shan the young, innocent and beautiful mermaid. She's obviously new to acting and her role seemed to be perfect for her. Unknowing of the outside world and how to handle luxury. She wasn't believable in scenes that didn't involve her innocence.Chao Deng plays Liu Xuan a wealthy beyond means businessman who endangers the merfolk. He was the best actor in the entire movie and when you look at this track record in China it's not a surprise that he could draw a crowd to see the film.Show Luo plays the Octopus-man in the film is and is by far the funniest part of the film. Since it's easier for mermaids to hide among the humans it proves funny and near impossible to hide the fact he's a huge octopus on his lower half. The direction of the film is well done and I had been meaning to look up who had directed it since the start of the film. Good direction can make up for some bad acting by supporting characters. Much of the dialogue seems to be lost in translation. I felt that some of the funny parts must be colloquial or maybe my sense of humor is too strict. Verdict: Watch if you enjoy foreign films or Steven Chow. The first act is really slow and some of the supporting actors are off. The humor is either really goofy or clever.

pcqgod 'Mermaid,' the new offering from director Stephen Chow is a breezy fantasy romantic comedy in which a group of mer-people (the sub-titles only refer to them as "Mermaids," even though some are clearly men) decide the only way to save their lives is to assassinate the mega-tycoon behind the exploitation and destruction of their undersea home. They teach one of their young, erm, school-members, how to walk like a human (sort of) in order to turn her into a honey-pot trap for the tycoon, and the plot is off and running. This movie features some hilarious slapstick comedy as you would expect from this director, some beautiful visuals, sets and locations, and not an especially subtle pro-conservation/anti-whaling message. However, it's still fun enough that you don't feel you are being preached at the whole time, at least.

quincytheodore One of the most visible traits from Stephen Chow is his lead female is always quirky and far from generic beauty, thus the mermaid here is definitely not your average princess. The style of mixing comedy and drama is incredibly and bizarrely compelling, often depicting light nuance and then jarring grim tone hand-in-hand. However, it works perfectly for the drama as well as delivering its eco-friendly message with approachable means.Liu Xuan (Chao Deng) is a businessman who ruins environment for profit, little did he know that a group of mermaid is hell bent on stopping him. It's a rather simple build up, although the simplicity is strikingly presentable. This is a love story that is littered with silly antics in expense of its own characters. It's nicely done without being too cheesy and having good female lead Yun Lin as Shan who is adorably unlike supermodel can be uniquely charming.The comedy is spot-on, as expected from Stephen Chow. His signature stupid series of unfortunate events are ridiculously infectious and effective in delivering laughter. Those wanting classic slapstick from Shaolin Soccer or Kung Fu Hustle will not be disappointed. Its transition from comedy to drama and even slight horror can be jarring, but no one does it better than Stephen Chow. The mixed tone plays smoothly, sometimes having sad and funny moments at the same scene.Unfortunately, it's not without flaws. Its usage of CGI can be sketchy, Chinese film has a certain juvenile style of CG, which might fit some movies theme, but here it is often poorly done. Still, the movie plays its nature premise pretty well, using it as subplot and also an integral part of the movie.The unique fairy tale is attractive in its own way, with slapstick humor and oddly riveting drama.