Review of Splash (1984) by Jonathan F — 01 Nov 2012

A very entertaining rom-com about a guy who fall in love with a mermaid. It's a simple, predictable story but it's very entertaining. Possibly the best part of the film is Daryl Hannah, who is remarkably beautiful.

Allen Bauer (Tom Hanks) is just looking for love. His fiancee left him and he has been bummed lately, so he takes a trip to Cape Cod to relax himself. While there, he meets a nude woman who cannot speak English. After a while, he goes back to New York as the nude woman follows him. For a while, she can just kiss him over and over as Allen lets her stay in his apartment. Over the course of one day, she somehow knows the entire English language by...watching television. Of course, this is impossible, but how would she know what the words meant? Anyway, she names herself Madison and doesn't want to tell Allen this huge secret about how she's a mermaid. If she gets wet, she turns into one but when dry she has human legs. Madison only has 6 days to be outside of the water, so Allen and her try to make them count. However, Eugene Levy plays Walter Kornbluth, an intelligent man who has been ridiculed lately by his belief that mermaids exist. He tries to prove to his old college professor that they exist by constantly trying to make Madison wet. When he finally does, Allen and the press find out she is a mermaid and doctors constantly test her. Allen and Walter eventually get her out but are hunted down by the military. Allen and Madison jump into the water as Madison becomes a mermaid again and somehow Allen can breathe underwater.

A kinda confusing movie but it's also a very entertaining one. Tom Hanks, surprisingly, doesn't get as much airplay as Hannah did- and John Candy, who plays Allen's older brother Freddie, doesn't get much airplay at all. Perhaps the main comedic sources were from Eugene Levy and his crazy theories about mermaids and such. But it's still a great movie and, in fact, Hanks' first major film (his actual first was a low-budget horror movie). I definitely suggest you watch it.