Splash (1984)

I was a huge mermaid kid. I watched that other 1980s mermaid movie five times a day until my mom got so sick of it she used my love of mermaids to get me to watch anything else. Unlike the last time I told that story, it worked with this one, and little me was as enchanted by Madison as Ariel. But will this one hold up without nostalgia goggles? Or is my love for it dead in the water?

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Walt Disney Pictures did not release a single movie in the year 1984. My regularly scheduled list jumps right from Never Cry Wolf in October 1983 to our next movie in June 1985. That’s over a year and a half without a release. Things went a little crazy at the Disney Studio around this time, leaving little time to focus on production. My goal when I started this blog was to learn more about the studio’s history through their films, and this little dark spot is a pivotal moment in that history. So, I stretched the rules of sticking to the Wikipedia list juuuust a little bit to justify digging into the meat of the studio’s turmoil. I could have just done a blog post about the Disney War, I guess, but here we are.

I’ve neglected to talk about Ron Miller much, which I’ve regretted for a while now but I also don’t feel like going back and editing two decades worth of posts so I’ll do it here. Miller married Walt’s daughter Diane in 1954. Walt wanted his company to stay in the family, and despite Miller being a professional football player with no experience in the film industry, he was also the next male in the lineage so obviously that’s enough qualifications. So for the two decades following Walt’s death, he took over the studio, then later the company as a whole. And it worked out… uh…

Movies flopped like fish hit with oars. Stock prices tanked. Investors smelled blood in the water, eager to rip the whole company for parts and sell off the pieces (live-action, animation, parks, etc). Something drastic needed to happen quickly. So Walt’s nephew Roy E. Disney worked with the company’s largest shareholder to fire Miller. And in his place, they recruited a man from Paramount. A man unburdened by the legacy that had chained the studio to the past for far too long. A man who had somehow never seen a Disney movie. A man who will play both hero and villain at different points in our story. And his name… was Michael Eisner.

Eisner’s legacy ended up as tumultuous as Miller’s, if not more, but we’ll get there when we get there. For now, he had the magic touch. Unlike certain football players I could name, Eisner actually knew movies. Having greenlit classics like Raiders of the Lost Ark, he had his finger on the pulse of what audiences wanted to spend money on. He even helped revitalize the stagnant parks, resulting in classics like Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Star Tours, and the Indiana Jones Adventure among others, as well as five new parks, 20+ resort hotels, two cruise ships, and a partridge in a pear tree. And that’s not even an exhaustive list. His ideas weren’t always realistic, but that’s why he had his partner, Frank Wells, to reign him in like the Roy to his Walt. Finally, Disney had a creative at the helm again. He was exactly what the company needed at exactly the right time.

One of Eisner’s first acts as CEO was to dust off a struggling project Miller had been working on. Because so many of their efforts to include more mature subject matter had failed, the studio planned to create a new label to tell more grown-up stories. Trenchcoat was actually intended to be the first film released under that label, but that fell through. But by 1984, the shiny new Touchstone branch of the Walt Disney Company was ready for its big debut. And it worked. Filmmakers and actors wanted to work with Disney again. Several box office smash hits brought in a badly needed windfall, including Down and Out in Beverly Hills, Ruthless People, Good Morning Vietnam, There Men and a Baby, Beaches, Dead Poets’ Society, and Turner & Hooch, among others. Without Touchstone, Disney wouldn’t exist today. Period. I’m not covering all of Touchstone’s output because I don’t want to, but I am going to examine four particularly impactful films. And the first one is today’s feature presentation.

Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel (great name) pitched their original draft for a mermaid comedy to a variety of studios for seven years. Unfortunately, this version focused too heavily on the mermaid and would have proven too difficult to shoot in live-action, including scenes in an underwater city full of merpeople and one where she gets legs from a sea hag, so it was soundly rejected. Walt Disney Productions eventually agreed to produce, though they required big script changes, including shifting the perspective from the mermaid to the human she falls for to make the story more relatable and easier to film.

The now-legendary Ron Howard had retired from acting (we saw him in The Wild Country) in favor of directing, turning down Footloose and Mr. Mom in favor of Splash. This was his third movie, but his first big hit. And Splash was a big hit, launching Howard and both of its lead actors to super-stardom overnight. It grossed $69.8 million on an $11 million budget, Disney’s first unequivocal success in ages. Funny, heartfelt, and well-acted, Splash became the 10th highest-grossing film of 1984. It even got a sequel, though none of the lead actors reprised their roles and it’s terrible. A remake has been in the works since 2016, though apparently it’s been in development hell for a while because I haven’t heard much since it was announced. We do know that Channing Tatum is playing the merman who falls for a human woman, which I find exciting. The world could use more mermen.

I loved this movie as an unhealthily mermaid-obsessed little kid. Like, I nearly drowned when I was about five because I wanted to swim like Madison and Ariel. But for some reason, I never actually owned it on DVD or Blu-ray, so there was a long absence of Splash in my life. So, when Disney+ dropped, I was more excited to watch it again than I was bothered by the poorly executed censorship. Splash was one of the first non-blog-related things I watched on the service, alongside The Thirteenth Year and The Little Mermaid TV series (you may notice a theme here). And… uh. Yikes. I kinda can’t believe my overly strict, thoroughly-insane parents let me watch this. To be entirely fair, my mom probably did some judicious fast-forwarding of most of Freddie’s scenes and there is a high probability of little me zoning out when there was no mermaid tail onscreen. But still. Not many 80s rom-coms hold up today even for people who enjoy rom-coms, and I cannot stand rom-coms. But there are still elements that I find magical and it still holds a 91% on Rotten Tomatoes, so it’s not all bad. So let’s dive in!

STORY

We open on a sepia-toned flashback where we meet the Bauer family enjoying a scenic booze cruise around Cape Cod. The mother catches her older son, Freddie, dropping change on the floor as an excuse to look up women’s skirts, and rightfully reads him the riot act. Meanwhile, the younger brother Allen gazes pensively over the water. Something catches his eye and, before anyone can stop him, he jumps overboard. Everyone on board freaks out except Freddie, who takes advantage of the chaos to look up more skirts. But Allen grins, safe and happy thanks to the little girl he saw in the water. She reaches for his hands, and her touch temporarily grants him the ability to breathe underwater. But it only lasts a moment before a man hauls him out of the water. The boat pulls away, and Allen watches the girl as long as he can. She watches it go with tears in her eyes. When it vanishes around a corner, she dives, giving us a moment’s glimpse of the tiny mermaid’s fishtail.

Fast forward twenty years, and Allen Bauer owns a struggling produce business in New York City. It’s a stressful morning. A client screams at him to hurry up with an order of cherries, but when he goes to fetch them from the supplier, they’re all rotten thanks to Freddie’s latest gambling mishap. Ron Howard famously gives his father and brother cameos in all of his movies, and this irate customer is his father, Rance Howard. We’ll get to his brother in a little bit. The supplier makes excuses and the rotten cherry on top is a call from Allen’s girlfriend Victoria. She’s upset about something but Allen has too much going on and has to brush her off. Just then, Freddie crashes into a bunch of crates in a fancy new sports car, crowing that he got a story published in Penthouse magazine about… sigh… converting a lesbian to heterosexuality. Rrgh.

With help from an employee who’s getting married tomorrow, Allen manages to smooth things over with Rance Howard. He and Freddie retreat to the relative quiet of their office, passing their secretary who’s a little addled after being struck by lightning. But she’s back to work after suffering massive brain damage so she’s probably fine. Probably. Freddie reveals that he landed a huge deal with a major grocery chain that could save the business… even if he had to lie to do it. The CEO will visit later today, which is the worst possible timing considering Allen is supposed to be an usher at his employee’s wedding. The two bicker until the phone rings again. It’s Victoria, dropping the bomb that she’s moving out and dumping Allen because he can’t say he loves her. The movie never outright says it, but it’s implied that he’s still subconsciously hung up on the mermaid from Cape Cod, even if he’s long since dismissed her as a near-death hallucination.

At their friend’s wedding, Allen mopes to Freddie about his disastrous love life… after catching his big brother dropping change to look up women’s skirts. Eugh. Freddie as written is the worst. Allen can’t understand why he can’t feel romantic love which, join the club bro it’s not the end of the world. Wedding guests pour in, each asking why Victoria couldn’t come. And this is where Ron Howard’s brother Clint makes his obligatory appearance as the last straw before Allen flips out. During his child star days, Clint appeared with his brother in The Wild Country and did some voice work as Haithi Jr. in The Jungle Book and Roo in the first two Winnie the Pooh shorts! So it’s neat to spot him as an adult, even if he doesn’t deserve Allen screaming at him.

Allen gets absolutely trashed at the reception to try to forget his troubles. Freddie eggs him on until he wanders off to flirt with two random women. Allen spots a guy trying to pick up a girl and drunkenly rambles about how he only wants to find love and live happily ever after. Something I hate about rom-coms is the way they always portray a woman whose life and career are so unfulfilling that she neeeeeeeeeeeeds to give up her whole identity to be some mediocre guy’s wife because independence isn’t feminine. It’s not exactly better for the guy to be so desperate, but it does subvert expectations enough to be noteworthy. But also? As an aromantic person, people of any gender who act like this are insufferable. Freddie invites Allen to Rio with him and the two giggling ladies he’s charmed, but when Allen feels this low, he needs to go to Cape Cod. The film never outright says it, but again, he’s still hung up on the mermaid, and that’s where she charmed him for the first time.

Freddie worries about him, but Allen staggers out to a cab. The cabbie is stunned that someone would take a taxi all the way from New York to Massachusetts (about 255 miles and a five-and-a-half-hour drive), but Allen has the cash. Unfortunately, he drops him off in the wrong place. Allen approaches Walter Kornbluth on the beach to politely ask for help. Kornbluth accuses him of trying to poach his research before screaming at his two assistants for carrying his scientific equipment wrong. One of the assistants, played by David Knell who was Nerve Nordlinger in The Devil and Max Devlin, helpfully tells him he knows someone who runs boats to the island across the way. Unfortunately for Allen, he’s kind of a jerk. When he hears Allen can’t swim, he rocks the boat, effectively ruining the engine. He cheerfully dives into the water to fetch another boat, leaving Allen stranded in the middle of the water. Desperate, Allen whacks it with a hammer but doesn’t expect to get it working. The boat roars to life, bucking so hard it knocks Allen into the water. The rogue boat smacks him in the head and he falls into the water.

Allen wakes up on a beach that is visibly not Cape Cod. There’s freaking palm trees. Aside from a splitting headache, there’s no harm done, but he has no idea how he survived. As he hauls himself to his feet, he spots a beautiful woman staring at him, covered only by the bushes and her own long hair. Allen tries to ask what happened but she doesn’t seem to understand. She starts to run from him, but when their eyes meet, she freezes. She steps towards him, and to his utter shock, kisses him soundly. Before he can process what just happened, she dives into the water and disappears. He yells for her to stop, but stops short of the water because he can’t swim. To hear other reviewers talk you’d think the brief glimpse of the woman’s back was the whole movie. Kiss aside, her state of undress isn’t gratuitous or even all that sexualized. She’s a mermaid. Fabric drags in water. People need to calm down.

Oh, yeah, did I mention this woman is the mermaid from before? We follow her down into her underwater home and hngnnngh no words should have sent a poet. This scene is why I was so excited to watch this movie despite the ravages of time. I remember every frame of watching her swim over the majestic coral reefs of Massachussets, her orange fins bright against the water. It’s so magical. She spots Allen’s wallet stuck between two pieces of coral and takes it home with her. On the way, she passes by a scuba diving Kornbluth, who drops his camera in shock. Before he can get it together, she vanishes. Eventually, the mermaid comes to her home in an old shipwrecked galleon that absolutely inspired Ariel’s introduction. She goes to her collection of nautical maps and matches one to the location on Allen’s license. A playful sea turtle tries to get her attention, but she shakes her head with a little laugh, which shows so much personality in such a small moment. I love her. She darts out of the shipwreck and she’s on her way!

The mermaid steps onto shore at the Statue of Liberty, where writer Lowell Ganz is giving a particularly colorful tour. Her lack of clothes causes quite a stir, both in and out of universe. When Disney+ first dropped, they censored this scene by using bad CGI to extend her hair to cover her back. Yes, it looked atrocious, but the “controversy” was blown waaaay out of proportion by people who need to chill. They’ve since walked it back and the scene is presented as originally intended, mostly because with Hulu and Fox there is a lot worse on the service now. But the way it’s actually shown in the movie is again, quite innocent. She’s just kinda here. She doesn’t know why everyone’s freaking out. She just finds herself arrested for indecent exposure and hauled away. And by the way, the fact that people react by either panicking or taking pictures with her is appalling. Did no one think to ask the naked, confused, mute woman if she needed help?

The police dress the mermaid in an oversized T-shirt and take her back to the city on a boat. They try to interrogate her but she can’t speak. She can, however, point to the wallet, so the cops call Allen at work. A beautiful unclad blonde looking for him can only mean one thing, so Allen bolts to the police station while Freddie covers for him. Sure enough, when he gets to the station, it’s her. The girl who rescued him. She greets him by heavily making out with him in front of the whole station. He gives her his jacket and takes her home to his apartment. Two steps into the lobby, she’s all over him again.

The mermaid explores Allen’s apartment, taking a particular interest in the awesome bubble fish tank embedded in his wall. I want one. He returns with a huge breakfast spread but she just wants more kisses. He pushes her off long enough to promise to come back after work, but it doesn’t take long for him to decide he has a little time so he pushes her down onto the bed. When he finally, finally gets back to work, he’s in the best mood they’ve ever seen him in. He’s so happy getting with this weird mute girl who showed up just to get into his pants he can’t stop belting Zip a Dee Doo Dah. Incidentally, around the time this came out, the parks were working on a ride called Zip A Dee River Run. Michael Eisner dropped by Imagineering and suggested tying the water ride to Splash as an early form of brand synergy. The Song of the South-themed ride had literally nothing to do with mermaids, but the Imagineers agreed to change the name to Splash Mountain.

Allen kindly left the TV on for the mermaid, much like you might do for a beloved dog. She stares transfixed at a Bloomingdales commercial and decides she wants to go there so she puts on one of Allen’s suits and ventures outside. The doorman offers to help her, and she utters the first word she’s learned in human language: “Bloomingdales”. He does his job and calls her a cab, so it’s time for that beloved 1980s tradition: shopping montage! Mike Teavee’s mom is apparently a saleslady now, encouraging the mermaid to try on some outfits. And she gets probably the most regrettable joke in a movie full of regrettable jokes, snarking that her daughter is lucky to have an eating disorder because she can fit in smaller sizes. Gross.

The mermaid leaves the clothing department with a pretty new dress and boxes full of clothes she purchased with Allen’s wallet that she apparently still has. She finds her way to the electronics department and is instantly transfixed by the TVs that can teach her all sorts of things. She mystifies the electronic salesmen by spending six hours getting startled by overly aggressive commercials and happily exercising with Richard Simmons. Allen comes home to an empty apartment and panics, bolting to the department store. To his great relief, he finds her safe and sound and agrees to help the salesmen get her out so they can close because she can’t speak English. Surprise! She speaks English now! After six hours of watching TV, she cheerfully greets him, perfectly fluent. It still makes more sense than Pocahontas. Now that they can communicate, Allen asks the mermaid her name. Unfortunately for everyone, the mermaid language is a series of dolphin noises so high-pitched it smashes all the TVs in the store.

As they make a hurried exit, the mermaid excitedly chatters to Allen, though most of her vocabulary clearly comes from 80s game shows. Allen has some questions of his own but she’s too busy discovering things like traffic lights and music to tell him much. She’s adorable. I love her so much. He manages to get her attention long enough to explain that if she stays for longer than six days, she’ll never be able to go home. Allen decides he has to call her something other than dolphin noises and she’s on board, so he starts listing off names. In the middle of this, he fumbles to get his bearings, noting they’re on Madison Avenue. Her face lights up and she decides she wants to be called Madison. It’s an unusual name, but sure, why not? And yes, Madison was practically unheard of as a given name for girls in 1984. This movie was so popular that people started naming their daughters after the mermaid, and now the name is extremely common.

Late that night, Madison sneaks out of bed while Allen’s asleep. She reaches for a canister of salt hidden in a drawer and pours it liberally into the bathtub before sliding in herself. It’s the only time we see her transform, and the effect is a triumph of practical effects work. I read how they did it and I don’t fully understand it, only that her hand is hiding a device that vacuum seals scales onto her thigh or something. Her tail unfurling over the edge of the tub has lived in my head rent-free for most of my life, even without every mermaid movie ever made referencing the image. Which it does. She relaxes, brushing her hair like the mermaids of legend.

And then Allen has to go and ruin it. He wakes up alone and panics. Madison calls that she’s taking a bath and would like to be left alone, please. Allen goes berserk, demanding to come in even though she tells him she’s fine. She flops onto the floor, frantically trying to dry her tail before he sees it and begs him to leave her alone. So Allen breaks down the door. Dude! What is your damage? With or without the fantasy element, this is completely unhinged behavior. Boundaries don’t stop existing just because you’re in a physical relationship. You’ve got to let your partner have privacy once in a while. Not a cool move, my guy. Fortunately for Madison, her legs come back at the exact right moment, and she makes the excuse that she was shy which baffles him after all the very public displays of affection.

Kornbluth comes up from another fruitless dive. He’s incensed to see his assistants guffawing over a tabloid about the woman from the Statue of Liberty. But as he lays into them, he realizes he recognizes the girl in the photo. It’s the mermaid! Meanwhile, Allen finds Madison in his living room sobbing over a man dying on TV. Allen explains that the man was an actor, which was supposed to lead into a brick joke where she laughs at a news report of a plane crash. Now that she’s cheered up, Allen hands her a Tiffany’s box. Bless her, she thinks the box is the present and kisses it, which is absolutely precious on its own. But inside, she finds a beautiful music box depicting two people dancing and wait a minute here.

The two lovers in the music box fade out, never to return. It feels like it should be a minor plot point, but nope, he’s just giving her toys like a very small child. And now they’re on a date. They’re even walking past a string quartet- how hard would it be to transition into them dancing just like the figurine couple? But nah, they just walk right past into the park. Madison takes Allen’s hand, and they pass by a fountain depicting a mermaid surrounded by water spouts. Allen muses that he’s always been drawn to it, despite his fear of water stemming from his childhood accident. Madison accidentally blurts that she was there, but covers it up by pretending she forgot English. Allen is too stupid to realize the girl he’s fixated on all these years is right in front of him and sighs that he’s going to miss this park when it’s gone.

Later on, Allen joins Freddie at the gym for a game of racquetball because it’s the 80s and that’s what bougie people do. Freddie invites Allen to see the President of the United States speak. I’m not sure why two produce wholesalers got invited to a presidential dinner but sure, okay. Allen agrees on the condition that he go with Madison instead of Freddie because surely a woman with no ID who doesn’t legally exist will have clearance to be in the same room as the President. Freddie grins, knowing what that means, and gently bullies his little brother to get him to admit he loves her. But he can’t say it yet. There’s too much that doesn’t add up. Freddie has a logical, if characteristically perverted, explanation for all of it, and none of it matters anyway. Allen is in love and the sooner he admits it, the better off they’ll all be. John Candy nailed this whole scene in one take – and after showing up late to set still drunk from an impromptu night out with Jack Nicholson. What a legend.

After the game, Allen comes home to find a very excited Madison yanking him into his room. She has a present for him. Turns out she traded her priceless necklace of pearls and sunken treasure to save Allen’s beloved fountain. Now it’s in Allen’s living room, complete with water hookup and lighting. But sure, it’s romantic. Madison tells him it was worth losing her necklace because she loves him. And, after some hesitation, Allen finally manages to say he loves her back. But all is not well. Kornbluth presents his evidence for the existence of mermaids to Dr. Ross, head of the Naural History Museum. He laughs him out of the room. His former mentor, Dr. Zidell (Howard Morris, aka Gopher from Winnie the Pooh), chews him out for chasing fairytales, but Kornbluth insists that mermaids are real. Zidell was only telling him myths and legends for the fun of it, with no intention of Kornbluth devoting his life to something so insane. Incensed, Kornbluth vows that he’ll catch a mermaid and then they’ll all be sorry. He follows the couple through the city, trying to dump buckets of water on her, but he douses a completely different woman. Twice. Her husband is not pleased and beats the snot out of him.

Allen and Madison get to dinner without even noticing their stalker. Allen makes a few suggestions on how to deal with Madison’s ‘immigration problems’ to keep her with him, culminating in offering to let her marry him. She doesn’t get it, and the arrival of their meal interrupts the clumsy proposal. Madison picks up her lobster and chomps into it like an ear of corn, earning stares from the whole restaurant. Daryl Hannah, a lifelong vegetarian and animal rights activist, cried after every take. Even though they replaced the lobster’s innards with mashed potatoes and leeks, they still had to use a real lobster shell because the fake one didn’t look good on camera. Allen makes excuses for his girlfriend and they head outside to ice skate after dinner. No one, not even the extras, is dressed for the cold, even though the dialogue comments on Allen being cold. Madison’s wearing short sleeves! What.

Allen sits her down to finish what he started. Madison apologizes for her strange behavior with the lobster, but he’s already forgotten. No, he’s here to propose properly this time. After three days. One of which she couldn’t speak. Most of the female characters I’ve seen get criticized for this, like Ariel and Cinderella, have time skips between the story and their wedding. What’s his excuse? To his horror, she says no with no explanation. Alan tries to pry her big secret out of her to get her to change her mind, including a joke that somehow manages to be transphobic and progressive at the same time. But she won’t answer. So he blows up at her for daring to contradict him. As he screams, her eyes well up with tears and she runs away. At least he has the decency to regret it as the mood rain starts falling but yikes. It’s like he doesn’t want a relationship, he wants a wedding and a pet he can sleep with. He loves her when she’s quiet and obedient, but when she contradicts him, sets boundaries, or acts like her own person in any way he gets violently angry.

Allen tries to chase after her, but the guy renting the ice skates (the other writer, Babaloo Mandel) tackles him and scolds him for being pathetic. Mood rain starts falling in case you didn’t get that we’re supposed to be sad. While Allen aimlessly wanders the city, Madison shelters under a bridge, cowering from the water that could blow her secret. When the storm ends, she makes her way to the top of the bridge. She stares out over the river and starts to undo her dress. There’s no dialogue, but it’s shot brilliantly. You can feel Madison contemplating returning to her underwater home and leaving her love forever. Which she should do. Like right now.

But nah, that would involve giving the female character agency. So she finds Allen and eagerly agrees to drop her whole life and marry him. Ariel gets so much crap for dropping her whole life for a man, which as I’ll rant about soon is blatantly untrue if you actually watch the movie. I think she’s owed a big apology because Madison actually is about to drop her whole life for a man she just met. And he treats her like garbage! Like, what about the way he treated her last night convinced her she can’t live without him? This is why I hate rom-coms. Allen got his way so he’s elated, but before they can tie the knot she has to tell him everything. But she can’t. Not yet. Besides, they can’t get married until after the presidential dinner.

Dressed in their finest, Allen leads Madison into the banquet hall, still babbling to anyone who will listen that they’re getting married tonight. Kornbluth infiltrates the kitchen disguised as a busboy despite his broken arm, smuggling a water tank on his back. It would be so much easier to pose as a waiter and spill water on her. In fact, that actually happens with a real waiter in the garbage sequel! But I digress. The Secret Service spots the tank hidden under his jacket and assumes it’s a gun, so they drag him out of the banquet. Not-Reagan smooths over the commotion with a joke and drones on about stuff. Madison decides now is the time to spill the beans, so she takes Allen outside for some privacy. Kornbluth spots her. He seizes the hose. And the water strikes Madison.

The world goes into slow motion. She falls. Cameras flash. Allen stares, horrified, as an orange fishtail emerges from under Madison’s dress. Reporters trap her in a frenzied sea of humanity. Scared and overwhelmed, Madison screams for Allen to help her. And… he doesn’t. He just stands there, stone-faced. Government agents pick her up and carry her off. And he lets them. To be entirely fair, some shock is to be expected, but come on. She’s begging for help and you’re just going to let the woman you ostensibly love get kidnapped? You suck, dude. The government arrests him too, hauling him off to a secret government facility where they drop him naked in a tank to see if he’s a merman. After twelve hours, he doesn’t change, so the scientists drop a helpless Madison into the tank. Only the heart monitors break the awkward silence. He can’t stop staring at her tail. She reaches to touch him, but he flinches. So Madison dives under to cry.

Dr. Ross, the head of this operation, gives up on Allen and orders him to be taken away. The second the government van pulls away, reporters swarm him with increasingly ridiculous and invasive questions. Freddie comes to the rescue and frogmarches him through the market to the safety of their office. Allen flops onto the couch, moaning that he can’t believe everyone’s treating him like a freak because his girlfriend sprouted a tail. Yes, you are the victim, not the girl languishing in a tank as a GOVERNMENT CAPTIVE. This makes perfect sense. Poor you. Freddie gets as sick of all this whining as I am and lays into him with an epic Reason You Suck speech. Who cares if she’s half fish? She made him happy. He loves her. She inexplicably loves him. And that’s more important than anything. Honestly, this one moment almost redeems Freddie’s whole character for me. Almost.

The government’s tests take a toll on poor Madison. Her fins molt, and her scales lose their sparkle. She falls listless from the sling as they drop her into the pool. She stares out at Kornbluth, silently begging for help. And the once-deranged scientist realizes he’s made a mistake. He confronts Ross to make sure he’s thinking about her well-being. And… he isn’t. He really, really isn’t. He gleefully reveals his plans to dissect her to learn as much about her as possible, because just asking her never occurred to anyone. Kornbluth is horrified, but Ross just tells him to screw off because he really is crazy. That’s the last straw. Kornbluth knees down to apologize to the mermaid huddled in a corner.

There’s nothing he can do so he leaves to get his cracked teeth repaired. Miserable and guilty, he asks to have the work done without anesthetic as penance. The dentist gleefully agrees because apparently, this is the dentist’s office from Little Shop of Horrors. The set even looks kind of similar. Allen bursts in (how did he know where Kornbluth’s dentist was?) and kicks the dentist out so there are no witnesses. Kornbluth seizes a syringe to defend himself, but Allen overpowers him and Kornbluth accidentally jams Novocaine into his own leg. As he falls to his knees, he apologizes for everything. He never wanted to hurt anyone. He just wanted to be right. It’s so pathetic Allen just has to believe him, so Allen enlists him to help him save Madison.

Kornbluth, Allen, and Freddie march into the secret facility under the Natural History Museum. With his security clearance, Kornbluth introduces the brothers as the Swedish scientists the government is expecting. One soldier cheerfully asks about their trip in Swedish, and they manage to fake it decently enough. For now. But then the soldier keeps going, trying to engage them in conversation. And Freddie… well. Freddie responds. It’s not something you should say to a total stranger. He learned it from watching adult films. But it sure does get them in.

By now, Madison’s scales have almost entirely flaked away. She doesn’t have the energy to move off the tank bottom. But then she spots Allen. The heart monitor speeds up and she darts to the surface. Allen races to the tank and kisses her soundly, asking if there’s anything else she wants to share. Madison actually apologizes to Allen if he doesn’t love her anymore, which given the way he’s behaved is astounding. But Allen assures her he loves her more than anything, no matter what. It would be sweet if he wasn’t the one who needed to earn forgiveness. He’s screamed at her and abandoned her when she needed him, but sure, she’s the one who needs to apologize because she… was afraid he’d react like that. Okay. Whatever. But Freddie and Kornbluth look on with a smile as the lovers share another kiss.

Time to get her out of there. Kornbluth staggers out of the lab, screaming bloody murder about the mermaid shooting him with her laser eyes. All the lore about mermaids eating sailors and you go with laser eyes? Allen comes out with what he says is another scientist wrapped in a body bag, begging the guard to escape with his life. He does, letting Kornbluth and Allen leave unimpeded. Madison emerges from the body bag, wrapped in Freddie’s coat and a lab coat, and they pile her into Allen’s car. Dr. Ross and the real Swedish doctors enter the lab to find Freddie cheerfully perched on the empty tank using a stick and an extension cord as a fishing line. He’s arrested and that’s the last we see of him.

Look at the time! It’s Car Chase O’Clock! Soldiers swarm the streets with tanks and helicopters, determined to get their mermaid back. It doesn’t look good, so Kornbluth hops out of the car to sacrifice himself, stopping only to apologize to Madison. It’s about time someone did, so she rewards him with a kiss. As the car zooms away, he stands in the middle of the street to hold up a tank. It lasts about thirty seconds before he goes flying into a sewer but it’s the thought that counts. At least he buys enough time for Allen to get to the edge of the Hudson River. He and Madison embrace, realizing she can’t stay, no matter how much she wants to. But maybe Allen could go with her? After all, she kept him safe when they were children.

Only now, after an hour and a half of evidence, does Allen realize the mermaid he saw in Cape Cod and the mermaid who found him in Cape Cod and swam to New York just to be with him are one and the same. I kind of understand him not realizing it when they were in the park with the fountain, but he’s known she’s a mermaid for a while now, there’s no excuse. Allen throws his arms around her and decides he’ll go into the water with her and come back to visit Freddie. But Madison’s face falls. He can’t. He has to choose between Madison and the rest of his life. Okay, that is an absurd thing to ask anyone to do for a romantic relationship, but it’s interesting that the guy is put into this position. It’s almost always expected of the girl so this is kind of refreshing. Also, if given the choice between capitalism and being a mermaid, who wouldn’t choose being a mermaid?

At first, Allen decides he can’t leave everything he knows, so with one last kiss, Madison dives into the Hudson. She’s probably radioactive now. That water’s gross. Seconds later, Allen realizes he can’t live without her and dives in after her. He can swim now. Madison darts for him as government divers give chase. She smacks one in the junk with her tail, and Allen bites another. Being together gives them new strength, so they successfully fight off the bad guys. And now, after all those trials and tribulations, our lovers are finally free to be together. They swim off through the majestic coral reefs of the Hudson (?), hand in hand, until they reach the magical mermaid city. And then the movie ends. You can’t cut off right when you get to the magical mermaid city! I don’t care that it’s hard to film! I want to see that!

Ah well. We’ll get to Atlantica in five years and it’s pretty much the same thing. But better. Unfortunately, this is one of those times where a movie that captured your imagination as a child really doesn’t hold up. As a child, I pretty much only registered the fun mermaid stuff and the delights of watching Madison discover the human world. But as an adult, I just can’t get past how much this movie exemplified the “Born Sexy Yesterday” power fantasy. The writing even goes as far as to paint Madison as being in the wrong for acting independently of Allen’s wishes! And that’s before you get into the entire character of Freddie who… the less said the better.

Yet even with those glaring flaws, it’s not a terrible movie. Yes, I have nostalgia goggles. But fish-out-of-water is one of my favorite styles of comedy, and some of the antics are legitimately funny. The casting is flawless, too. Tom Hanks and John Candy manage to inject some manner of likability into their loathsome characters through sheer charisma, and Daryl Hannah makes the most out of a pretty thankless role. All three overcome the script’s many shortcomings with aplomb. Ron Howard’s direction is nothing to sneeze at, either. He may not be the most interesting auteur out there, but his understated work allows the actors to do what they do best and creates a dreamscape out of the ordinary city. And of course, the fun mermaid stuff is timeless.

CHARACTERS

Madison has the makings of a fun character. Despite being out of her element, she’s self-assured and goes after what she wants. It’s implied she’s been thinking of Allen as long as he’s been thinking of her, and when she finds his wallet, she decides she’s not wasting another moment. She’s in complete control of her sexuality, which I find admirable even if that detail as written is problematic at best. But weirdly, all her big personality moments come before she learns to talk. Once she can communicate with Allen, it all goes out the window, which sucks. She’s still adorable, though.

Daryl Hannah (Blade Runner, Kill Bill) looks every inch a mermaid come to life, with her crimped hair and Amazonian figure. She had a lifelong fascination with Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid story (same), to the point where she would tie her legs together to swim as a child (also same). So, getting to be a real-life mermaid was a dream come true. She learned to swim in her fully functional tail so fast that her safety team couldn’t keep up! In fact, she could swim so fast and hold her breath so long that they decided they didn’t need stunt doubles.

That tail was designed by visual effects legend Robert Short, who later won an Oscar for his work on Beetlejuice (well deserved, that movie has some of the best makeup effects on film). Howard intended for it to be more dolphin-like since she’s an aquatic mammal, but Short decided to make it bright orange with a koi fish design to make it stand out. And it works gorgeously. The tail weighed 35 pounds and had to be glued to her body with Krazyglue, making it so hard to remove that she had to go full days without eating. The rest of the cast often dropped French fries into her tank like an animal in an aquarium!

Allen Bauer is supposed to be a charming everyman. And to be entirely fair, Tom Hanks is incredibly charming. That’s why we all love Tom Hanks. I don’t have to tell you what Tom Hanks is in. He’s Tom Hanks. This was his first big theatrical movie (Mazes and Monsters was a TV movie), and baby Tom Hanks looks like a puppy in human form. But oh, honey, that script is doing you no favors. We’re clearly supposed to think of him as a hopeless romantic who finally found the love he’s craved all his life, but it reads as an unhinged, possessive lunatic. He only acts romantic towards her when she’s climbing all over him and doing what he wants. The second she contradicts him, he throws a fit until she apologizes. And that is… ugh. In another actor’s hands, this man would be unwatchable. Just like…

Freddie Bauer is a sexual predator played for laughs. The movie opens with him upskirting multiple women! And he does it again! That would not fly today and I’m pretty horrified Disney allowed it even with the new grown-up label. But like Hanks, John Candy (Uncle Buck, Spaceballs) manages to make the character… if not exactly entirely likable, then tolerable, and by the end I found myself rooting for him despite everything. After all, it’s Freddie that gets Allen to stop feeling sorry for himself when his girlfriend’s in trouble, and the scene at the bar where he’s fumbling through taking care of his drunk brother is legitimately hilarious. John Candy was an absolute gift to the world of comedy and we lost him far, far too soon. Disney just went waaaay too far with the mature humor.

Walter Kornbluth gets both the most compelling subplot in the movie and a very rare redemption arc that works. I would love to see a version of this where the romance is… if not nixed, then takes a backseat to the mermaid trying to avoid detection from this obsessive weirdo. The scenes where Kornbluth realizes he messed up are some of the most effective in the movie, thanks to the silent acting of Eugene Levy (American Pie, Schitt’s Creek). I forgot he was in this and I’m so glad he is.

MUSIC

Lee Holdridge’s (Mr. Mom) soundtrack is a little dated with all the synth, but perfectly suited to the film. I mean, look at Daryl Hannah’s hair, this whole movie is super 80s (and, to be fair, it’s nice to see Disney realizing what year is after a whole decade that felt stuck 20 years in the past). Much of the score revolves around variations on one main love theme, which is lovely and dreamy and lends itself well to changes in instrumentation and tempo to draw emotion out. It’s more effective than the script in the “Allen acts like a jerkwad because Madison won’t abandon her life for him” story beat, that’s for sure. Unfortunately, they add words to the song.

Love Came For Me is wretched. It’s such a boring song, which is amazing because the melody is so pretty as an instrumental. It’s like someone parodying an 80s love ballad. Like, I know it is an 80s love ballad but wow. This sure is one. Rita Coolidge (All Time High from the James Bond film Octopussy) is a fine singer but yikes. Its biggest problem is it’s so generic – this could be any romance, and Madison is definitely not an ordinary lead. Parts of the score of the underwater scenes encapsulate the way light moves through water (and actually sound a lot like the piano glissando that opens Part of Your World), so something a little more ocean-y might work better even if it doesn’t have the radio appeal they so clearly hoped for.

ARTISTRY

Ron Howard explicitly tried to avoid the harsh lighting and stagnant camera work that characterized the comedy genre up to this point. Donald Peterman (Men in Black, Addams Family Values, the Jim Carey Grinch) rose to the challenge and the results are gorgeous. The whole movie is lit in soft focus, which feels romantic and adds a magical, dreamlike feeling to the streets of New York. And then you get underwater, where they went out of their way to make the bright blue pop against the orange of Madison’s fins. As I snarked about in the main review, these were very clearly not shot in New York or Cape Cod, but in a place called Gorda Cay in the Bahamas. But you won’t find Gorda Cay on a map these days. Disney later purchased it and renamed it Castaway Cay, the private island used for shore excursions on the Disney Cruise Line!

THEME PARK INFLUENCE

The fountain that inexplicably found its way into Allen’s one-bedroom apartment found its way back out again. It landed in a courtyard in Disney-MGM Studios when it opened in 1989, possibly to capitalize on that year’s mermaid fever. The screen-used prop lived outside Studio Catering Company and the Backlot Tour through many massive changes, including the name change to Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Alas, it did not make it to a galaxy far, far away when the Backlot area was demolished to make way for Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge. But Walt Disney World does still have a little Splash if you know where to look. One of the screen-used mermaid tails is on display behind one of the three bars at Planet Hollywood at Disney Springs! Sadly, I don’t know which one.

Speaking of Disney Springs, there was almost a more substantial Splash reference. Well, it was still Downtown Disney at the time, but that’s beside the point. When the Pleasure Island area was in development to compete with the nightlife sprouting up in the Orlando area, Imagineers planned several over-the-top clubs loaded with special effects and unique gimmicks. One of these would have been Madison’s Dive, a sailor bar where a window would look out into the lake. And just like the bar’s namesake, live performing mermaids would periodically swim past the window. Unfortunately, Pleasure Island went waaaaay over budget, causing several plans to fall through including Madison’s.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I really, really wish this movie held up. Parts of it still make me so, so happy. But I can’t overlook how slimy and chauvinistic it really is when you watch with grown-up eyes. Still, there’s as much her to love as there is to hate, and it’s worth a watch just for the special effects. Just… brace yourself.

Favorite scene: Madison swimming to the shipwreck. It’s the most we get to see of her in her element and it is delightful.

Final rating: 5/10 and it pains me to do it.