Splash

For many contemporary viewers, 1984's SPLASH will play like some male adolescent fantasy.  With its story of a mysterious, confused woman who turns up naked at the Statue of Liberty and begins a romance with a lovelorn regular joe, the fuel to the fire is stoked.  That this woman will prove to be subservient will seal the deal for our would-be Pauline Kaels, with great apologies to the late film critic.  That is actually a very poor comparison.  As caustic and infuriating as her reviews could be, she understood film, what makes it live, breathe, or die.  Maybe she agreed with the male fantasy assessment, but she also knew how to judge a film beyond her own bias, prejudices, and hang-ups.  Or more accurately, beyond her cultural piety.  Something many these days are unwilling or simply unable to do.

Said woman (Daryl Hannah) is in fact a mermaid.  The regular joe is named Allen (Tom Hanks), co-owner of a wholesale fruit and vegetable business.  They originally met years ago as kids on Cape Cod, an encounter Allen would come to dismiss as a hallucination.  They meet again in nearly the same spot twenty years later, and after a boating mishap, she rescues him before disappearing back out to sea.  He forgets his wallet there, and she makes her way to NYC to find him.  After getting arrested for indecent exposure, the mermaid, who later names herself Madison after observing a street sign, begins a relationship with Allen.  The girl of his dreams, it turns out.  

But...he doesn't know she's a mermaid.  Bumbling scientist Walter Kornbluth (Eugene Levy) does, and spends much of the movie trying in vain to prove it.  It leads to some achingly funny gags.  Will true love survive Allen's ultimate realization that he is smitten with a fish?

SPLASH is director Ron Howard's second high profile film, following NIGHT SHIFT (his very first, GRAND THEFT AUTO was a low budgeter shot while he was on Happy Days) and his ability to milk big laughs and warm heartedness is still impressive.  The script by his old sitcom buddies Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel (along with Bruce Jay Friedman) adds to that a running gag of how rude New Yorkers can be - my favorite being the cab driver who refuses to move his car even when the Army needs to get through.  Everything in this movie comes together, even when it threatens to get too silly.  With this cast, I doubt any directorial micromanagement was necessary.  Hanks gets laughs as the straight guy.  John Candy gets even more as his playboy brother.  He and Levy don't even need to do anything to elicit smiles.  Dody Goodman is positively uproarious as Hanks' distsy secretary. 

And Ms. Hannah? She has the toughest role, but plays it just right, even getting a laugh or two herself.  And her subservience is believable given that she never really interacted with many humans before.  I guess if this were a horror movie she would've just eaten everybody.