Granted, I knew very well what I went into when I sat down to watch "A Mermaid's Tale". But I still did sit down and gave the movie a go, on the odd chance that it might actually be a good movie.
I will say that the storyline turned out exactly as I had expected, for better or worse. I had expected this to be a family movie of sorts, with the main focus on a female audience, and "A Mermaid's Tale" was exactly that.
The story is about 12 year old Ryan (played by Caitlin Carmichael) who has returned to a fishing town with her father Matt (played by Jerry O'Connell) in order to be at her grand father Art's (played by Barry Bostwick) side, as his health is declining. She accidentally loses her necklace that contains a photo of her deceased mother in the water, and a mermaid named Coral (played by Sydney Scotia) returns it to her. The two young women, human and mermaid, become best of friends.
"A Mermaid's Tale" is not a bad movie, but it is very generic and predictable, and it does follow the exact recipe that you would expect from a movie such as this. And the movie offers no surprises or plot twists along the way.
It should be said that the acting in the movie was actually adequate, and people did fair jobs with their given roles and characters.
Some of the underwater scenes are just downright atrocious to look at, as they are so obviously fake that it just screams at you. And the scene during the secret mermaid cave was just downright laughable to look at; it was so painstakingly obvious all green screen. And it wasn't even good green screen. First of all, the background looked so fake, and you could actually see the background through the hair of the mermaid queen. But at least that whole scene had me laughing hard.
I also noticed a continuity error in the movie, as Coral and Ryan had exchanged necklaces, then in some later scene they were wearing their own necklaces, only to have it switched back again in a following scene.
All in all, if you sit down as a family with a young pre-teen daughter, then you will definitely enjoy the movie. However, if you just sit down to watch it as an adult, the end result of the movie is just less than mediocre.
