Splash, Too

'Splash' was my favorite movie as a small child. I even named my pet turtles Madison and Allen. So as you can imagine when 'Splash Too' premiered on TV you couldn't have found a more excited kid. Unfortunately I remember even then thinking there was something very wrong with this continuation. Skip ahead twenty years later; I find this unworthy sequel on youtube and decide to give it another chance.

My first and biggest gripe; where was the military? Remember the reason Madison and Allen left in the first place? Did the United States government and the rest of the world just forget that Allen Bauer broke the only living mermaid on record out of a government facility and then escaped into the ocean with her? They didn't even change their names! Eddie should have been in jail! Even if you ignore that inexcusable continuity error there are many, many other things wrong with this movie.

Amy Yasbeck and Todd Waring give decent Madison and Allen impersonations but they simply don't evoke the same chemistry or charm the original pair displayed. The dialogue is corny, and the characters are caricatures of their original counterparts. All that and slap a truly abysmal theme song on it and you've got yourself a real sinker.

The bottom line is that this is a perfect example of what happens when you try to continue a story that doesn't need to be continued. It should really be renamed 'Splash Too Much.'

Now I came across this movie during a period of channel surfing and I tell you I wish I had just surfed on. This is terrible. I have not seen the original for many years but remember it in a much fonder light than this drivel. What we have here is a pants film with a poor story, wooden acting and sloppy direction. How this ever got the green light is beyond me. You get character TV actors who are not worthy of gracing a movie filling roles filled by actors who on the whole went on to bigger and better things (sorry Daryl Hannah) and doing an extremely poor job of it. The script is worse than your average TV sit-com and the direction is just TV plodder like. The supporting characters have little to no value and are so flat I think I will coin the term one dimensional for them. Avoid at all times.

Like most people writing a review on this, I'm a big fan of the original movie. I saw Splash Too a couple of years after it came out and watched it repeatedly because, you know - mermaids! But even as a 10 year old I was fully aware that as sequels go, this was right up there with the worst. As another reviewer succinctly put it: when hardly any of the original cast or crew want anything to do with a sequel, take the hint. That is a bad omen.

The replacement actors were not good, but to be fair on them I think Tom Hanks and Daryl Hannah themselves would have struggled with such a terrible script and direction. Rescuing the dolphin could have been a good plot if it hadn't been handled so feebly and cringely. That sums the whole sorry affair up really - cringe, cringe, cringe. I've given a generous 4 thanks to nostalgia and the fact that Amy Yasbeck was ok as a mermaid all the time she was underwater and therefore not delivering any cringey lines of nonsense.

I saw this film for the first time today. Having seen the original, I didn't have very high expectations in this one, with the cast being completely new and different. But, I was positively surprised. It is actually a good film, more than just an attempt to make more money out of the concept of a mermaid who comes up on land, from the original film. Sequels are rarely as good as the originals, and I think that's true of this one too, but it's a lot better than many sequels are, compared to their originals. It's definitely worth seeing and if you like the original, you won't get disappointed.

As bad sequels go, this one is right up there with Freddy Kruger's Cash-in Christmas Special part VI.

Now if you can't get one of the main characters to appear, then you think long and hard, and if you can cast someone else and get away with it - as in Silence of the Lambs/Hannibal - then you make the new film.

But when practically NONE of the original cast OR the production team OR writers want to do a sequel, it becomes a really bad idea. A really bad idea.

That said, it has some good ideas which would've worked well in the original Splash.