Fishtales

The cast may have seemed to have had fun filming this--but you certainly won't.

Classicist goes to Greek island with his daughter to work on his research on ancient love spells. There his daughter befriends a mermaid, with whom she subsequently attempts to fix up her reclusive and work-obsessed father.

Sounds good when I put it that way but sitting through the film is a very different experience. If I had to describe this entire movie in one word, it would be "jagged." The plot lurches abruptly in random directions, with characters' motivations suddenly shifting unexplainably or we see them performing actions which are bizarre and out of place.

Not long after the professor arrives on the island, he calls Oxford and, in a drunken stupor, tells them he quits his job. There is no lead up to this. Nothing. Out of nowhere, a perfectly composed researcher is shown drunk and quitting. His daughter, who befriends the mermaid, does all she can to make her father and the mermaid meet only to suddenly change her mind because she realizes her father is in love with "a fish." Why is the daughter's motivation suddenly twisted around 180 degrees? In another scene, we see the daughter walking into a shop and addressed by a female shopkeeper with a dubbed male voice who snorts, pig-like. Why? We will never know. The villain is played by a local fisherman with a mechanical arm (your guess it as good as mine here) who wants to capture the mermaid for his own profit.

Countless of scenes consist of snippets of dialog which seem to have belonged in a bigger conversation. Then the scene cuts to yet another in a long stream of bizarre happenings.

I don't want to put this film down, because I rather like its strange but original nature. However, I must warn any potential viewers: If you are looking for an off-beat, strange little movie that'll slightly perplex you while it throws in a few slightly amusing parts, then sure, go see "Fishtales." However, if you are looking to be ENTERTAINED--if you want a movie with a coherent plot, which is well-paced, moves in a pleasant manner and captures you attention without you having to constantly pause and ask yourself, "what the..."--see "Splash" instead.

Simple, innocent and romantically fun. A good family movie to enjoy.

Dr. Thomas Bradley (Billy Zane) is a bumbling Oxford University professor of classical Greece. He is given one more summer to finish his database of ancient Greek. Another professor offers him a villa in Spetses, Greece. He travels there with his 12 year old daughter Serena. Captain Mavros sends him overboard. Thomas can't swim and he's rescued by mermaid Neried (Kelly Brook). Serena is looking for love for his father and asks Neried to translated old writings.

This is sort of like a bad kids movie. It's got sloppy slapstick. Billy Zane is wrong for a bumbling professor but the little girl is perfectly fine. I can't believe this got shown in Cannes. That is the last place to show this. This is a weakly made kids fantasy. It's more straight to video.

exciting plot,funny characters,uplifting jokes ,ALKI David VERY PROMISING AS mr .MAVROS, BILLY ZANE seducing as usual, cinematography very fulfilling creates as many variants as the characters being realistic and magical the same time ,editing too cuty but works well, a slower pace would be probably more funny, script is strong and very inventive with good jokes and twisted story lines that do not allow the viewer to be bored in a linear narration. A down to earth mermaid completes the puzzle with her humanistic approach and tolerance of the mortals, worth seeing it more than once as pure entertainment,take your kids or date with you. visually one of the more exciting images combining oxford atmosphere with Greek island taste and smell,yes images work so well that you almost touch and smell the locations.

Der Schnibbler was too kind when he called this movie jagged. The screenwriter seems to have no clue about anything. I howled in the beginning when Billy Zane's character is warned of the precarious position of a "visiting professor emeritus." ("Emeritus" is a fancy word for "retired", hardly appropriate for the youthful Zane, and visitors don't retire because they never had a permanent job in the first place.) The mermaid doesn't make any attempt to hide herself, but the villagers are unaware of her. When the daughter first encounters her, both characters are unsurprised and swim together like old friends, with no hesitation or getting-to-know-you scenes. I could go on and on.

The filmmakers seem to have been making up the plot as they went along, while suffering some sort of amnesia as to what came before. Yes, it's a fantasy, but there is zero internal logic. And whenever they run out of ideas, they resort to gross-out jokes. (TWO crotch blows in 15 seconds? Give me a break.)

I will, however, admit that all the leads are photogenic. I hope that next time they will read the script before signing up.