Why did the critics maul our mermaids?🧜‍♀️

This week’s recommended movie is Mermaids (1990).

I cannot stress this point enough: if you haven’t seen Mermaids in recent years, you really should. I don’t think it’s an overstatement to describe it as joyous.

That said, I’ll admit, I’ve always had a soft spot for this sharply-written slice of nostalgia (based on the novel by Patty Dann). This film has been, in my opinion, woefully overlooked and critiqued because it doesn’t star James Bond, Jason Bourne, Iron Man, or Daniel Stern.

For those of you wondering what the Daniel Stern name-drop is all about, I’d first like to point out that I really like Daniel Stern. I don’t know him personally or anything but he never fails to entertain me whenever he pops up on screen. The reason I name-drop him above is because he appeared in the 1982 film Diner which critics RAVED about.

For those of you who haven’t seen it, it’s about a bunch of guys living in Baltimore in 1959. They are all friends and they hang out at this diner. I’m somewhat understating the plot for sarcastic effect here. Over the course of the film we do learn about the character’s lives, loves and challenges. We also learn that if a guy has to devise a test about football in order to know if you’re the right one to marry, you should probably run screaming in the opposite direction. Or, you know, maybe that’s just what I took away from the movie.

On reviewing Diner on release, Chicago Sun Times critic Roger Ebert stated: Diner is often a very funny movie, although I laughed most freely not at the sexual pranks but at the movie's accurate ear, as it reproduced dialogue with great comic accuracy.

On reviewing Mermaids, a film that explores the lives, loves and challenges of a female family living in 1963 small town Massachusetts, Roger Ebert had this to say: Mermaids is not exactly good, but it is not boring.

And that is not exactly a glowing report, is it?

Now, to be fair, that is not the full attributed quote and just showing you that portion of Ebert’s review demonstrates how easy it is to cherry pick quotes to support your arguments on the internet. He did go on to praise the acting: Winona Ryder, in another of her alienated outsider roles, generates real charisma. And what the movie is saying about Cher is as elusive as it is intriguing.

I am also unfairly picking Mr Ebert out of the line-up because he is a recognisable name to most people who love movies. At the time of writing, his faint praise of Mermaids is echoed across the board with Diner receiving a 92% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes while Mermaids sits at 71%.

Why am I making a comparison between Diner and Mermaids? Well, they sit in the same genre and are set in roughly the same time period. They both boast some excellent dialogue and, arguably, both capture faithfully the antics and concerns of men in the case of Diner and women in the case of Mermaids. They were released just eight years apart and yet were given very different treatment by the critics.

To me, this is another example of films featuring male characters and relationships being given much more of a free pass than those that focus on women. I will argue until I’m blue in the face that Mermaids boasts just as good a script as Diner and, in places, it’s doing much more interesting things. Regardless of what the critics might have said about it more than thirty years ago now, Mermaids still delivers what so many other pictures fail to: a compelling character-driven narrative that both tickles and moves the viewer. The narrow portrait of manhood depicted in Diner simply cannot boast the same. It is too ugly. Too insistent that men have to adhere to the worst demands of the patriarchy. Conversely, Mermaids laughs in the face of the patriarchy from start to finish.

Hopping back to Daniel Stern for just a moment, there is actually a bona fide connection between him and this week’s recommended movie. Although Mermaids originally hit cinemas in the US in December 1990, it was released several months later in most other countries to avoid clashing with the international mega hit Home Alone. Given how badly things turned out for Harry and Marv when they pitted themselves against Macaulay Culkin, it’s hardly surprising that the good folks at Orion Pictures had second thoughts about trying it for themselves.

With a runtime of one hour fifty minutes, Mermaids is tightly-edited and doesn’t outstay its welcome. Another aspect of moviemaking that many modern-day directors, and even those who have been in the game for a long time (too long?), seem to have lost touch with.

If you’ve never seen this movie, or if it’s been a while since you enjoyed it, I recommend tracking it down. Not least because Cher walking down the street wearing a blue polka dot dress and sucking a lollipop is everything.

Paid members can find my carefully curated notes on this movie, with spoilers included, below.