MERMAID GOT MARRIED

This significantly less famous movie is the Hong Kong version of Splash. As the lead pair are Christy Chung and Cheng Ekin, both of whom probably mean nothing to you if you're unfamiliar with Asian cinema. Anyway, like most HK romantic comedies Mermaid Got Married is sweet, surreal and sometimes downright crazy, though you have to admit that they made the love story a bit more believable than Splash's love-at-first-sight. On the flipside, the ending makes NO sense whatsoever. (What's up with that, HK cinema?)

There is a mermaid (Christy) and there is a man (Ekin). As children, they mutually save each other's lives. Years later when the guy falls into the ocean, the mermaid, remembering how he helped her once before, uses her magic pearl to save his life. But when the guy accidentally (and unknowingly) swallows the pearl, the mermaid loses her passport home. So she has no choice but to brave the strange new world of land in order to get back the pearl from the man who swallowed it. Along the way, they accidentally fall in love.

So the mermaid/human love story and the fact that the mermaid gains legs whenever she's dry was basically lifted from Splash, though the first noticeable difference this movie has is that they only fall in love eventually. Other significant differences are that the guy works as a part-time gym teacher at a local school where the mermaid "accidentally" enrols, and there's a silly love-quadrangle between the mermaid, her guy, and two of the students at the school.

Though really, the thing this movie did really well were the underwater mermaid scenes. There were two lengthy underwater sequences where Christy Chung gets to flex her tail, and that makes me happy. Sure, the tail looked a little more fake than the one in Splash, but Christy Chung was breathtakingly graceful as she did her underwater mermaid moves. Daryl Hannah can make you believe that mermaids exist, but Christy Chung can make you believe that they caused men to crash their ships into rocks. As a bonus, I loved the Faye Wong song they used as the theme of the movie. (I know people who wouldn't agree with me, but that's okay.)

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