Rating: PG13
Genre:
Comedy Drama
Release Date: 02/06/2001
SubTitles: French/Espanol
Dubbed: English/French/Espanol
Sound: 2/5.1
Run Time: 110 Minutes
Distributor/Studio: MGM
There's no point in recounting the many production problems and personal hostilities which plagued the filming of
Mermaids: the end result is all that matters. Set in the 1960s, the film details the relationship between an unorthodox, unmarried vagabond mother (
Cher), and her two daughters. The 15-year-old (
Winona Ryder), continually embarrassed by her flamboyant mother, wants to be the world's greatest Catholic; the nine-year-old (
Christina Ricci) would be satisfied with becoming the world's champion swimmer. Moving with her family to New England, the older daughter falls in love from afar with the groundskeeper (
Michael Schoeffling) from a nearby convent, while Mom takes up with a lonely salesman (
Bob Hoskins).
Mermaids is perceptively adapted from the warmly comic novel by
Patty Dann.
~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide