Good stuff. Cher plays the realistic slutty single mom who is never really happy and doesn't know how to commit to any man. Bob Hoskins plays the realistic average guy who wants the hot mom but can't quite have her. ChrisTEENY Ricci is one of the most bad ass 5 year olds or however old she is in this. Chugging red wine and holding her head under water for fun. But it's Winona Ryder who really shines through as the troubled 15 year old who is completely focused on 2 things: 1. becoming a nun, and 2. losing her virginity to the cute bus driver who drives her to school. The awkward "love story" is quite compelling, as is the believable tension that is constantly erupting within the walls of the family's home. This is probably the greatest performance I have ever seen from Winona. She is intense and emotional throughout and it's extremely genuine feeling. A classic chick flick right here! It's got a lot of personality! Very well done!

Mermaids is directed by Richard Benjamin, has a screenplay by June Roberts, is based on the novel by Patty Dann and stars Cher, Bob Hoskins, Winona Ryder and Christina Ricci.Charlotte Flax(Winona Ryder)and her younger sister Kate(Christina Ricci)have to learn to cope with their mum moving them all over the country whenever things don't go right for her in her failed relationships.Their mum(Cher)is a glamorous woman who can be a bit shocking at times.She adores Kate but doesn't know what to do with Charlotte who's just trying to find her place in the world.They family move to a small town near to a convent(at which Charlotte is thrilled) and she ends up falling in love with the gorgeous caretaker there Joe(Michael Schoeffling).Mrs Flax finds romance of her own with kind shoe salesman Lou Landsky(Bob Hoskins)who is the one man to reach her heart and he may just be the man for her.Funny and moving Mermaids will have you laughing and crying. The whole cast give superb performances especially Cher and Winona. A great family film.

I walked into the cinema expecting this to be a film. I was right, but I thought it was going to be about women with tails swimming about the ocean, perhaps a sequel to The Little Mermaid. I was wrong. This is a film about a woman and her two daughters riding from town to town trying to get a break. Who cares. Who writes these things? Who watches these things? Seriously. Do you want to watch a film about a mummy shouting at her daughters and flirting with Bob Hopkins? No. Then they burst into a rendition of the Cheep Cheep song written by Dusky Springfield. It wasn't long before I fell asleep and dreamed a dream.I dreamt that I was a mermaid, or in this case a merman like in He-Man. I had a big 3-pronged fork which I used to catch my dinner- giant shrimp, octopussies, sea burgers etc. I wasn't the King or anything, but I was pretty well off as far as ocean dwellers go. I had a few concubines who would answer my every sordid whim. The main one looked like Winorda Rider so the film had some impact on me. One day I was relaxing on the ocean floor when a little lost boy swam round the rock shouting 'Kali Ma! Kali Maaa!' This disturbed me greatly so I gathered a group of my mates and went off to investigate. The source of the trouble was a giant dragon which had erupted from the ocean floor. We started to beat it with sticks and throw crabs at it but it laughed and turned into Les from Coronation Street. I was quite taken by surprise, and even more so when I looked down and saw that I was no longer a merman but a cup of tea sitting on a table on the set of Britain's most beloved soap. Vera had a suck of me, then Rita, then the ginger one, and Les dipped a digestive in me. Even now I feel his crumbs floating around my insides. All of a sudden Chair came running in singing the Woop Woop song, her and Bob Hostile dancing together, faster and faster. The youngest daughter from Mermaids (Lionel Ricci) came bounding in, tripped and banged into me. I tipped over the edge of the table and fell towards the carpet. Just before I hit the ground I woke up. The cinema was empty and the screen was blank. I realised I had slept over so decided to get up and go home for some sausages and whiskey.I noticed my watch (a Timex) had stopped. I walked out and found that no-one was around so I thought they were all in other screens, watching better movies. My footsteps seemed louder than usual, and there was an eerie quiet. An empty bag of minstrels rustled on the floor. Eager to put the whole episode behind me I made my way down the stairs and out they door. What greeted me I can only describe as silent carnage. Cars lay upturned on the streets, bikes and clothes lay strewn in the highest branches of the trees and on top of the lamp posts. Fires were burning all around, but in their dying stages. There was no wind. No sound. Everything seemed stale and artificial like a reality TV show commissioned by Channel 4. I had a feeling in my groin like some unknown force from centuries ago had taken residence there with no intention of leaving. The air had no taste but seemed like Polystyrene. Worse, there were no people. Shell shocked I stumbled across the street, still looking left and right for traffic even though the nearest car sat half in half out of the third storey of an office block behind me. I entered the corner shop looking for some fellow humans; not were to be found. Wait! Maybe some took shelter in the pub next door from whatever had happened here. What had happened? Terrorist? Aliens? Bomb? Earthquake? Act of God? I couldn't be sure, and my thoughts were not following logically anyway. Words bounced spontaneously about my head. Like. Unfocused. Wasps. Chasing. Jigsaw. Lullaby of descent into something something hell don't can't know no this isn't me here, why, why not whine aught? The pub was no less empty than the shop before. No-one anywhere. This was 4 days ago. I am home. I am alone. It's getting dark and I mostly get scared at night. Mostly. I haven't met another living soul in days. TV and radio are gone. Is there anybody out there? Let me know. I'll be at the town hall at midday everyday for an hour. I won't stay around for long though. I'm taking my bike down south to see if every town is the same. Head for the coast. Get a boat or swim if I must. Leave this place and find another way. Surely this can't be the only place. Please God.Best Bit: Taking all the DVDs from HMV now that everyone's gone.

What diabolical karma is needed to so effect a large group of writers, a director, producers that they create, with one large exception, a movie that stifles honesty in virtually every scene? I give this dishonest film a 2 instead of a 1 because of the brilliant performance of Winona Ryder (at 18, how was it possible for her to escape the banal direction of Richard Benjamin?). But Ms. Ryder aside, the film has some notorious performances and character creation in it; Christina Ricci, trying her best, has created a loathsomely "cute" character. When this character falls into the frigid waters of a small pond I was praying that there would be a final shot of her breathing bubbles stopping: what an insufferable little brat! Cher's entire persona and character made me think of what some critic said of a Katherina Hepburn Broadway performance: "she runs the gamut of emotions from A to B"! The Mask of Cher, possibly o.k. to see once in a career, had become institutionalized by 1990 and I found myself having to look elsewhere on the screen when she appeared (in this case not much of a hardship given Winona Ryder's nuanced portrayal). Director Benjamin also should be given another dubious award. For the first and only time in my experiencing Bob Hoskins career, he is made to look foolish and bad.In closing I must mention that I have never in the past, as far as I can remember, mentioned another reviewer's comment; we can't and don't, as people, have the same reactions to things, but in the case of someone who commented earlier on this site, who mentioned Truffault's "400 Blows" in the same breath as the atrocity "Mermaids", I must set a precedent. The "400 Blows" is one of the most honest films about a youngster I have ever seen. "Mermaids" is among the most dishonest one I have seen in many years. Compare Truffault and Benjamin favorably? My mind boggles and shudders simultaneously!