SPLASH - DVD review

"All my life I've been waiting for someone, and when I find her, she's a fish!"

"Nobody said love's perfect."

Such is the exchange between Allen Bauer and his older brother Freddie when Allen finds out his true love is a mermaid. The 1984 romantic comedy "Splash" was at the time a hit at the box office and a hit with critics. The folks at Buena Vista have made it available again on DVD in this newest, 20th Anniversary Edition.

I came to the film in the late eighties when it appeared on tape, and I was wholly captivated by it. But not having seen it since then, I wasn't sure how it would hold up. Such is memory that we tend to overemphasize our fondest and maybe our worst recollections, and I'm afraid "Splash" didn't make as much of an impression on me this time around. That's not to say I didn't still like it; just not as much as I had hoped to enjoy it again.

Little Ronnie Howard finally became Ron Howard directing this film. He had directed "Night Shift" a year or two before, but only Michael Keaton was remembered from that one. "Splash" made the director a household name again. Likewise star Tom Hanks. His TV sitcom "Bosom Buddies" had ended, and his career was at a standstill until "Splash" pushed him to the top of the big-screen world. He never had to look back. Ditto with Daryl Hannah as the mermaid and Eugene Levy as the goofy scientist.

Hanks plays Allen Bauer, the owner of a Manhattan produce market. He's a fellow who's having no luck at all with women, his latest girlfriend having just left him. He swears he will never be able to fall in love. Which works until he spills out of a boat one afternoon off Cape Cod, can't swim, hits his head, and is rescued by a gorgeous mermaid. Only he doesn't know she's a mermaid, because when she's out of the water, her fins turn into shapely legs. They both fall instantly in love.

From this point, the movie becomes an engaging romance, with Allen eventually taking the mermaid back to his apartment where she learns English almost overnight by watching TV, assumes the name Madison after the avenue, and has a field day with Allen's credit card. She's fascinated by everything human, having never been one.

Hanks is young and sweet and innocent in appearance, a bit whiny but charming. Hannah is young, but even sweeter, more innocent, and more winsome than Hanks. In fact, it's Hannah's totally appealing simplicity, her naivete, that makes the film a success. She is not only a vision of beauty, she's a wonder in the part. Without her, I'm afraid we'd have only a clever fantasy idea and little more.

On top of the difficulty Madison has in trying to keep her being a mermaid a secret from her newfound love, we have two other conflicts, one involving Allen's older brother, Freddie (John Candy), a would-be playboy who keeps getting married and divorced and butting in and out of the story; and another conflict involving a nutty scientist, Walter Kornbluth (Eugene Levy), trying to make a name for himself by proving that Madison is in reality a mermaid. "I'm really a nice guy," he says. "If I had friends, you could ask them."

The story is at its best, and funniest, when it sticks to the oddball love theme. A scene in a restaurant with Madison picking up a lobster and chewing it whole is hilarious. But, of course, the love story alone apparently wasn't thought enough to sustain a whole movie. Thus, the scientist subplot kicks in about halfway through, and it's here the film begins to fade. Government agents get involved, and insensitive scientific investigators; then Allen finds out his lover's secret, and everything turns sour, including Allen's supposed devotion to Madison changing drastically. The plot becomes routine and more than a bit disappointing after the imaginative spark shown in the film's first half.

Sure, everything is righted in the end, but by then the audience may not have the same respect for Hanks's character or for the film itself that it had earlier. A formula car chase at the climax doesn't help to bolster our confidence in the script much, either. By the time it's over, the film has turned somewhat sappy and overly contrived. In any case, the first half carries the day, and the movie can still be considered good fun. Just not as much fun as I had thought it was going to be.

Video:
With a bit rate increased over the first edition, the colors in this remastered transfer come up deep and true; but you can probably only do so much with an original print that was not quite the equivalent of today's state-of-the-art product. The screen size measures a widescreen ratio of about 1.74:1, anamorphic (or enhanced for 16x9 televisions). The image is not as smooth as many viewers would expect. It's slightly rough and a touch grainy, with darker areas of the screen a bit too dark for their own good. Nighttime shots can be a tad murky, delineation is a little soft, and a few moiré effects are in evidence.

Audio:
The Dolby Digital 5.1 remix does very little with the rear channels until the very end of the picture, and then the sound is only marginally effective. This really isn't a bad thing, since there is little for the rear speakers to do, anyway, I suppose. Nor is the front left-to-right stereo spread is exceptional, although the soundtrack does have the merit of being clean and quiet.

Extras:
For a "20th Anniversary Edition," which would seem to promise a lot, there isn't very much in the way of extras on the disc. The two main ones are an audio commentary with director Ron Howard, producer Brian Grazer, and writers Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel; and a twenty-four minute documentary, "Making a Splash," which includes appearances by practically everyone who was in the film, including some older footage of the late John Candy. We learn a few things from the documentary, like "Splash" was the first film made under the Disney "Touchstone" banner, evidently a result of the amount of skin Ms. Hannah exposes in the film; and John Travolta and Michael Keaton were among the first actors considered for the starring role. The rest of the bonuses are the usual filler, though: two auditions taped by director Ron Howard, the first of Tom Hanks (sixteen minutes) and the second of Daryl Hannah (seven minutes); two Sneak Peeks at other BV titles (but no trailer for "Splash"); and twenty scene selections. English and French are the spoken language options, with Spanish subtitles and English captions for the hearing impaired.

Parting Thoughts:
"Splash" made a quite a splash for everyone concerned, getting Ron Howard, Tom Hanks, even Eugene Levy their first really big hit movie. Daryl Hannah had been in "Blade Runner," but it was here that she, too, made her big move to stardom. The movie is cute, light, and fluffy, perhaps not the laugh-fest I had remembered but enough to get by. It seems terribly dated now as only a sixties, seventies, or eighties film can date itself, but it is still entertaining in its own harmless way. You could do worse.