The 1984 box office smash "Splash" gave us a lot of things: Tom Hanks as a leading man, Ron Howard as a bankable director, and oddly the name Madison becoming popular. It’s just a shame that's all this pile of fish crap is worth.
It's literally a fish out of water story, and also, frankly, the filmmakers have a lawsuit against the movie "The Shape of Water," which ripped this off almost to the letter.
Tom Hanks plays Allen Bauer, a wholesale fruit and vegetable salesman who apparently is incapable of loving a woman because he saw a mermaid when he was 10 years old. When he meets her much older, he doesn't know she's a mermaid and just assumes she's a hot woman who doesn't speak English and might not be of sound mind, but he decides the best thing to do is have sex with her a bunch.
Daryl Hannah plays "Madison," the aforementioned mermaid, who has six days to spend on land (which is never explained) to find her true love (which is apparently some kid she saw on a boat once). Also, she transforms to a mermaid and back to a human multiple times throughout, so why is there some deadline? Anyway. Oh, and she’s also apparently a genius, because she learns how to speak English and everything about modern society by watching TV for a few hours.
John Candy plays Hanks' older, zany playboy brother who drinks too much, chases women, and smokes cigars. His character is for comic relief. The only problem is he's not funny at all.
Eugene Levy plays the hair-brained scientist who is after the mermaid. He spends the movie trying to spray her with water so people will stop thinking he's crazy, but then he gets a heart and helps her out in the end. What a shock.
Join us as we try to figure out how this was nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the Oscars that year, how this movie received a PG rating, and how both Cape Cod and New York City's the East River are both somehow tropical paradises.
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