Well, here's another outing for the tissue-tribe. One of the many utterly talentless casting-couch queens of the 1980's, Daryl Hannah, plays her predictable screen persona as the vulnerable naiveté in a hu-man's world (check-out 'Crazy People'). This movie doesn't contain clichés; it is a cliché.<br /><br />Strangely popular one-dimensional Tom Hanks plays it straight against various odd-ball individuals including his huckster brother, acted by the continuously upstaging John Candy, with a little pythonesque humour supplied by a female employee who has had a bump on the head and is now in the habit of wearing her clothes out of synch. Then later, he's up against a marine-biologist with a fascist turn, attempting to expose Ms Hannah's fishy secret, of which he - Hanks - is as yet unaware (she's a mermaid, you see).<br /><br />It would appear that on dry land, her fishy lower-half turns into a human and most excellent pair of pins with the sundry anatomy between -so long as they stay dry. But that if they don't get a regular soaking, they'll remain as legs forever, and she will be forced to stay on land. Or something like that. <br /><br />Candy can be hilarious in the right scenario - check-out 'Planes,Trains & Automobiles'. Hanks? I can only conclude that he spent some time on a very influential casting-couch as well. <br /><br />Darly Hannah has the face and figure to have most unemancipated males -or most males, in other words - embarrassed by the scale of their spontaneous erections. She is definitely the stuff of an evolutionary 'trophy' wife. And we get to see a great deal of her meat in this movie. <br /><br />Then, of course, she gets to do most anything she likes, whether it be wandering about stark naked, going on a buying spree at another's expense, or destroying a shop full of TV sets. She gets to do this because she's 'pretty' and 'vulnerable' and 'naive'. Yawn. <br /><br />Some people see it as a 'romance'. But I offer this bi-line: Ms Hannah's character - or Madison, as she calls herself - is a mermaid, and therefor not only a different species but also a supposedly dangerous one of ancient folklore. And we learn that she has been stalking Hanks's character like some paedophilic pariah ever since he was a child. Naturally, she has waited until he is adult before taking her pursuit onto dry land, but the implication is self-evident. She uses sex to ensnare him (and a great deal of it, as the dialogue makes clear) in order to subvert him to her way of life. It's a life of immortality but from which he can never, ever escape (though he doesn't yet know it whilst he's submitting to her therapy).<br /><br />Am I the only one who can see the parallels with 'Dracula' in that resume? I put this to any viewer: would the scenario be quite so 'romantic' if the seducer were male? Because then the parallel with 'Dracula' would be complete. <br /><br />Only at the last moment, on the dockside, when she has won him over and he has cravenly agreed to join her in her oceanic world, does she spring on him the deadly caveat that there will be no going back; when he joins her, it is for ever. <br /><br />I suspect that if the gender-tables were turned, any male would be regarded as the most consummate manipulator and fraud under the same circumstances.<br /><br />However; if paedophilia, bestiality, and betrayal are your idea of the ingredients for a good romance, then keep taking the tissues.