Mermaids (1990)

And Michael Schoeffling

“Know your shoe size and know your fabrics.”

R1 So yummy.

Some great Cher moments.

Cher was negative about this movie but it was great -- it founds its life on video. God, I miss the days of movies in theaters -- then the excitement when they came out for rental. Everything is just a mediocre blur of too much content -- plus enforced diversity that feels so anti-art.

I watched this many time on VHS. I was living in Boston when this and Witches of Eastwick were filmed and ran into her quite a few times. She's very nice.

Lasse Halstrom wanted a darker ending where Ricci's character died...so Cher had him fired.

R7 😂

I liked it and saw it when I was in high school. I’d never want to watch it again.

[quote]Cher was negative about this movie but it was great -- it founds its life on video. God, I miss the days of movies in theaters -- then the excitement when they came out for rental. Everything is just a mediocre blur of too much content -- plus enforced diversity that feels so anti-art.

I was a kid when it came out in theaters. My aunt who is a big Cher fan took me and my cousin and we loved it. I also sort of miss the days of rental stores because my parents were friends with a couple who owned a rental store and we rent a couple of times a month from them.

"Now his lips are touching mine..."

R11 Some of Charlotte’s dialogue was so “My So-Called Life.”

i forgot does ryder's character actually get screwed by michael schoeffling's character in the movie or were they only ABOUT to have intercourse before they had to stop to save ricci's character... if they DID have full blown sex, what a young hunk to lose your virginity too! whew lordy be!!!

R13 it’s definitely implied that he pushes himself all the way inside her, but I don’t think he cums because they get interrupted by nuns. Still, yeah, imagine losing your virginity to him?!

Emily Lloyd was originally supposed to play the Ryder part, but clashed with Cher. She had to sue them to get compensation for her salary.

YouTube has this listed as “free with ads” but it let me watch the whole thing last night with no ads.

That waterfall where Charlotte almost drowns and where the fake monastery set was built by the production team is actually located in the large backyard of some house in Easton, Massachusetts. It was on sale recently for $1.5 million.

Sorry, it's Kate who almost drowns, not Charlotte.

[quote]Emily Lloyd was originally supposed to play the Ryder part, but clashed with Cher. She had to sue them to get compensation for her salary.

Geez. how many people did Cher have fired from this film?

She also had Frank Oz fired from this as director because they clashed.

I really like the movie. Bob Hoskins and Ricci are really charming. Cher is good too and Winona was in her first breakdown phase, which kind of worked. But I can't get into to alleged acting.

The real distraction in this film is Cher's spanking new cheekbones her choice to be constantly smirking. She shouldn't really like her performance in it very much, but I'm sure it's her being 8 lbs overweight and those enormous cheek implants that really make her dislike it. Cher is innately talented, but far too dumb and vain. She's is the worst judge of what's good.

Overall it's an oddly enjoyable movie. But mostly because of BoB and Ricci.

R19 She also had issues with people on the sets of Mask and Witches of Eastwick. Peter Bogdanovich who directed Mask said she had a bad attitude and was difficult to work with. And three years after Burlesque came out, she said the director of that movie was a bad director. Not a good idea to bash directors if you want work.

Her movie career slowed down not because of the infomercial, but because she’s a bitch and difficult to work with. If you have problem after problem on one movie set after another, YOU are the problem.

It wasn’t a great movie and the whole premise was utterly stupid. Move on tampon!!

Am I the only one that found Christina Ricci super hot in this?

Fuck off, Defacto at R14.

DIAGF.

R22 😂

I saw this in the theater with my sister. When it looks like the kid is going to drown, she got all tense and I said, "Relax! They aren't going to kill a kid in a Cher movie." So I was kindof right and kindof wrong.

Awful voice over and way too much of it. But Cher got another cool hit song out of it all.

If you’ve posted in here, I liked your mini-review and insights, so I’m posting it in here:

I watched this last night after not seeing it for 15-20 years.

What a fun little movie this is! It made me nostalgic for not only the 60s that this movie portrays, but also the 90s when a movie like this could still get made.

The New England aesthetic is so beautiful and I love the attention to detail of the changing seasons. The dialogue is wonderful and all of Charlotte’s inappropriate, half-baked thoughts felt so real to me and what I actually would be thinking when I was a teenager, especially all her thoughts about Joe. And Joe, man, what a stunning hunk of a man.

Cher is so effortlessly cool as Mrs. Flax. Each character is just so unique and quirky and it really makes you long for the freedom of the 60s and people not being such horrid cunts to each other back then. Even little Christina Ricci is fantastically weird as Kate.

It drags a little bit in the middle, and Charlotte’s virgin pregnancy is a little bit much, but it’s a classic nonetheless. I just felt like I was home watching this. This is the type of movie that just feels so right to me, and it could never get made today 🙁

Everyone said Winona stole the movie from Cher, but I don’t agree at all. Cher’s comedic timing in this is pretty much perfect and effortless, whereas Charlotte’s voice over and character more generally was just this side of previous.

Still really enjoy the movie though, albeit from a “critical standpoint” I can certainly see where it’s not great. I saw this Xmas day with my family - the same day as Alice (which SUCKED)

And about a million times since then - shoop shoop!

Winona mopped the floor with Cher and nearly got an Oscar nomination out of it. Were it not for Diane Ladd's shameless self promoting spaghetti dinner screenings of Wild At Heat for Academy members she probably would have gotten it. That's why Cher speaks ill of it. I found the film charming when I first saw it and still enjoy it when I stop to watch it if it's on TV.

Personally, Imas I noted in the op, I think Cher, Ryder, and Ricci are excellent, perfect, and effortless together.

Here’s an interview with all three:

Great interview with Oprah about the film. Winona is interviewed alongside Cher.

Winona later cane out to say she hated doing the video for the shoop shoop song and was sort of rail roaded into it

Also, Cher goes into detail about why she said she didn’t think she was good in the film in the interview @ R31.

I love Cher but this thread has made me think of her a little differently. Firing both Lasse Hallstrom and Frank Oz, both solid directors, says a lot about her. And then Lloyd.

Ryder was a good choice, as she, Cher, and Ricci look like they could be related. But I can't help but feel Lloyd sparking with Cher would have been more interesting.

I think it's a decent film, great soundtrack, Bob Hoskins is terrific (as he always was), nice cinematography but it's a little staid.

I saw Cher at the heliport in Logan Airport towards the end of filming Mermaids. She was crumpled up in a ball on the chairs with a trench coat draped over her. She was suffering from chronic fatigue.

I always find it funny how much younger Christina Ricci seems in this than she does in The Addams Family, which was only made 1 year later. She was 9 when Mermaids was filmed but looks and acts more like a 5 or 6 year old.

I have a soft spot this film and I think it's one of Winona's best performances.

Cher may be a bitch but Emily Lloyd was kinda nuts. The poor girl turned down Pretty Woman to do Mermaids and then she was fired from Woody Allen's Husbands and Wives because she had become unstable.

If find it ironic that Bob Hoskins plays Christina Ricci's potential stepfather rather than her actual father because he would have been a better choice to play her father than any of the actors who did so in her other films. Like her he was short and intense, had a round head and was good at doing intimidating stares. A big father-daughter argument scene between him and teenage Ricci would have been amazing.

The Oprah show with Cher must have been filmed in December 1990ish to promote the release of the film in the US.

Channel 4 in the UK used to show Oprahs in the daytime, and I would regularly truant from school, so I knew about the film well before it was released.

And then The Shoop Shoop Song was released in May to coincide with the film and I didn't know the original version of the song, but I knew it from Oprah so I bought it on the first week of release and it missed the top 40, then it went in at 23, then jumped to 2, then spent 5 weeks at number 1.

Also LOL at the woman asking Cher at 25.00 if her relationship with Chastity is like the movie.

And this kind of happened again in Sleepy Hollow, Ricci's stepmother was played by Miranda Richardson who could actually have passed as a biological parent, much more so than Michael Gambon who played her father.

What I don't get is how Cher complained for years that she wanted to be taken seriously as an actress. She gets into movies, has a phenomenal year in 1987 that wins her an Oscar, and then doesn't do another movie for three years, before practically abandoning her acting career.

She was offered many A list roles in the late 80's early 90's post oscar win. (War of the Roses, Thelma and Louise) but aside from Mermaids, nothing.

r42, I think she achieved her goal and found acting boring.

The other thing is she was sick for at least 2 years with chronic fatigue after Mermaids.

I think another problem is Cher doesn't have a lot of range. I enjoy her acting but she never showed us what else she could play. Plus the increasing plastic surgery limited her and she became preoccupied with her "final" tours.