There have been stories about mermaids for centuries, such as the original Hans Christian Anderson story of “The Little Mermaid.” Later adapted into the iconic Disney film from 1989. However, there is one mermaid movie that I think deserves more love and attention today, and that is the 1984 comedy romance film “Splash,” starring Darryl Hannah and Tom Hanks.

The movie follows Tom Hanks as the main character, Allen, who’s an average guy with an ordinary life, along with his brother Freddie, played by John Candy. However, when Allen was a kid, he fell into the water and saw a little girl under the water whom he had never met before. But when their hands touched, they both felt a special connection to each other, until they were eventually rescued by the boat staff. Ever since then, he never saw the girl again, but always wanted to know who she was. Until one day, he meets a young woman, who is secretly a mermaid, who is played by Daryl Hannah, after she rescues him from drowning. They later meet each other once again when the girl is found at the police station by Allen. He takes her home, and he learns the girl is named Madison. For the next few days, Allen and Madison go around New York City, while the main antagonist of the movie, Mr Kornbluth, who is played by Eugene Levy, is attempting to get Madison wet so he can show people mermaids exist. While Madison is fascinated by the land, she also knows she can’t stay forever and must return to the sea, or else she’ll never be able to go back to it. So, during the length of the film, she’s trying to find a way to tell Allen she’s a mermaid without him freaking out. But Allen would soon find out the secret when Kornbluth finally managed to spray water on Madison, revealing her tail to not just Allen, but a crowd as well. Allen, weirded out and bitter about it, lets Madison be taken to the lab where she’ll then be experimented on. This leaves Madison so heartbroken that she nearly dies of a broken heart. Kornbluth sees the sad mermaid and feels extremely guilty of what he did, so he tries to help Allen and Freddie when Allen finally decides to attempt to save Madison. This then leads to some goofy shenanigans happening and an epic car chase. It was at the dock that Madison revealed she was the girl that he saw when they were kids, and they both escaped into the ocean together, and that ends the movie.

So, in my opinion, this was a really cute movie. I always loved mermaid content when I was young, and a goofy yet charming story about falling in love with someone. Daryl Hannah did a wonderful job playing a naive but sweet character without it seeming too childish, and the tail for Madison still looks good to this day. The movie does a good job of combining fantasy and romance as a genre. It’s not the greatest movie ever made, it’s not a perfect movie, but I recommend it if you’re into mermaids or romcoms, or if you simply want a chill movie to watch on a rainy day when you’re bored. Anyways Splash, in my opinion, needs to be talked about more because we need more mermaid media than we have, and because there’s already not a lot to go around. But go watch Splash if I made you curious from this review; it’s an underrated classic.