Aquamarine

Aquamarine, a 2006 film, directed by Elizabeth Allen, can't be judged like any other film. It has a very specific audience--teenage girls. From my vantage point, it's impossible for me to know if it succeeds in that, but it does go down easy and is inoffensive.

Set on a beach in Florida, two teens of about 16 (Emma Roberts and Joanna "JoJo" Levesque, are best friends. They are both in love with the hunky lifeguard (Jake McDorman), but Levesque has to move with her mother to Australia. Roberts is timid, especially afraid of the water because her parents drowned.

After a storm, among all the muck in the swimming pool, they find a mermaid, who is played with Reese Witherspoon-in-training pluck by Sara Paxton. She's escaped an arranged marriage, and wants to prove to her father that love exists. So the two girls help her get the lifeguard to fall in love with her.

Essentially this is Splash for the Seventeen set. I haven't seen Splash in a long time, but I think they borrowed the rules--Paxton has legs, but only during the day and only if they stay dry. She speaks English, but at least they through in a line that says mermaids speak all languages, even crustacean. Who am I to disagree?

The film, while aimed directly at girls, also pokes a little fun at the culture, sending up those articles in teen magazines that are designed to help girls, like the "fluff and flee." The performers are all fine--Levesque, better known as a singer, has some inner gravitas.