Μύ American TV starlet Sara Paxton plays a teenage mermaid who falls in love with a landlubber in Aquamarine. It was an apt showcase for her ditzy blonde routine and a chance for untested director Elizabeth Allen to make a splash. Sadly a lot of "froth and treacle" drags this comedy under. With lukewarm reviews and no big-name stars, it didn't stay afloat for too long at the box office.
School Of Fish
"This was a really interesting film to make," says Allen in her introduction to the DVD. Of course she doesn't bother to qualify that statement so we have to assume she's lying. Still it's a shame for Paxton that the film didn't score higher with the Nickelodeon crowd because as her audition tape shows, she is a talented actress. She can flit from comedy to tragedy within the blink of an eye, apparently by "channelling" the real-life trauma of having tripped over in front of a boy she fancied... It sounds like a skit from Aquamarine so it's no wonder she got the part. Later on in the featurette, co-stars Emma Roberts and JoJo Levesque are shown in their first meeting and get on like a house on fire while love interest Jake McDorman merely has to whip his shirt off.
Kickin' It On The Set is a five-minute reel of outtakes that proves just how well this gang of kids got on together. Unfortunately it also demonstrates that McDorman is unable to deliver dialogue and unbutton his shirt at the same time.
Washed Away
At least three of six deleted scenes are just 20 second cutaways where someone walks away, falls over and (most deadly of all) flicks through a photo album. On top of that there's a fart gag (the last refuge of the unimaginative scriptwriter) and yet more scenes of the girls combing each other's hair and gossiping about boys. If this was a Roland Emmerich film we could have safely counted on a tsunami crashing through the bedroom at this point, but alas...
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