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As Good As It Gets

Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

The acting in this movie is really good.

The premise is ridiculous. And after watching it for the first time recently, the relationship build up of Allen (Tom Hanks) and Madison (Daryl Hannah) seemed a little flimsy in my opinion. But I loved that the cast and the two leads just went for it and did the romance wholeheartedly. And that's what's so strong about this movie other than the comedic performances of John Candy and Eugene Levy is the chemistry of Daryl Hannah and Tom Hanks. They were just so sincere with the relationship they were trying to show.The movie is a fish-out-of-water type romantic comedy. Madison is a mermaid that falls in love with Allen a hopeless romantic that's weirdly apprehensive when it comes to love. And that apprehension brings up the major issue I had with the movie. Initially the relationship between the leads seemed like Madison loved Allen more than Allen did her and for no good reason. And yes, I understand that they built Allen up at the start as hesitant when it came to love. They just didn't show enough to convince that that mattered to his arc. Also, they didn't show enough as to why Madison loved Allen so much. But then later on when the goofs started coming in and with the crisis of the ending act of the movie. I started to believe that Allen did have deeper feelings for Madison. And it did help that Tom Hanks added a knew when to pull back the comedy and bring in the emotion and drama of his character. Also, Daryl Hannah was just so fun to watch as a wide-eyed foreigner but also fun to see her unexplained deep love for Allen. I guess unexplained is a bit much ... maybe contextualized would be better. But to my point of the sincere performances of the leads. It's just so fun to watch them in love with no hint of irony or parody that my current mindset of relationships in film is right now. The movie and the leads performance is just unabashed in it's romanticism. And that made me love the movie. And again John Candy and especially Eugene Levy really brought the comedy to this.All-in-all, I recommend the movie. If you happen to catch on cable like I did, it's not a bad experience.

I remember watching this shortly after it was released and finding it to be a fun little movie. Looked at over 30 years later it strikes me as memorable mostly because it was some of the earliest work from some of the significant names associated with it. Most notably, because of how his career evolved, this was actually the first big screen role for Tom Hanks, whose previous work had been in television. It was also an early role for Daryl Hannah, and an early piece of directing from Ron Howard. So it's not an insignificant movie at all, although it does have little of substance.Hanks played Allen Bauer, a young New York businessman. As a boy he fell off a boat and before he was rescued he encountered a mermaid. Years later, the mermaid (played by Hannah) shows up naked (not gratuitously) at the Statue of Liberty, apparently looking for Allen. Dry and on land, she has legs, so Allen doesn't realize that she's a mermaid, and quickly falls in love with her, finding her innocence both appealing and mysterious. I thought Hanks and Hannah were both very good in their roles. They shared a nice chemistry and made the relationship believable. The supporting cast featured John Candy as Allen's brother and Eugene Levy as a scientist who is convinced that mermaids exist and wants to prove it by capturing Madison (as the mermaid has chosen to be called.) I guess the performances from Candy and Levy were all right, but I found their characters too over the top. They took the focus off the relationship between Allen and Madison, which probably could have been explored in more depth.In the end, this can be called a pleasant way to waste some time, and an interesting look at some of the early work from people who went on to bigger and better things. (5/10)

Tom Hanks breaks out in this light, charming, modestly funny fish-out-of-water comedy (har har) about a man's lifelong encounters with a lustily enamored mermaid. It can be tremendously naive at times, and the plot is about as telegraphed as they come, but there's something intangible about this picture that manages to gloss over many of those shortcomings. The central performance of Hanks is key, working as the plucky everyman he'd embody in most of his early repertoire, though this time it's dosed with a few fits of sharply possessive, unsettling anger. Maybe those shades just look bad in retrospect, as the film's a full generation old now, but it's tough not to cringe at such puzzling spots in the modern climate. I think the humor falls into a similar trap, in that it was probably more relevant at the time than it is today. A handful of comedies from the same era still serve as timeless examples of great humor (Ghostbusters, also released in 1984, springs to mind), and though a few of its gags and one-liners still connect, Splash isn't even in that ballpark after thirty years on the shelf. Hanks's easy rapport with John Candy is worth celebrating, though, and Daryl Hannah is positively breathtaking as the sweet, innocent fish-tailed beauty at the center of all the action. Simple, straight entertainment that's beginning to fade as it grows older.

Ron Howard directed this hit comedy that stars Tom Hanks as harried businessman Allen Bauer, who as a young boy almost drowned off Cape Cod, but a young mermaid saved his life, and many years later as adults, when the same thing happens again, the mermaid(played by Daryl Hannah) follows Allen home to New York, where she comes ashore nude, making quite an entrance! After Allen takes her home, and names her Madison, they fall in love, which is tested when her secret comes out, and unscrupulous scientists(led by Eugene Levy) want to study her, which will mean her eventual death. John Candy costars as his brother Freddie. Appealing comedy nearly goes off the rails with the kidnapping subplot, but manages to right itself by the end. Good cast helps.