The Mermaid is a 2016 Hong Kong fantasy-comedy-drama directed by Stephen Chow, starring Deng Chao, Show Lo, Kitty Zhang (Stephen's former collaborator from CJ7 and Shaolin Girl) and newcomer "Jelly" Lin Yun as the titular character.
A small community of merpeople living underneath Hong Kong's Green Gulf, a coastal wildlife reserve, have their lives threatened when a property tycoon, Liu Xuan (Deng) and his business partner and second-in-command, Ruolan (Zhang) purchases the entire area for a land reclamation operation. With their project threatening all marine life in the area, and the sonar used by Liu's company causing multiple members of the merpeople to fall sick, it's up to a young mermaid girl named Shan (Lin) who's accommodated into human society to infiltrate Liu Xuan's company and assassinate him. But after a botched assassination attempt ends with an oblivious Liu sending Shan home and spending a day with her, Shan started having second thoughts on killing him.
And yes, Hilarity Ensues. Loads and loads of it.
A sequel, The Mermaid 2, is in development but appears to be stuck in Development Hell.
The Mermaid contain examples of:
- Amusing Injuries: It's not a Stephen Chow comedy without this trope.
- Shan, in her failed attempt to kill Liu Xuan, gets a stack of papers flung at her, hit by an ashtray, a door slammed on her by a random tech, had urchins embedded on her face, have her fingers stepped on by Liu (who didn't notice her hiding under a table trying to ambush him) before accidentally stabbing herself through her hand with her own knife and getting a golf club into her cranium by accident. And it's all Played for Laughs. What takes the cake however is that Liu Xuan didn't even notice she's in the very same room as he is until he realize his golf club had hit something!
- Brother Octopus, pretending to be the cook of a Korean seafood restaurant Shan and Liu Xuan are dining in, repeatedly had his tentacles beaten, cut, mutilated, burnt and sliced off when the other cooks mistaken his exposed limbs as calamari. He shows up later with a bunch of his tentacles as bandaged stumps.
- Butt-Monkey: Shan and Brother Octopus repeatedly runs into various Amusing Injuries just for entertainment's sake.
- Celebrity Cameo:
- Veteran Hong Kong producers and directors, Chiu Chi-ling and Tsui-Hark have walk-on cameos in the movie that doesn't have any bearing on the plot.
- There's also Kris Wu as a random student in the final scene. He's the one who interviewed Liu Xuan and Mrs. Liu, a.k.a Shan, about their company's marine preservation project's efforts.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Subverted with Liu Xuan, the tycoon developing the Green Gulf development who is unaware his project is driving the mermaid population to extinction. His partner Ruolan is a much straighter example.
- Covers Always Lie: For some baffling reason, the film's poster and DVD covers frequently depicts the giant tail of some unseen fish monster coming out of the ocean, something that doesn't happen at any point in the film. There's also a series of Character Posters promoting the movie where the titular mermaid has her hair fashioned into a fish's tail, but that doesn't happen in the film either.
- Epic Fail: Shan's first attempt at assassinating Liu Xuan, in a nutshell. She gets at least four attempts, each one backfiring in increasingly ridiculous ways, like her flung urchin bouncing back into her face and getting her fingers stepped on by an oblivious Liu as she tried sneaking up from underneath a table, and Liu Xuan didn't even know she's trying to kill him.
- Even Evil Has Standards: When Liu Xuan gets near-fatally injured by harpoons in an attempt to shield Shan, Ruolan tries shooting him again only for her henchman, the mercenary leader George, to stop her.
- Falling-in-Love Montage: After Liu Xuan decides to escort Shan home the two of them spend some time together, firstly in an outdoor hawker stall (with an impromptu karaoke duet) and later in an amusement park where Shan resolves to show Liu Xuan there's more to life than making money. They then start having feelings for each other.
- Funny Octopus: Brother Octopus (played by the Taiwanese singer and comedian, Show Lo a.k.a "Piggy"), the film's resident Butt-Monkey who decide to follow behind Shan to make sure she succeed on her quest, only to suffer one humiliating injury after another, like having his tentacles mutilated and getting decked out of a restaurant's windows.
- Green Aesop: Much of the film revolves around the importance of preserving the marine environment, with the development of the Green Gulf resort being depicted as highly-destructive to a group of benevolent merfolk living in the gulf, to the point where a mermaid is sent to assassinate the project's director. The film even has a happy ending with Liu Xuan, having survived being shot by Ruolan, deciding to abandon the project and dedicate his research to preserving the environment.
- Harpoon Gun: Ruolan's mercenary army uses these weapons in the finale, when she ordered them to hunt down every single merfolk. She tries shooting Shan with one of these, but Liu Xuan got in the way.
- Hate Sink: Liu Xuan's partner, Ruolan, takes the cake for being the one character in the film the audience can despise. While Liu Xuan had a Heel Realization after realizing the damage his project is causing to the environment, Ruolan care only about the profit, turning on Liu Xuan and having him locked up before deciding to massacre the merfolk, and trying to kill Shan personally for "getting in her way".
- Heel Realization: When Liu Xuan discovers the mermaids are real, his project is harming the population, with Shan, the titular mermaid, saving his life from her kind. He immediately pulls the plug on the construction after escaping, only for Ruolan to take over.
- Hey, Wait!: A non-verbal variant; when Shan pretends to be an attendant working for Liu Xuan (while trying to assassinate him) a bunch of Liu Xuan's bodyguards scans her with metal detectors. At one point it like seems her cover is going to be blown when a detector starts beeping, and Shan thought her hidden knife is spotted, but turns out the detector caught a stray nail stuck to her shoe.
- Hidden Villain: The film seemingly doesn't have a villain for most of the first act, with Liu Xuan, the tycoon behind the Green Gulf project, being unaware that the sonar used for the Green Gulf's development is hurting the mermaid population. But then the project is usurped by Liu's partner, Ruolan, who is willing to exterminate the mermaid population to extinction for the project to be completed.
- In Love with the Mark: Shan's original mission is to assassinate Liu Xuan, the Green Gulf project's manager, to put a stop to his operations which is threatening the merfolk living underneath. She inevitably falls for him after Liu Xuan mistakens her for an escort and takes her back home, where they started bonding to the point where Shan stops Octopus from killing Liu Xuan by hacking off one of his limbs.
- Interspecies Romance: A mermaid and a human property tycoon.
- Jet Pack: One of the various equipment developed by Liu Xuan's company, which he is shown testing a few times in the film, only for it to malfunction and throw him around in a comical manner. It's a build-up for a Chekhov's Gun when it finally works for real in the finale when Liu Xuan straps on the jetpack to rescue Shan and the other mermaids from Ruolan's mercenary army.
- Karaoke Bonding Scene: Liu Xuan and Shan had one of these after spending a day in an amusement park. The song they chose, however, is the opening theme of the 1960s TV adaptation of The Legend of the Condor Heroes, for some really odd reason.
- Making a Splash: The Mermaid Elder can control water with her tail.
- Masquerade: Shan, the titular mermaid, blends in with human society by pretending to be one of them. At the film's conclusion it's revealed she's permanently part of human society after marrying Liu Xuan.
- Obliviously Evil: Liu Xuan's attempts to use sonar technology to drive away the population of marine life in order for the Green Gulf construction is destroying a peaceful community of merfolk living underneath, which he is oblivious about until he found out his lover, Shan, is a mermaid.
- Oh, Crap!: Liu Xuan after discovering Shan and the rest of her kin are mermaids. And her "uncle" is actually a mere-octopus and wants to kill him.
- Our Mermaids Are Different: The mermaids in this film, for instance? They can shape-shift from merpeople to human form after years and years of practice, but must learn to walk like a human. Shan is one of the few mermaids who succeed in her training and volunteered to infiltrate human society, while her mentor, Octopus, being a mer-octopus, can easily walk around by twisting his tentacles into legs and hiding them in trousers.
- Sea Hurtchin: One of the "weapons" utilized by Shan to kill Liu Xuan is a handful of sea urchins, but being a klutz she ends up stabbing a bunch of urchins in her face.
- Shout-Out: The merpeople are big fans of actor Adam Cheng and the 1983 version of The Legend of the Condor Heroes. Cheng himself performs the theme of Condor Heroes during the credits.
- Small, Secluded World: Shan and her fellow merpeople lives in an abandoned shipwreck underneath the Green Gulf, having been cut off from the world outside for several generations. They're implied to be the Last of Their Kind.
- Taking the Bullet: Near the end of the climax, Liu Xuan, in a last-ditch attempt to prove to Shan that his love for her is genuine, took two harpoons fired by Ruolan. He survives his injuries when the police arrive to investigate the sound of explosions and arrest Ruolan, George, and the other mercenaries.
