Scales (2017)

“You’re living every little girl’s dream,” the young heroine of Scales: Mermaids Are Real (2017), whose given name is literally Siren (Emmy Perry), is told. “You’re officially a mermaid, honey!”

I would have thought that every little girl dreams of being, I dunno, a princess or something like that; turning into a grotesque cryptid sounds more like a nightmare. Do a lot of little girls watch The Fly and go, “Gee, I wish that happened to me but with a fish instead”?

Underneath the sunny milieu, there’s some Innsmouth-type stuff going on in this film (never a good sign when there are repeated references to “The Others”), but only Siren herself comes close to grasping the lovecraftian implications, and even then not for long.

The main characters reside in an unnamed beachside town reminiscent of Garrison in Cop Land, but with mermaids instead of policemen. Eleven-year-olds Siren and her BFF Crystal (Nikki Hahn) are “half-breed” mermaids.

Crystal has “known since she could talk,” but Siren has been kept in the dark (other than her name being a misleading clue, since sirens and mermaids aren’t quite the same thing). Crystal tries to break the news to Siren: “So, you know how my mom goes off to work every couple of years and I come live with you? Three years at sea, three years on land … Well, she actually goes into the ocean.”

Siren’s foster mother, Tiffany (Elisabeth Rohm), chimes in: “All mermaids have to stay on land until they are 12, and then the half-breeds, they live in the ocean for three years and on land for three years. But the purebloods, they can go in and out of the water as they please.” It would make more sense if it were the half-breeds who can come and go at leisure and purebloods had to stay in the water all the time, but whatever.

Siren has recently discovered that she can control water. “If you can do this,” Siren is informed, “it’s possible that your blood may also have healing powers. Which would make you very desirable to the Hunters.” Uh-oh! The link between the water bending and the healing powers is never established, but at least this development is sort of relevant.

Siren befriends Adam (Jack Grazer) when she “rescues” him from some half-hearted bullying. The token bullies, who are never seen again, are giving Adam a semi-hard time because they “found out about this,” presumably meaning his conspicuous, ubiquitous crutch.

Adam claims to have “a form of osteogenesis imperfecta. It just means my bones are very fragile.” It turns out to be a rather mild form of the disease. A young Mr. Glass, this boy ain’t. At one point, Adam steals a bicycle and rides it effortlessly, even tucking his crutch between his schoolbag and his back. It makes you wonder why he doesn’t just ride a bike everywhere.

He will later cover the same distance at the same time as two healthy adults who got a running head start. This causes Adam to break, well, something; it looks like his ulna and radius, but his reaction is to grab his stomach, so it’s hard to say.

The only way in which his quote-unquote condition impairs Adam is in that he has to carry around a prop that he doesn’t even really need. It’s like the filmmakers figured that the disease is Adam’s cross to bear, but since they couldn’t very well have him bear an actual cross, they stuck him with a crutch that is both literal and figurative — as in, the scriptwriter, having failed to make of osteogenesis imperfecta anything more than an Informed Attribute, relies too heavily on the crutch to convey the idea that Adam is sick, in the process oversimplifying the complexities of living with that disorder.

The movie’s conflict, such as it is, comes from the standoff between the local coven of mermaids and the Hunters, led by Adam’s father Gary (Stephen Snedden), who wants Siren’s blood to heal his son. According to Adam, “My dad said a pureblood could save me, or a half-breed at the time they change.” Siren is a half-breed — presumably meaning that they have to sacrifice her mid-metamorphosis or something — until she conveniently turns out to be a pureblood, so that she can heal Adam sans bloodshed.

All the mermaids are female and all the hunters are male. Coincidence? There is never the slightest mention of Siren’s father (or, for that matter, Crystal’s), so what makes a pureblood a pureblood is a bit of nonsensical mermaid lore that is never explained.

All of the above makes little difference, though. Adam’s perceived problems would be over if he’d just chuck that damn crutch into the ocean — and indeed, the difference between the new and improved Adam and Adam Classic is negligible at best. While I understand this is a children’s fantasy movie, young viewers should still be able to feel like there’s something important at stake in order to be emotionally engaged in the story. This film fails to create any sense of urgency.

If it feels like this should have been an animated movie, it’s perhaps because the premise unwittingly manages to bring together Avatar: The Last Airbender and Metalocalypse. Who knows? Maybe Scales: Mermaids Are Real was only meant to be seen by fish, just like the Deathwater album was only meant to be listened to by fish.