Aquamarine

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Review #54 of 365
Film: Aquamarine [PG] 109 minutes
WIP: $9.00
When 1st Seen: 5 March 2006
Where Viewed: Metropolitan Metrolux 14, Loveland, CO
Time: 3:50 p.m.
Review Dedicated to: Brooke C. of Pilot Mound, Manitoba, Canada

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Sunday afternoon, before the Academy Awards® Show, I headed up to Loveland, CO to see Aquamarine. I had seen the preview and suspected this was going to be a fun, Disneyesque movie, made mostly to appeal to teenage and younger girls. I came away with my suspicions confirmed. Starring Emma Roberts and Joanna 'JoJo' Levesque as inseparable 8th grade friends Claire and Hailey, the twosome find their friendship in jeopardy when Claire’s marine biologist mother gets a grant to do research in Australia. Fearing they will never see each other again, the two hope for a miracle—which happens. A ‘freak’ storm brings them their own, personal, one-wish for helping her find love, mermaid named Aquamarine (Sara Paxton). Further complicating matters, Aquamarine falls for the local lifeguard super stud nice guy, Raymond (Jake Mc Dorman) and challenges the girls to help her get him to fall in love with her within the three days before she must return to the see to face her angry merdad. Unfortunately, the local weather caster’s nasty daughter Cecilia (Arielle Kebbel) has her own designs on Raymond.

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And, there, you have the basic elements for the fun and mayhem that ensue. The audience I joined at the Metrolux 14 was predominantly little kids and their not-looking-so-happy-to-be-there parents, guardians, and older siblings. I have to say that there are some funny moments that will appeal to moviegoers of all ages. This movie is nothing more or less than it portends to be. It is not going to win any Academy Awards®. It is exactly the kind of movie (with a caution) that people can ‘safely’ take their kids to see on a Sunday afternoon when the weather outside is frightful. So, here’s the caution. There is a tremendous about of stereotypical junk that I, for one, wish people would stop putting in movies pitched at young girls. Director Elizabeth Allen has put in some elements to counter balance this stuff, but I fail to see why writers cannot find ways of keeping this stuff out of movies in the first place. Examples of the stereotypical stuff to which I refer include:

• Claire and Hailey get all of their information about boys from teen magazines. Maybe this is reality, but it’s terrible.
• Claire and Hailey are in 8th grade. 8th grade girls might be really enchanted with the older boy lifeguard on their beach, but do they really need to be depicted as so one-dimensionally focused? Do they really need to be portrayed as interested in nothing but him and having some sort of relationship with him and his biceps?
• The lifeguard comes across in this film as one of the more sensitive good guys lifeguard guys ever on film, but still, he is first and foremost and object of obsession for not only Hailey, Claire, and Aquamarine, but also the back-stabbing Cecilia.
• Claire’s mom is stereotypically so completely uninvolved in the life of her daughter so as to be completely unaware that she is keeping a mermaid in the bathtub.
• All of the young women seem concerned with make-up, jewelry, and impressing boys. Hopefully, there are more dimensions to their lives we just didn’t see in this film.

I think it would have been more than possible to make this same film with modifications that would have utilized fewer negative stereotypes for young women and still maintained the fun and fantasy-filled atmosphere. There were some breakthroughs, like the fact that Ray is more charm than air, and Hailey and Claire’s friendship and willingness to help a new friend comes through so strongly.

All in all, I give this film a good recommendation for light, family fare with some discussion with young children afterwards regarding the stereotypes and how to get past them in this film. Most other adults may wish to skip this one and wait for DVD.

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Aquamarine [DVD](2006) DVD

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