In this environmental activist comedy from Stephen Chow, mermaids whose environment is being destroyed by an evil developer plot to kill him, using a pretty mermaid as bait. The complications are unsurprising.

While lacking any comical martial arts, the movie still has Chow's usual slapstick humor and weirdness. This includes a very funny scene of a series of hapless assassination attempts, a goofy singing duet, and a cool special-effects driven scene involving splashing water into objects. Some scenes are a bit too dumb, but overall this is a reasonably amusing movie, although nowhere near as funny as Chow's masterpiece, Shaolin Soccer.

The plotting doesn't make much sense. The developer unconvincingly shifts from fairly cartoony awfulness to general sincerity, and the mermaids are, weirdly, more concerned with vengeance than with fixing their problems. But within its silly, slapsticky world, this isn't a huge problem.

What is a huge problem is the shift into violence towards the end. It's both upsetting and nonsensical; a classic example of a movie that makes its villains evil to the point where they do terrible things that not only don't benefit them, but that would seemingly work against their interests. This whole part of the movie is pretty terrible, and to some extent ruined it for me.

One last note. I had a dual audio version of this, and started off watching the English dub. I'm not someone who automatically rejects dubbed movies, but I strongly suggest that you do not, under any circumstances, watch the English dub of this, because it is horrendously bad. I think it's a shame that a successful director's biggest hit of all time doesn't rate competent English actors. If I were rating this based on the dub, I would take another star off. It's an embarrassment.

I started to like Stephen Chow's movies since Shaolin Soccer. In order to maximise my enjoyment, I go for this movie without reading any reviews, especially from those who are always quick to write a review like a book. Anyway, I can trust that a Stephen Chow movie needs no reviews and quality is guaranteed. So being impressed with the poster, I set my hopes high. In order not to spoil anyone's fun, I will not describe the story or details. Generally, one can see that Stephen Chow's aim in this movie is to smash all China's box office and he did it successfully, with some good messages as usual; about love, humanity and environmentally friendly here, filled with romance, comedy, action and even a good old song. What else do you need for a movie to sell well ? Nothing else. For China audience who have not seen too much of Stephen Chow and where people do not have too high demand on artistic values, they are sure to enjoy it very much. For me, I don't like this style of "mo-lei-tao" comedy and I find them too much here. Much of the jokes are also old and predictable, although done in a good way. The male and 2 female leads are good. Most of the other supporting casts are poor. The 2nd male lead just cannot act and his face just don't match the role. Using that great classic HK song from the 80s is obviously to please the Chinese but made the movie less creative. This movie don't deserve any awards unless they give it for the same reasons like Titanic. Overall, I find this movie not as good as his last 4 because it doesn't give me much surprises.

Ruthless land developer Liu Xuan is planning reclamation project for Green Gulf. He's using powerful sonar to drive away dolphins. He takes on Ruolan as his business partner. The playboy Liu Xuan calls up cheap floozy Shan after being ridiculed by Ruolan. Only they don't know that Shan is actually a mermaid. She is part of a community being driven out by Xuan's sonar. Shan is told by Brother Octopus to assassinate Xuan. After many failed attempts, Shan wins over Xuan with rotisserie chicken. Shan is conflicted about killing him but a conflict is inevitable.

This is Stephen Chow's very broad brand of comedy. The museum mermaid is hilarious. There are some funny bits with Shan. There are lots of funny with a good helping of environmentalism. However, there are some uncomfortable violence especially the climatic battle. Chow is obviously heavily influenced by documentaries such as The Cove. It's awkward to have such vicious violence trying to coexist with the broad cartoon comedy. There is a difference between cartoon violence and brutal horror violence. He needs to cut down on the horrifying.