Film
Ryan (Caitlin Carmichael), a twelve year old girl, is forced to move with her father Matt (Jerry O’Connell), back to the struggling fishing town where he was born. There, they will live with Ryan’s grandfather Art (Barry Bostwick).
As Ryan tries to make new friends, and be accepted, she discovers a secret cove. Here she meets Coral (Sydney Scotia), a mysterious girl whom Ryan eventually discovers to be a mermaid. Together, the girls will uncover a secret, that will help save the dying town.
A Mermaids Tale is slow to start, a fact that will likely mean that it will lose the attention of its target audience very soon into the film. If that weren’t bad enough, dialogue feels forced, trying too hard to reveal the emotional state of each character.
The film follows a rather basic plot, as it meanders towards the predictable conclusion, making for another of the all too many average films. One that will likely not hold the attention of adults or children alike. Just for die hard fans of mermaids, maybe.
Disc
Overall, the disc is of a decent technical quality. The main feature is rather average.
A Mermaid’s Tale is available now, to purchase on disc, in South Africa.
Video
Video is encoded at a high average bitrate, with no visible artefacts on-screen. There is no visible colour bleed, and colours are vibrant where needed.
There however a few places where colour looks a bit off, in areas such as clouds, sky, or water, however these appear to be choices made during colour correcting / grading, of the actual film itself.
Detail is maintained in the few darker areas, mostly sorted in part, due to some scenes that have inconsistent lighting and colour.
Video for the menus is compressed a lot more than that of the main feature, and while leaving more room for the film, means that there are very visible artefacts in these menus. This however is not too bad from a normal viewing distance.
Audio
Audio is presented in a Dolby Digital 5.1 mix, with dialogue clear via the centre channel. Much of the soundtrack weight is carried via the front channels, with use of the surrounds to expand the on-screen world, and further draw the viewer into the story.
Navigation
Navigation is simple, and easy to follow. The main menu has text links to play the main feature, chapter selection, and audio.
The chapter selection sub-menus each have four large, static, colour thumbnails, for a total of sixteen chapters. While these are numbered, they are not labelled, meaning a degree of guesswork is needed in order to navigate to a particular part of the main film.
The audio sub-menu has text links to select between the surround 5.1 soundtrack and the stereo 2.0.
Bonus Features
There are no bonus features on the disc, other than trailers for The Nut Job 2, and Paddington 2, which autoplay at the beginning of the disc.
While these can be fast-forward, or skipped, individually, they can not be accessed again via the disc menu system.
Packaging
Packaging is rather standard, with a poster on the front, with title and main cast.
The back of the disc has a short synopsis, the usual technical information, and a few stills from the main feature.
