Change Your Image
jalcenius
Reviews
Mermaids: The Body Found (2011)
Shame on Animal Planet and Seriously!?
I have always respected Animal Planet for their documentaries on interesting subjects. I believe they even had one called "The Whale That Exploded" and it was a documentary about a sperm whale that exploded while being transported to a university on the busy streets of Taiwan. I did not see advertisements for the show. I just happened to be scrolling through the channels and saw it was coming up. Thankfully, I DVRd it so I could go through the commercials (which were half of the show!). I naturally assumed, that this program was going to be a scientific look at the possibilities of mermaids and the likelihood that they had found a body. At first I was really intrigued. They did a good job at making the show seem legit. I found this particularly interesting when they were talking about our unusual evolutionary characteristics that we shared with marine mammals. At first, I felt the "scientists" seemed too comfortable with the camera and were too moody. I assumed this may have just been editing. As they were showing the "reenactments" I started to get more suspicious, but I stayed tuned in. It wasn't until halfway through the show that I thought, "Hmm... this seems a little bull," but I continued to watch anyway.
When they finally reveal that it was for "entertainment only" I felt robbed and really angry. I trust Animal Planet to give me truthful events. They needed to state at the very beginning of the show that the entire "documentary" was "For Entertainment Only." If it had been a true documentary, I think it would have scored higher and had been very entertaining had they removed all the fake BS and maybe focused on the possibility of there being mermaids and what they might look like and evolve into (which they did touch on that a bit). As a movie, it sucks. The HORRIFIC CGI would have been acceptable for a true documentary, but for a movie, it was horribly done and we could have seen better CGI in the 1990s. The videos that showed evidence was poorly done. The 2-hour time slot was made up of 1/2 commercials.
At first I felt this was a real documentary, but as the conspiracy theory part of the movie continues, you begin to strongly question it. Had I known at the beginning that it was a "movie", I still would have watch it and it would have been given the same score.