Still looking for the perfect Mother’s Day gift? Even if you haven’t yet settled on exactly which scented candle, throw blanket or tech gadget to get mom for today’s holiday, you can rest assured that she’d likely be more than happy with simply switching on a great movie and spending time with you.
Thankfully, the top streaming services around offer plenty of Mother’s Day-ready movies for you and mama to share, and one of this writer’s personal favorites is an old Cher classic: the 1990 family dramedy “Mermaids,” which pairs the Hollywood legend with fellow icon Winona Ryder as a mom-and-daughter duo navigating small-town life and their many differences in coastal New England.
What is ‘Mermaids’ about?
In this 1963-set period comedy, Academy Award winner Cher stars as carefree, unconventional single mom Rachel Flax, who has a habit of uprooting her two daughters — neurotic 15-year-old Charlotte (Winona Ryder, who earned a Golden Globe nomination for her performance here) and swim-obsessed 9-year-old Kate (Christina Ricci) — at her whim, usually after a romantic encounter gone bad.
Their latest move has landed the gals in the small Massachusetts town of Eastport, where Rachel becomes romantically entangled with a local shopkeeper (Bob Hoskins) and Charlotte — who, much to the chagrin of her fun-loving mother, harbors dreams of entering the nunnery — falls for the convent’s hunky caretaker (Michael Schoeffling). All the while, the Flax girls are left wondering whether Rachel will eventually give in yet again to her wayward ways or if this time, the family will finally settle down for real.
Why you should stream ‘Mermaids’ on Prime Video
Some movies can sugarcoat the layered and often complicated nature of mother-daughter relationships, but not “Mermaids. Though the Richard Benjamin-directed flick is an undoubtedly feel-good watch, it does get relatably real about that loving tension via Rachel and Charlotte’s odd-couple relationship.
Cher’s matriarch, who became pregnant with Charlotte when she was just a teen herself, is unpredictable, nomadic and, especially for the times, fiercely independent and sexually progressive; on the flip side, her daughter is far more buttoned-up than her free-spirited parent, craving tradition and stability amidst the chaos of her upbringing. But in the midst of all of that difference and discord, there’s clear love there, a warmth that permeates throughout the movie.
For The Washington Post, Hal Hinson praised “the strength of June Roberts’s sprightly, inventive script — which came by way of Patty Dann’s novel, with some custom modifications based on Cher’s relationship with her own mother” and said that overall “‘Mermaids’ is an infectious, bouncy diversion, like the fruity dance the girls and their mother do around the kitchen table at the film’s end. It gets you humming along.”
Watch “Mermaids” on Prime Video now
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