There s no point in recounting the many production problems and personal hostilities which plagued the filming of Mermaids: the end result is all that matters. Set in the 1960s the film details the relationship between an unorthodox unmarried vagabond mother (Cher) and her two daughters. The 15-year-old (Winona Ryder) continually embarrassed by her flamboyant mother wants to be the world s greatest Catholic; the nine-year-old (Christina Ricci) would be satisfied with becoming the world s champion swimmer. Moving with her family to New England the older daughter falls in love from afar with the groundskeeper (Michael Schoeffling) from a nearby convent while Mom takes up with a lonely salesman (Bob Hoskins). Mermaids is perceptively adapted from the warmly comic novel by Patty Dann. ~ Hal Erickson Rovi