Mermaid’s Jade (2019)

I liked this movie!

So first of all this is a moderate budget Chinese wuxia movie about gay mermaids. I did not go into it with high expectations, and it starts off a bit confusing. But I thought the story they ended up weaving was pretty interesting!

In this story, mermaids can make special silk and their tears are pearls. They are trafficked by humans as a source of wealth as a result. And because they are enslaved and tortured to force them to produce silk and pearls, they sometimes fight back.

Because they are seen as a danger to humans, it is illegal to keep them and if someone is caught keeping one both the mermaid and the human should be executed by law.

But when Yuanshan finds the merman Yixia at the scene of a murder, for some reason he spares his life.

The plot is pretty complex, with a fight for the succession to the throne, Yuanshan's wife being a princess, her brother having a dragon beast spreading around bad dragon qi, and Yixia being so cute and irresistible. What is a minister of justice to do?

The ending is also an absolute trip.

Anyway understand this isn't a high budget movie and set expectations accordingly, enjoy the gay mermaid fun.

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I really wanted to like this movie more than I did

It's not every day that we see a Chinese BL movie, and one that contains some explicit scenes too.

However, steamy sex scenes cannot cover up bad writing. While the premise is promising, with an historical-fantasy theme, the execution itself is quite poor. In the first minutes of the film we learn that there are three factions of races in the world - dragons, humans and mermen - and that they are all in constant conflict with one another. Why? that's a great question, but you won't receive a clear answer throughout the movie. The love story between the two main characters develops way too quickly - they go straight from enemies to lovers. There are many more problems with the script other than these two, but I don't want to add any spoilers.

The acting itself was good , considering the story. It seems they all tried to do their best.

The music was not noteworthy. Not bad, but not outstanding either.

Overall I probably won't watch it again. And that's a shame, really, because with better writing it could have been a really great movie.

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