If you loved (or even remember) the fantastically nutty “Alien Autopsy,” you will fall madly for “Mermaids: The Body Found,” an equally nutty special — on Animal Planet, of all places.
Of course, if real mermaids did exist, they wouldn’t look like adorable seahorses with Daryl Hannah’s hair.
And if they did exist (and they certainly don’t seem to!), it turns out they’d have to have ugly human-fish heads and ugly fish teeth. And forget about the skin.
What is hypothesized in “Mermaids” is just outrageous.
For starters, it opens with the statement: “The scientists in this film are speaking on camera for the first time.”
And with good reason. None of them are scientists. They are actors pretending to be scientists. And what they are speaking about never happened — for the most part, anyway.
Dr. Paul Robertson, a “maritime scientist,” vaguely resembles maritime scientist Richard Dreyfuss in “Jaws,” right down to the scruffy beard and sweater. In other words, too real to be real.
Robertson — and all the other “scientists” on the special — give testimony about what they saw and learned about real-life mermaids.
This is interspersed with fantastic CGI of mer-people a-swimming in the sea accompanied by a voiceover with genuine and accurate information.
Back then to Robertson, who tells a story about the (actual) mass beaching of whales in Washington state in 1997 and 2004, and how it is believed that Navy sonar-weapons-testing was responsible, The sound, it was believed, drove the whales in a panic to the shore to escape the terrible noise. All true.
Then “Mermaids” again drifts off into Disneyland with a made-up tale in which “Robertson” and others do a mermaid autopsy. Or maybe it’s merman — I don’t know — since in that department, they seem to be lacking.
Well, it’s only the bottom half anyway.
It’s hard to know what’s real and what’s not. I guess it’s on purpose.
The bottom line? We used to be ape-like creatures that got a hankering for shellfish (clearly our ancestors weren’t kosher) and so moved closer to the sea.
Then, when the sea rose and covered over most of East Africa, some creatures went further inland and others took to the sea without ships.
Despite the fact that commercial fishing nets scoop up everything in their wake, no one has ever caught a mermaid/man.
Good thing, too. These fish people are so ugly they need a leash to go out.