Aquamarine is aimed at the crowd that loved The Babysitter's Club. It has a similar energy and the same respect for the difficulties of negotiating the adolescent passage without caving in to peer group pressures. The saving grace for this movie directed by Elizabeth Allen is that it is based on a novel by Alice Hoffman, a gifted writer who always delivers fresh insights into the feminine journey. Here the character on a quest for love is a mermaid. Her presence serves as a spur to help two friends sort out their feelings about each other and the future.
Claire (Emma Roberts) and Hailey (Joanna "Jojo" Levesque) are 13-year-olds living in a small Florida town. Neither of them wants to deal with the major change that lies on the horizon: Hailey's mother, a marine biologist, has taken a job in Australia and they are going to be moving shortly. Claire lives with her grandparents who run a beach club. She and Hailey are infatuated with Raymond Calder (Jake McDorman), the lifeguard, and hang on his every move. He is pretty much indifferent to their existence.
One day after a storm, Claire and Hailey are stunned to come across Aqua (Sara Paxton), an 18-year old mermaid who has fled home to avoid an arranged marriage and is on a quest for love. If she finds it in three days, her father will let her out of the wedding. When the mermaid, who can walk on land legs until sunset each day, sees Raymond, she is convinced that he is the one she can love.
Claire and Hailey try to give her advice on getting his attention and winning him over, but their own source of ideas are teen magazines. In a plot device sure to delight the fashion industry, they must all go shopping for new wardrobes and a hair makeover. Although Aqua has fun doing this, she wonders whether all this will make Raymond love her. It doesn't help to find out that Cecilia (Arielle Kebbel), an attractive teenager, also wants him as her trophy boyfriend.
Aquamarine is a spunky movie that contains some awkward moments when Claire and Hailey go over the top in their slavery to popular culture and the lies promoted by the media about what it means to be in a romantic relationship. Perhaps the most creative bit in the movie is when Aqua tells her two new friends that starfish make great earrings because they whisper little words of praise and endearment into her ears. Now there's something all teenagers could really use during those times when they are not at all happy about the way they look and the way others see them.
Special DVD features include a commentary by director Elizabeth Allen, scene specific cast commentary, deleted scenes, an "Awesome Auditions" featurette, an "It's All About the Fashion" featurette, and a "Kickin' It on Set" featurette.
