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, All Movie Guide