Cinderella’s glass flipper

Cinderella’s glass flipper

Another movie where something amazing happens, and it is wrapped in the plot of a sitcom. This time around, a teenage mermaid washes ashore at a Florida beach resort and befriends two 13-year-old girls while dating a cute lifeguard. Oh, and there’s also a mean blonde with her posse who wants to spoil everyone’s fun.

And yet well, the movie is awfully sweet. The young actresses playing eighth-graders look their age for once, and have an unforced charm. I know there’s an audience for this film as certainly as I know that I’m not part of it. It is clever how the two heroines develop crushes on the lifeguard and then use the mermaid as their designated hitter; they coach her how to attract a boy’s attention, and watch fascinated as she captivates the boy they can only dream about.

The girls are Claire and Hailey (Emma Roberts and JoJo), best friends who share everything except the screen names of their MySpace pages. But when Hailey learns that she must move to Australia with her mother at summer’s end in just three days! they pine over Raymond (Jake McDorman), the hunky blond musclehead who works at Beach Java Hut across from Lifeguards Unlimited next to Bait Shop Shack.

They study his body language: How he shakes his hair out of his eyes; how he stretches his arms behind his head to flex his biceps; basically every indication that what little blood flow he has does not go straight from brain to heart or vice versa.

Then one night there is a big storm, which you might have guessed because “Aquamarine” features scenes so subtly lit that you can see zippers on shadows, followed by swimming pools in which normal people somehow manage not to drown.

But after said storm passes through town one night, Claire slips into Beach Club swimming pool the next day and sees a fish tail sticking out from behind an underwater cheapness. It appears that this is how mermaids look right after they are taken out of their fluorescent, motion activated “Find Me First!” packaging.

Oh, yeah: The title character is played by Sara Paxton, who possesses one of those mouths that looks like every time she smiles, it should make a clicking sound. Aquamarine eventually grows legs long enough to deliver punch lines such as “We don’t have Sea World where I come from; we have Lake World” but only when dry or clearly visible by someone to whom she wants to prove her existence.

“We’re not fictional,” Aquamarine tells the skeptical girls. “We’re discreet.” She also has nail polish that changes colors according to her mood, which was a big hit with the 10-year old at my screening who kept yelling her guesses before hearing the characters say them.

See, Aquamarine’s mission on land is to prove love exists so she can avoid marrying some guy undersea whom she doesn’t even know. Her dad gives her three days in human form to find true love or accept arranged marriage because he controls life and death of millions of fish.

So Hailey and Claire decide to teach Aquamarine how to get Raymond’s attention. Step One: Call him and hang up. Step Two: Walk past him without appearing to notice him difficult when you’ve never bothered developing peripheral vision.

Before long Aquamarine is holding hands with Raymond and stuff, which enrages Cecilia (Arielle Kebbel), blond nemesis who has spent previous scenes sneaking through bushes trying to discover Aquamarine’s secret instead of just asking herself why there’s suddenly a girl in town wearing bikini tops made entirely out of fishing net found near docks owned by Bait Shop Shack next door to Lifeguards Unlimited across from Beach Java Hut.

One thing leads to another, and before you know it, Raymond is taking Aquamarine out on a date, which she must complete before she turns to sea foam at midnight or her battery runs out. But because the town council has declared mission of movie to be “keep girls apart,” Aquamarine ends up stuck overnight inside giant water tank outside town, where sharks apparently have been struggling with addiction to junk food.

So the suspense builds as Cecilia tries to beat out Aquamarine for Raymond’s date at the Final Splash a block party on last day of summer that conveniently takes place right in front of Lifeguards Unlimited across from Beach Java Hut next door to Bait Shop Shack owned by Hailey’s father. Meanwhile, Hailey learns that mermaids can grant wishes and wonders if she can use hers to make her mom stay in Florida and forget about Australia.

And geez, wouldn’t it be nice if together they could figure out how to keep everyone else there from watching?

A film like this one doesn’t stimulate the mind; it stimulates the eyes. It features nice clean-limbed kids looking as if they still think making movies is a lark, and stays so far away from anything specific that its PG rating, ”for mild language and sensuality,” seems severe. The plot is hackneyed, the emotions are simple-minded, and the mermaid reminded me of my friend McHugh explaining why lobsters make good pets: They don’t bark, and they know the secrets of the deep.

Oh, I almost forgot Leonard (Bruce Spence), the beachcomber. He looks so ominous that at one point one girl whispers to another: “He knows what you did last summer.” I learn from IMDb.com that Spence stands 6-foot 7-inches tall. His role as The Mouth of Sauron in ”The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” was cut from the movie but restored in the Extended Edition, and I tell you this because when Leonard comes on screen you’ll want to know more about him. He’s practically the only thing there you will want to know more about.

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