Frozen star Josh Gad’s effort of bringing together cast members of beloved, nostalgic hit movies has been a real treat over these weeks of self-isolation. His latest venture reunited the cast of the cherished 1984 hit romantic comedy Splash.
This latest installment of Josh Gad’s Reunited Apart series brought together most of the principle cast of Splash including Tom Hanks, Darryl Hannah, and Eugene Levy, along with producer Brian Grazer, screenwriters Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandell and director Ron Howard.
Splash tells the story of a man named Allen Bauer who unwittingly falls in love with a woman who is secretly a mermaid. The movie begins in 1959, when a young boy is rescued from a watery grave by an adolescent mermaid. Twenty-five years later, the mermaid, named Madison, surfaces in search of her long-lost love. The girl manages to win Allen’s heart, but trouble ensues when a government lab captures her for research purposes.
The movie is a delightful 80s romp, led by charming performances from Hanks and Hannah, as well as the hilarious addition of the late, great John Candy as Hanks’ boisterous brother. In fact, the most touching moment of the reunion came when Josh Gad invited Deadpool star Ryan Reynolds to close it out with a touching tribute to the sadly departed Splash cast member.
The reunited cast had a lot to talk about, with the group discussing a wide range of topics, ranging from how the idea behind Spalsh was first conceived and what it was like to film the movie. Producer Brian Grazer explained that he came up with the story for Splash before he and Ron Howard collaborated on the 1982 comedy Night Shift. However, Howard wanted to do the latter before acting on Grazer’s idea. After finishing that movie, Grazer floated the idea to Howard again, and the two began working on it right away.
Lead actors Tom Hanks and Daryl Hannah recalled how they both had to learn how to scuba dive in order to shoot the underwater scenes. Hannah even opened up about how nervous she felt having to kiss Hanks for the first time as she was so young when the movie was made that she had never even really had a boyfriend. Describing what the experience was like, “I was terrified because I was still – even though I was like 21 or 22, I still really hadn’t had a boyfriend. I was terrified about the kiss.”
So far, Josh Gad has done an impressive job of getting the cast and crew from ’80s hit movies back together, with the actor having previously reunited the casts of family adventure movie The Goonies and Robert Zemeckis’s iconic time-traveling flick Back to the Future. For those of us who hold these in such regard, it has been an absolute delight to see the talent behind these movies come back together again, and give us some insight into what filming them was like, especially now they have such a nostalgic legacy.
Splash is now available to watch on Disney+, though the streamer was taken to task by fans for editing some of its content. Best to just ignore that and enjoy this charming story of a guy trying to bed a fish-woman. You can watch the Splash cast reunite on Josh Gad’s Youtube Channel.
