The Thirteenth Year: AKA that mermaid movie
At least they didn’t make fish puns.
I don’t remember the first DCOM I watched, but The Thirteenth Year (1999) was one of the first. I saw this many times as a kid.
I’m not sure why, though. Not much stood out from the other films. At face value, it isn’t particularly exceptional: a kid finds out that he’s a merman (a term the movie constantly reminds you of). To make things more complicated, he’s a competitive swimmer and grows fins and a tail when he enters the water.
The concept is enough to at least pique your interest. But this a DCOM that stands out among the others. It was played frequently on the network and is remembered by many as ‘that mermaid movie on Disney Channel.’
But why this one specifically? It doesn’t have a unique, immersive world like Halloweentown or Zenon. It doesn’t have a big DCOM star on it like Cadet Kelly or Camp Rock. It doesn’t even tackle serious issues like The Color of Friendship or [insert one of the multiple DCOMs that address sexism here] did.
It would have to come down to timing and quality then. I think the timing of the film is what makes it so memorable. This is one of the first ten DCOMs to be released on the network.
Given how much of a financial risk it was to churn these films out, they had to promote the crap out of them. And this one isn’t based around a holiday, so you could air it throughout the year.
For quality, we look at the director, who not only directed Halloweentown, but edited Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. Make of that as you wish, but the movie isn’t that great, regardless of that interpretation.
It’s surprising who Disney Channel got to direct and act in some of these films. There are seasoned actors mixed with future and past child stars, along with lots of talented staff. Can of Worms had Caligula himself voice a talking dog.
Unfortunately, The Thirteenth Year doesn’t have an all-star cast, but it does have a talented one (with a few exceptions). There’s a Rick Moranis-type character named Jess (Justin Jon Ross). I half-expected him to start singing ‘Suddenly Seymour’. I wish he became the new go-to nerd guy after Rick Moranis took a hiatus from acting.
You also have the secondary antagonist, Sean (Tim Redwine), who is the main character Cody’s (Chez Starbuck) rival on the swim team. I don’t know if it’s because antagonists are more fun to play, but DCOMs have some great actors to play asshole antagonists*.
*Side note: I’ll talk more about the DCOM tropes I come across in another post, because I’m starting to see a trend in these films. The formula is so tried-and-true that I can’t blame Disney for exploiting it to hell like they do everything else.
This guy was a special kind of dick for the whole movie, even though he vanished from it in the last 20 minutes or so. More on the plot holes and other errors later.
Then there’s Cody, the good-looking swim star who was accidentally given away by his mother, a mermaid. The situation was obviously sad, but the mermaid’s performance was so wooden that it robbed the scene of all emotion. Luckily, Cody’s human parents were at least trying.
Cody’s acting isn’t the greatest, either. It becomes painfully obvious since the other actors fit their roles a lot better. I know this sounds mean, but I think he was chosen for his looks instead of his acting.
The acting was the least of this movie’s problems. The movie is full of wasted potential and plot points that go nowhere.
Where do I even begin? Let’s start with the connection between Cody and Jess. Jess’s father, John (Brent Briscoe), is a fisherman who chases after then newborn Cody’s mermaid mother, causing her to leave baby Cody in his future parents’ boat.
The mermom (I’m calling her that from now on) escapes, but is unable to get Cody back afterward for thirteen years. I have a hard time believing that she couldn’t get the parents’ attention for 13 years. Later in the film, she communicated with them by staring at them seductively, so it’s plausible that she could have told them at any point.
Meanwhile, John spent 13 years obsessing over mermaids and not raising Jess. Maybe that’s why Jess turned out the way he is. He didn’t receive enough attention as a kid, so he spent that extra time reading in solitude.
That would also explain why Jess never learned how to swim, despite being the son of a fisherman. When your dad obsesses over mermaids and ignores you, you lose out on useful life skills. By the way, his mother is never mentioned in the film. Classic Disney.
Speaking of missing parents, where is Cody’s father? Where are the other merpeople? What’s going to happen in the future? If he learns to control his abilities, does that mean there are merpeople on land? If so, why didn’t the mermom get out of the water? So many unanswered questions.
You know, when you build a universe, you should at least try to make it consistent. Halloweentown and Zenon built fairly solid universes, and they could address certain issues if they really wanted to. I gave them a pass because the worlds were structured well enough. This one is so inconsistent that I couldn’t let it slide.
Jess and Cody’s friendship sparks after Cody saves him from drowning. When they inevitably get paired up for a project, Jess offers to help out Cody with biology work in return for swimming lessons. Over time, they bond fairly well, especially once Cody’s transformation into a merman begins.
Their relationship wasn’t the only good one in the movie. Another great moment was between Jess and John. The two have great father/son chemistry between them. It helps when both characters are outcasts in their respective circles, so all they’ve had is each other.
When John saw that Jess was doing more research on mermaids, you could feel the happiness radiating from John. His son shares a similar interest as him! Awwww.
This is yet another DCOM where a side character is more interesting than the main character. Why couldn’t they have made Jess a merman instead? Think about it: nerd guy becomes a merman and wins the state swim championship. It would have been great. Maybe.
Also, what about the state swim championship? Did no one else see Cody’s fins growing out of his arms? Is he just going to keep the record? I guess he technically didn’t cheat, so it’s fine.
Then there’s Sean being written out of the last twenty minutes or so of the movie. The last time you see him is when he gets into a fight with Cody. He says, “I don’t know what your story is Cody. But I’m gonna find out. And when I do, you’re done for.” In a later scene, he gets into a fight with Cody and Corbin Bleu’s dad (really) breaks up the fight. Then… he’s never seen again. He never found out about Cody being a merman. There was no big reveal in the school. In fact, the plot doesn’t require the school in the resolution at all.
What makes it worse is that he’s one of the few antagonists I’ve seen in a DCOM who has genuine motivation for being an asshole. He and Cody are rivals in swim and he was jealous of Cody and Sam’s relationship. It’s a perfect reason for having him as one of (if not, the) main antagonists. Cody saying, “I thought we were friends” felt unearned because we don’t see that friendship at all. I wish they developed their relationship in the beginning of the film more so that the betrayal, whether it be the cheating or his relationship with Sam, felt more personal.
It’s such a waste to not give him a bigger role and leaving us with the fisherman. He’s obsessed with mermaids and happens to be the father of the protagonist’s best friend, but that’s all to his character. At least Sean had a real relationship with Cody that the audience understood.
Now, we come to the biggest unanswered question I have about the movie: What’s going to happen to Cody now? He’s going to spend the summer learning to control his powers, and then what? Become Aquaman? This is one of those movies where a sequel is justifiable. There are so many unresolved plot points that I wish a sequel existed. Maybe this takes place in the Up, Up, and Away! or Sky High universes.
Of course, there are some good things about the movie. One highlight: Cody’s mom being an off-the-grid hippie who doesn’t trust doctors.
If you want to see what I think of people who hate doctors and only use ‘natural remedies,’ watch Tim Minchin’s Storm: The Animated Movie. This exchange was pretty great, though:
Dad: Remind me why we came here again?
Comrade Mom: To start a new life free from the constraints of the bourgeois capitalist existence.
Dad: See, I thought it was to start a tour boat company.
Comrade Mom: You have your reasons; I have mine.
On the relationship between Sam and Cody: I appreciate that they got the romance arc over after two minutes, but it felt forced. I genuinely didn’t care. I don’t even think I cared when I was a kid. If they had more time to flesh out the story, it could have worked. Unfortunately, they didn’t have that luxury.
I honestly don’t remember the movie being this bad. As a coming of age story, it lacks any subtlety and is hardly relatable to its target audience. As a ‘transforming into a different being’ story, it lacks any real stakes other than him maybe not seeing his mother or being captured by Jess’s father.
We get it, everyone’s body changes around age 13. A merman going through puberty wasn’t the best metaphor to visualize it, but they could have improved upon it if Disney let them add an extra half hour to deal with the plot points that went unresolved.
Next up: Smart House, the movie directed by Levar Burton about the talking house voiced by Katey Sagal. YES.
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