Stephen Chow is one of my favorite directors in China, I have seen many wonderful films directed by him like KongFu Hustle, ShaoLin soccer.
An outstanding characteristic of Chow's film is tricking of comedy ( I don't know how to describe that style accurately).
However, this film, The Mermaid, is very different compared to the other two mentioned above. To conclude it in a sentence, that is a wonderful mixture of comedy, love, science fiction and environment.
Environmental protection is heavy point of this film, but unlike many other directors, Stephen Chow shows it in another way, which is love and comedy.
This film inherit many characteristics in Chow's old films, like 'XiaoQiang' and 'WangCai' and so on. Though Language comedy has intrinsically regional difference, many tricks can be conveyed from the simple actuation.
Stunts seem to be an fatal drawback of Chinese films, may be investment is the major problem. But stunts in this film is very nice, e.g. the tail of octopus and arresting of the mermaid under water.
Overall, this is a wonderful movie which will catch heart of a very general range of audience. I strongly recommend it.