Monday, March 5, 2012

Review: Shark Night 3-D

Credentials: 3.9 out of 10 (Imdb.com) / 14% Certified Rotten (Rottentomatoes.com) / 22 out of 100 (Metacritic.com)

Plot: A group of college kids head to a remote lake house for some premarital relations, boozin’ and other assorted acts of youthful debauchery. Sadly, their fun-filled weekend takes a turn for the worst when a gang of hungry sharks show up and crash the party. And not just your run-of-the-mill sharks either, but all sorts of strange and exotic sharks including hammerheads and this weird kind that lights up. What a world. Anyway, all this gives rise to one very important question: Who will make it to graduation and uh what will be left of them?

Why it stinks: This should be pretty easy. I can sum up everything that’s wrong with “Shark Night 3-D” in two letters and one number: PG-13. What jabbering lunatic thought THAT was a good idea? I mean honestly, making a PG-13 film called “Shark Night 3-D” is like putting sunglasses on the Mona Lisa--- what’s the point?
                Sure, “Shark Night” tries to pass itself off as existing in the same trashy, gimmicky, exploitation-y vein as “Piranha 3-D,” but it’s not. Not even close. The rating makes all the difference.

                Subtract the endless amounts of gore and scantily clad ladies from “Piranha” and you get “Shark Night.” And instead of a rollicking good time, what you get is boring. Seriously boring. Really, really f’n boring.
                Basically “Shark Night” ends up at about the same level production and story-wise as a Scy-Fy Channel movie, only without the self-aware, so-bad-it’s-good humor to save it.
                The special effects are sad. We get some cheap-looking CGI sharks and even a few rubber puppets that characters get to wrestle around with in a shallow body of water “Bride of the Monster” style. Hang your head in shame, effects department.
                The acting is what you’d expect from this sort of movie… not great. To be fair though, the likes of Donal Logue (always fun), Katharine McPhee (very pretty) and Joshua Leonard (totally unrecognizable from his “Blair Witch” days) make it tolerable. At times even mildly enjoyable. So well done to those three.
                Can’t say the same about Dustin Milligan, who plays Nick, a med school student, videogame nerd, loser who also happens to have a six pack. Wait what? One of those things doesn’t belong. Hmmm… Anyway, Milligan spends most of the last two-thirds of the movie taking off his shirt and diving into bodies of water which gets pretty old and his goody two-shoes character irritated the hell out of me.
                Now, truth be told, I saw this thing in 2-D instead of its native 3-D. So perhaps I missed something. But I doubt it. There wasn’t even the traditional 3-D staple of a character playing with a yo-yo. Even “Avatar” had that… duh.

--- The origin story of the sharks has to be addressed because it is such a steaming pile of nonsense. But I don'r want to ruin it, so I'll just say it's got a dash of "Scream 4" mixed with a hint of hillbilly. Where the money or the resources came from for this project, well god only knows. 
--- Leading lady Sara Paxton looks too much like one of the "Gilmore Girls." Confused the hell out of me.
--- Absolutely NOT so bad it's good. Just bad. Bad bad. The kind of bad that makes kittens cry.

                Worst of the worst

                One of the college kids has his arm bitten off by a shark. The kid is understandably traumatized by this experience. For like 10 minutes. Next thing you know, he’s running into the lake with what I can only assume is a homemade spear in order to get revenge. On a shark. And by god he wrestles with the shark and everything. Despite having his arm amputated very recently. I mean wow. It’d be funny, but… I don’t know. It’s just not.

                Video Evidence

Poor Katharine. Oh well, at least she's got a show on CBS so things are looking... it's on NBC? Girl, you need a new agent...


                There you go. Sorry for the lengthy break between reviews. Bumblebee tuna.   

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