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.
--- 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.
No comments:
Post a Comment