the m0vie blog

You know, I wanted to like Piranha 3D. I really did. I like a certain level of schlock and self-awareness which a film like this really just promises. Hell, I’ll normally even acknowledge that a one-note film can strike that one note particularly well. Unfortunately, Piranha 3D is just… well, let’s just say I’d probably enjoy skinny-dipping with the eponymous monsters more than watching them.

Fish out of water...

Watching it, I had to wonder how a film like this could go so far wrong. I mean, the clue is in the title. It’s a monster movie made with the gimmicky trend of the particular moment. It’s going to be trash. It’s going to be pants. It can at least be entertaining rubbish. The very premise of the movie – a prehistoric piranha infestation as teens flock to the lake for the debauchery of Spring Break – indicates that those involved in the film should know that this is a dodgy premise and it’s one not to be taken seriously.

However, the film insists on taking itself seriously.

Take, for example, the manner in which the movie offers it’s seemingly obligatory T & A. Now, in an exploitation film like this, they are all but expected by the audience – it’s a staple of this particular brand of B-movie. So, you know, have some fun with it. This isn’t the seventies anymore – porn is freely available over the internet. Anyone who wants boobs can find them over a modem quickly and efficiently enough, without having to worry about cardboard dialogue or bad acting. So, the only reason to include it in a film like this is to play with it – to have a bit of fun about how gratuitous the showing of flesh is in these sorts of films. Unfortunately, the movie didn’t get the memo. Instead, it flashes the flesh with an almost disturbing perverse earnestness.

It should be Piranha DD...

Hell, it even builds a subplot around having women do sexy things to one another – using the pretense of a “Girls Gone Wild” video shoot. This might provide an opportunity for an exploration of how pornography infiltrates the mainstream through such seemingly “harmless” videos, but it ends up playing out as almost an example itself. It’s as if the movie doesn’t expect you to laugh at the way it treats sex (and will claim you are ruining the mood by doing so), and instead wants you to be titillated by it. It feels somewhat disgusting – like I could have gone out and bought a “Girls Gone Wild” video if I wanted this sort of thing.

The rest of the film is pretty much pants as well, unfortunately. From the CGI used to render the killer fish (which looks like it came from a SyFy original movie) through to the blurry 3D effect, it’s corny beyond belief. And not in a self-aware way either. It’s clear when the movie wants you to laugh, but it’s also clear there are moments when the film expects you to tense up in your seat. It’s a little awkward, because it never feels like the terrible nature of the film is intentional, and the self-awareness seems to have been focused around the least essential parts (the “shock ending” for example).

Enough rope to hang itself...

The movie contains a pretty deadly cast, which is why I was so disappointed to discover how crap it was. A film featuring Richard Dreyfus, Elizabeth Shue, Adam Scott, Ving Rhames and Christopher Lloyd should be able to get by on knowing winks and nods. Instead, the movie locks you in a dead serious and self-important stare – like that kid in your English class who read Shakespeare with the intensity that suggested he was destined for the Royal Shakespearean Society, despite the fact he couldn’t pronounce most of the words.

In fairness, Lloyd’s performance is solid. He provides the incredibly helpful (and unnecessary) plot exposition in the middle of the film. He’s chewing scenery like nobody’s business, but that’s a significant improvement when most of the cast are being out-performed by CGI fish. Lloyd is one of those actors who has starred in so many terrible films, but you kinda forgive him when you get a taste of his raw energy and enthusiasm. Everybody else sleepwalks through the film. Somehow Adam Scott manages to play a bad-ass shotgun-totting jet-ski-riding seismologist without even a hint of irony – or character, for that matter.

Doesn't make a splash...

The movie also takes a fair bit of time to set up the evil swarm of prehistoric piranhas as the bad guys of the piece, with lots of dull and pointless foreshadowing and ominous music. Here’s the thing though, most horror movies give us twenty minutes of boredom before anything happens because they want to convince us to invest in the lead characters (before they die, one by one). Here, the movie should be smart enough to realise that anybody paying to see Piranha 3D probably doesn’t want that sort of shallow characterisation. And yet the movie gives it to us with the same earnestness as it offers us the large volume of female flesh.

When the eponymous hordes do show up, the chaos is completely pointless. It’s poorly handled. It should be either tasteless or serious, but the movie tries walk the line between the two – and it doesn’t succeed. It’s surreal to see a movie having so much fun slaughter college students while asking us to hope that a pair of kids live through it. One gets the sense that the movie wastes what could have been a perfectly subversive look at the creature feature genre.

The actors phone it in...

It’s ironic, but I can’t help feel the movie needed more bite. It was just too bland and safe and self-conscious and self-important. It set itself up as a parody or an exploration of the classic tropes one might associate with the creature feature, an exploitation of an exploitation, but it ultimately manages to suck just as badly as the films it sought to homage – perhaps even worse, because it seems convinced that it’s a better film than it actually is.

Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Adam Scott, Christopher Lloyd, Elisabeth Shue, Girls Gone Wild, monster movie, Movie, non-review review, piranha 3d, review, Richard Dreyfuss, schlock, ving rhames |