Absolute dreck, which mysteriously managed to gain a myriad of critical accolades while rising to a far from impressive number 8 at the US box office. It has been a long time since we have gotten a fun Jaws-inspired rip-off, this does not qualify. The film is a wart on the butt of the original Jaws and fails to even come within miles of Jaws 2 or the original Piranha, both of which managed to be fun and suspenseful. An earthquake opens up a fissure to an underground cave housing deadly prehistoric piranha just shy of a Spring Break extravaganza. I love good trash or guilty pleasures and Piranha 3-D would certainly seem to fall within those parameters. It is completely up front about being trash, which I respect, but it also arrives acting like it is too-cool-for-the-room. In other words, it makes the mistake of believing in advance that it is great watchable trash...it is mistaken. Instead of crafting something fun and suspenseful from the set-up, director Aja has instead vomited forth a film so brutally repellent and disgusting as to defy belief. After a while, the gore literally ceases to have any impact. Aja has little interest in the characters populating his landscape of blood and fails to even make them "types" that anyone can be concerned about before they meet their gruesome fates. We have no concern for Sheriff Elisabeth Shue, scientist Adam Scott or any vested interest in whether Shue's three offspring will survive the onslaught. The visual effects range from adequate to clumsy, and the underwater 3-D effects are murky - proof positive that the film was converted rather than filmed expressly for 3-D. If character development is non-existent than suspense/excitement follows it down the same hole. The dialog consists of either screaming, a scientist-type pontificating a wild theory, or some variation of "Let's get out of here" or "Look out". Then again, it only has to function as little more than a bridging device between the next gore scene or the next boob shot. The film is awash in a ocean of boobs. There are bare breasts to right, to the left and storming the camera at every opportunity. Apparently, filmmakers forgot that their target audience would probably be dragging their girlfriends to this epic, so male skin is at a minimum. The film's "highlight" or nadir, depending on your view, is a roughly 10-minute orgy of violence with various partiers being devoured, skewered, ground up in propellers, torn apart, beheaded, etc., preferably women who somehow manage to lose their tops prior to being disemboweled. The film's idea of comedy is having Jerry O'Connell as a Girls Gone Wild-type sleaze merchant who gets his privates gnawed off on camera - oh the hilarity! The acting is not terrible. Perhaps Steven R. McQueen will have the luck of his grandfather after The Blob and go on to something better. Pity poor Shue, Richard Dreyfuss, Ving Rhames, Christopher Lloyd, et al., whose careers have apparently bottomed out to include chum like this as an option. Kelly Brook is lovely and seems classier than the film surrounding her, so no wonder Aja decides to destroy her physically near the climax, but not before graphically denuding her for the gratification of the sweaty adolescents in the audience. Then again, this is no surprise for a film that seems to view the entire human race as little more than bare boobs and geysers of gore. A truly disheartening experience and indefensible on any level.
Review of Piranha 3D
