Piranha 3DD

Since the campy Piranha 3D made over $80 million (!!!) in the box office, it was inevitable that it would spawn a sequel. It's a difficult task to follow up a stupid hit with an inevitably stupider sequel, but the filmmakers got off on the right foot when they named the sequel Piranha 3DD.  That is simply sublime.  I don't think there is a better way to distill what this movie should be about than that: killer fish and big boobs.  Somebody give that title guy a raise!  Truly, this will live out its days with the royalty of movie sequel titles, like Electric Boogaloo and Die Harder.  Here's the thing, though: I didn't really like Piranha 3D.  Sure, it was campy and had some cheap nudity and gore, but it was too aware of its crappiness to for me to truly enjoy laughing at it.  I hate laughing with bad movies --- I want to laugh at them.  What are the odds that Piranha 3DD will be stupid, but still stupid-fun?

I started off liking Piranha 3DD's choices, right off the bat.  Piranha 3D set the stage for the inevitable sequel, but 3DD opts to completely ignore the ending of that movie; in a brilliant move, they acknowledge that some people died in a lake, thanks to some fish, but it's probably unrelated to what's happening in this film.  So, if you were hoping for some tighter continuity in this series, you're absolutely adorable.  And out of luck.  The story kicks off with Maddy (Danielle Panabaker) returning home from college, only to discover that the water park she co-owns with her step-father, Chet (David Koechner), is about to grand open with an all-adult section and a brand new name: "Big Wet."  That's a lot to take in at one time, I know, but try to digest it all.  Yes, a college student co-owns a water park.  Yes, it is creepy that her step-father is setting up a raunchy zone in said water park.  And, following that logic, the lifeguards in the adult section will be strippers.

"And the lifeguards can drop their kids off in the main pool while they're pool stripping!  Genius!"

As the days count down to the grand opening of the park, Maddy and her friends start to notice some strange things happening at the lake that is located near the park.  Luckily, Maddy is a marine biologist and quickly realizes that super-piranhas are entering the lake, somehow.  But that's just the lake.  It couldn't possibly affect the water park, unless it happened to be illegally siphoning water from that lake.

But then...how did...oh, I get it now.

One of the unexpected strengths of Piranha 3D was its surprisingly legit cast.  Piranha 3DD doesn't quite match its prequel in that department.  Danielle Panabaker was fine, I guess, as the character with the closest thing that passes for brains in this movie.I don't know why, but I keep expecting her to have a breakout performance one of these days, despite the fact that she doesn't even stand out in this crap.  Her romantic interests are played by Matt Bush and Chris Zylka; Bush appears to be doing his best impression of a young Seth Green here, while Zylka continues to play teenage jerks.  Both were fine for what their roles called for, but neither was particularly interesting.  Meagan Tandy and Jean-Lu Bilodeau  were only in the film briefly, but they were void of personality.  Paul James Jordan would have been completely forgettable, if not for the scene where he cuts off his penis to keep a piranha from eating him.

I don't know if I would be that calm, sir

David Koechner was his usual bawdy self, and it actually made sense for him to show up in this film.  He wasn't funny, but I kind of hate seeing him in movies, so this matches my opinion of his talents quite well.  I was a little surprised that Ving Rhames reprised his role from the first movie (as did Paul Scheer), but at least his small part had a moderately funny moment. 

...that had already been done in Planet Terror

Gary Busey and Clu Gulager showed up in the introductory scene and were reasonably amusing as idiot rednecks.  Ever since Scream revived the "kill the recognizable actor in the opening scene" film trope, I have enjoyed seeing how different films have embraced the tradition; I'm fairly sure that Clu Gulager is the most obscure horror actor I have seen in a scene like that, but I am definitely not complaining.  It may be nepotism on the part of the director, but it's obscure and fun nepotism.  I will complain about Christopher Lloyd's choice to return, though; for an actor that is as occasionally hilarious as Lloyd, he sure knows how to stoop to the level of whatever movie he's in.  He could have been one of the shining moments of this film, and he definitely was not.  David Hasselhoff was shockingly not terrible playing himself.  I definitely like his work in the Spongebob movie better, but his singing threesome scene was enough to balance out most of his all-too-aware-of-its-campiness part.  When you get right down to it, the only actor I liked in the movie was Katrina Bowden.  Her character was too stupid and sincere for words, but the more I see of her, the more I am impressed by her excellent comedic timing.  Plus, she had the best line in the entire film:

John Gulager directed Piranha 3DD, and it was written by his buddies Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan; the three worked together on all three of the Feast movies.  In case you're unfamiliar with those movies, Melton and Dunstan have also co-written the last four Saw movies, so if anyone knows how to make a stupid movie funny, it's...the guys who write torture porn?  That doesn't sound right.

If only they had this picture to inspire them to greater heights...

I'm not going to bother commenting on normal directorial stuff, like cinematography, editing, or tone, because this movie doesn't care about any of that.  Instead, I'll judge Piranha 3DD on what it obviously values.  It had to be campy, gory, prominently feature large breasts, and, as the sequel to an already unlikely and campy movie, it had to be pretty darn stupid.  If that doesn't sound difficult to you, think of the last movie you watched that was intentionally so-bad-it's-good.  They're rarer beasts than you might think.  So, how did Gulager do?  This movie certainly was campy, but nowhere near as funny as it seemed to think it was. 

Example page from the script: Jiggle, jiggle, jiggle [WAIT FOR APPLAUSE TO DIE DOWN]

Aside from Hasselhoff's narration-singing and bizarre post-credits scene, the only time I laughed was with the whole piranha-in-my-vagina explanation.  That's not a good thing, especially when you consider how many other characters are in this movie.  Instead of being ridiculous, like Piranha 3D, this movie was stupid, and then had the nerve to elbow the audience in the stomach and ask if they "got it."  As for the gore, there definitely was some.  My personal favorite moments included an annoying child's head being eaten, a cow carcass exploding, and (of course) piranhagina (AKA pussanha).

Thank God this didn't start with "This one time, in band camp..."

The rest of the gore was surprisingly tame.  There was a lot of fake blood in the water, but it definitely felt less explicit than the original film, and it sure was a lot less original.  The filmmakers went out of their way to show gratuitous nude shots at the beginning of the film, but I was surprised by how rarely I saw unnecessary nudity as the story wore on.  Wasn't the entire point of making this an "adult" water park to constantly have topless girls splashing in the background of scenes?  It seems like such an obviously exploitative move, and yet it was used so sparingly. 

Why is Botox 'n' Balloon Chest Barbie even in this movie if she's clothed?

How about the plot?  Yes, that was dumb.  I know, I know, the filmmakers had to come up with a way to get piranhas into a water park, and they did it.  I have no problem with whatever stupid justification they needed to get Jason into space piranhas into the water park.  My problem is that the writers felt that they needed to build up to that.  That meant there was less time spent in the novelty location (the water park) and more time spent rehashing the last film in and around a lake.  This is a movie about killer fish in a water park; if I needed a plausible concept, then I wouldn't be watching a movie about killer fish in a water park. 

Correction: a movie about killer fish in a water park that features Gary Busey exploding a cow

When it gets down to brass tacks, Piranha 3DD feels like the poor man's version of Piranha 3D, instead of the bigger and stupider movie that all sequels strive to be.  It wants to be dumb enough to love, that much is clear.  It is just missing the charm, wit, and tongue-in-cheek knowing humor that earned Piranha 3D 3.5 stars (out of 10) from me.  In other words, this movie sucks, even when compared to a movie I didn't like.  The humor is cruder, the tone was more irritating than campy, there were human villains for some reason, and there wasn't enough creative gore or nudity to keep me interested.  It just.  Wasn't.  Fun. 

When 60% of your jokes come from the Hoff, you have a bad script

This isn't just a bad horror movie, it's a bad horror movie when you compare it to bad horror movies.  I almost wish I had given Piranha 3D a better rating, just to illustrate how much worse this sequel is.  How about this: Piranha 3DD made about 10% of Piranha 3D's box office gross.  Ouch.  Comparing it to Piranha 3D isn't even an apples-to-apples argument, because that movie actually achieved its goal of being dumb fun.  This is a lot closer to Shark Night 3D; both movies tried to capitalize on the success of the last Piranha, but couldn't be bothered to be ridiculously over the top.  This was lazy and boring instead of dumb fun. 

"I'll have to scrub for days to get all the shame off me"

On the bright side, this isn't a movie that deserves active hatred, it had a few worthwhile moments, and about fifteen minutes of its runtime was devoted to the end credits/gag reel, so the pain was short-lived.  Let's just hope we don't see another sequel for a while.

Piranha (2010)

Most movies want to convince you that they are high quality pieces of work, worth your time and your money.  Not every movie has the same strengths, of course, but action movies, comedies, dramas, horror or whatever, they all want to be thought of as "good."  However, not every movie is going to be good, and filmmakers know that.  Every year, there are hundreds of B-movies made for nickels on the Hollywood dollar, some of which turn out to be surprise hits, but most are just crappy direct-to-DVD fodder.  Once in a while, though, an odd beast rears its head: the big budget B-movie.  Piranha (2010), or Piranha 3D, is one of these strange creations, following in the proud footsteps of Snakes On a Plane.  It has no pretension of being anything but a cheesy movie with ample nudity and gore, no apologies needed or asked for.  Oh, and you can take your "piranhas are native to South American rivers, not Arizona" and shove it, along with your "research has proved that piranhas are more nuisances than dangers."  Take that, science!  Here's a fun fact: this film was made for $24 million, which is more than it cost to make four of this year's Best Picture nominees, and twice what it took to make the Best Picture winner, The King's Speech.  Don't get angry, it will just give you nosebleeds.

It is Spring Break and the tourist town of Lake Victoria is overflowing with drunken co-eds.  The local sheriff, Julie Forrester (Elizabeth Shue), and her deputy, Fallon (Ving Rhames), are trying their best to keep the annual chaos to a manageable minimum.  Since this is such a busy week for Julie, she forces her college-age son, Jake (Steven R. McQueen, grandson of Steve McQueen), to baby-sit his younger brother and sister instead of partying.  That's too bad, too, because the girl he totally has the hots for, Kelly (Jessica Szohr), is back in town and is hanging out with a bunch of jerkwads.  Life is tough sometimes.  Jake stumbles into some luck, though; he casually meets Derrick (Jerry O'Connell), the man behind the Girls Gone Wild Wild Wild Girls video series, and Derrick needs a local to help him find all the right spots to shoot his softcore pornography.  Shrugging off his family duties, Jake joins up with Derrick, some hot Wild Wild Girls starlets, and Kelly (more on her later) as they cruise their yacht to somewhere a little more comfortable.  Little do they know that a earthquake the afternoon before opened a chasm at the bottom of Lake Victoria, connecting it to a previously unknown subterranean lake.  And that lake is populated exclusively by thousands of piranhas.  These aren't regular piranhas, though; these are a proto-piranha species, thought to have been extinct for over two million years.  Piranhas, meet Spring Break.  Spring Break, meet your gory doom.

A quick side note on Kelly's character.  She first shows up in the movie with a douchey boyfriend in tow, who (of course) picks on Jake for no reason.  She then runs into Jake as he is about to board the slut boat party yacht, and when Derrick sees Jake talking to her, he invites her to join them.  Derrick is obviously a sleazebag, and she has just commented on how lame the Wild Wild Girls thing is, so Jake tries to help her and tells Derrick that she has other plans.  This causes Kelly to board the ship out of spite.  Later, Derrick tries to pressure her into doing body shots with one of the starlets (on camera, of course) and Jake once again stands up for her; once again, she decides that she definitely wants to do whatever Jake wants to protect her from.  So, let that be a lesson, young men: defending the girl you have a crush on will inevitably turn her into an exhibitionist.  Fact.

It should come as no surprise that the acting in Piranha (2010) is not fabulous.  The cast is surprisingly noteworthy, though.  Elizabeth Shue, Ving Rhames, Richard Dreyfuss, Christopher Lloyd, Adam Scott, Paul Scheer, Ricardo Chavira and Jerry O'Connell all damage their reputations by working in this film.  I'll give the young actors a pass, because work is work, but those established actors should have known better.  The movie also has famous nude model Kelly Brook in a main role, as well as porn stars Riley Steele, Gianna Michaels, and Ashlynn Brooke in small (and, not surprisingly, boobtastic) parts.  I guess I shouldn't be so hard on the actors for being in this movie, really.  B-movies are meant to be silly and fun, for actors as well as audiences.  With that perspective, Jerry O'Connell and Adam Scott turned in shockingly competent/quality-appropriate performances, with Ving Rhames occasionally deciding to overact in between bouts of sleepwalking through scenes.  Shue plays everything pretty straight as the main character; personally, I think that was the wrong angle to take, but I've seen worse.  Eli Roth also had a decent small part, but he was definitely aware of the quality of the movie and his acting.

These piranhas are extra dangerous, because they look like humans!

I hesitate to say that anyone actually directed this movie, but Alexandre Aja took the credit for it.  His direction is absolutely wretched.  You know how ineffective horror movies like to kill time between their theoretically scary scenes by startling you?  Like when the main character walks into a room, hears something behind them, and they turn around while the music simultaneously gets suddenly loud --- and nothing's there.  This movie wishes it was that competent.  In one scene, after the piranhas are loose but before the characters realize it, Jake notices that the inflatable chair Kelly was sitting on just minutes before is now empty --- duh-duh-DUMMM; he calls her name, gets no response, and dives in to find her.  It turns out that she was apparently right behind him on the boat.  Huh.  In the very next scene, the camera shows an empty canoe, which had two children in it the last time we saw it duh-duh-DUMMM; the camera pans to the left a few feet and shows the kids on the shore.  If film directing could be described in Monopoly terms, Alexandre Aja is pure Baltic Avenue.

You tell 'em, Uncle Pennybags!

What made this movie so bad?  Let me list the ways:

• CGI effects that were only marginally better than SyFy's (far more amusing) rip-off, Mega Piranha
• The film was edited by "Baxter."  No last name needed
• From a cause and effect standpoint, earthquakes cause piranhas
• Okay, imagine you are a teenage boy, living at home and looking at porn on his computer.  Picture it clearly in your mind.  Now...did anyone imagine having their computer screen clearly visible from their doorway for Mom to see when she walks in?  Or did anyone leave the door unlocked?  Amateurs.
• Stupid effing little kids
• The first thing the Wild Wild Girls people know about Jake is that he is seventeen, and they invite him for a day of drinking, drugs, and slut banging?
• Big breasted women can hold their breath for up to five minutes, as long as they are fondling each other underwater
• Whenever the camera takes on an underwater POV perspective, it is always to fake you out.  Piranhas get their own special "piranha view" shots to let you know they are coming
• Piranhas that have spent two million years in dark seclusion still have large eyes that can see
• There is visible light in the subterranean lake
• Most of the scenes from the previews are not in the final movie
• ...and many more!

Nope.  Not in the movie.

Okay, fine.  It's easy to watch a movie that is intentionally stupid and list off its failures.  The challenge is in finding what made the movie work.  For starters, the body count is pretty big.  I counted at least twenty confirmed on-screen deaths, and that doesn't count three scenes that were full of presumed deaths.  There was some pretty good gratuitous nudity in the film, too, but not as much as you might expect from a Spring Break flick.  Besides, all the nudity came from people who take their clothes off professionally; I'm sure this movie is tame compared to their normal work.  But I'm being negative again, sorry.  There was a ton of gore, including smashed-in heads, ripped-off faces, limbs gnawed down to the bone, and even a CGI severed penis (that was eaten and then puked up by a piranha that was "experimenting").  While I didn't see the movie in 3D, I could tell some of the things that were meant for the third dimension, like chopped up fish parts and vomit.  The very last scene of the movie was actually pretty amusing, too.  Oh, and the proposed sequel has (and I'm not joking about this) the working title of Piranha 3DD --- which, I think we can all agree, is brilliant.

But, even when you factor all that in, this movie just isn't stupid enough to be awesome and fun.  Consider this: the best death in the whole movie (Eli Roth's) was not piranha-related.  The second-best death had a girl getting her hair caught in a propeller and getting her face ripped off, which was also not piranha-related.  Heck, most of the piranha attack victims looked like they had been scratched by a large cat or had acid spilled on them.  Silly me, I thought they were supposed to look like they had the flesh eaten off of their bodies.  The script was dumb, and some of the characters were campy, but --- and I can't believe that I'm writing this --- it needed to be so much dumber and campier to work for me.  This is stupid-bad, not so-bad-it's-good.  So, even though it was being deliberately bad, it wasn't bad enough to be enjoyable.  On the plus side, though, boobs and gore.