Slick’s Nit-Picks: Piranha 3D

Before I really get into this review I have to let off some steam. Noth­ing against this movie at all really but it’s a shame that films like this can do well while really good ones like Scott Pil­grim are on life sup­port, in terms of box office num­bers. That is an argu­ment for a dif­fer­ent arti­cle but I had to put it out there. The other thing is that if you needed any fur­ther proof that 3D is absolutely unnec­es­sary and a waste of a gim­mick then you really need to see this movie. When the high­light of your 3D effects is a dig­i­tally ren­dered, dis­mem­bered penis being torn apart, eaten and burped up to float out at the audi­ence, well…that one pretty much speaks for itself, doesn’t it?

Cast­ing the gim­mick of 3-D aside, this film was sur­pris­ing in sev­eral ways. First of all, it takes a slight depar­ture from the cur­rent Hol­ly­wood trend of just rehash­ing that which has already been done. While there have been at least two other killer (lit­tle) fish movies, it’s hard to count those because the ori­gin story is always dif­fer­ent. That is why I say a “slight” depar­ture – the main action of the movie is always the same basi­cally, just in dif­fer­ent locales. The 1981 ver­sion was directed by James Cameron five years before Aliens and has almost be the exact same story as Aliens. Piranha 3D seems to unof­fi­cially be the sequel to these past two movies even though none of them have any­thing to do with one another. The film still lacks any real orig­i­nal­ity but this is one time where that was a good thing and it leads into the other sur­pris­ing aspect. Piranha 3D is another film that gives me that glim­mer of hope that Hollywood’s dan­gly parts have not com­pletely receded back up inside of itself. This movie is pure homage to the old style of hor­ror we loved back in the late ‘70s through the ‘80s. It’s not tor­ture porn or gore for gore’s sake – it has that “class” of greats like Creepshow, Night­mare On Elm Street and Fri­day The 13th. To put it sim­ply, if not for the nudity, this would be a SyFy Orig­i­nal Movie of the week. Since there is a large amount of nudity, this would be the type of B-movie you catch on Cin­e­max at 3AM while chan­nel surf­ing that you just have to watch.

This movie shines because it fol­lows the paint by num­bers rules of any “killer ani­mal in the water” movie. I will not spoil by telling how a fish that is indige­nous to South Amer­ica is liv­ing in Lake Vic­to­ria (really Lake Havasu, AZ), but it was mildly believ­able. The appear­ance of the pack of killer fish unfor­tu­nately hap­pens right at the start of Spring Break when thou­sands of tasty morsels, I uh mean thou­sands of col­lege kids pop­u­late the lake. Enter duti­ful local police chief, Elis­a­beth Shue in this case, doing her best to save the day dur­ing the obvi­ous feed­ing frenzy and you have your­self a win­ner. For some great movie trivia, find out why Richard Drey­fuss’ char­ac­ter is so significant.

For a B-movie, the cast was sur­pris­ingly good but don’t expect any Oscar nom­i­na­tions here. IMDB lists Richard Drey­fuss first and like I said he does have a sig­nif­i­cance in the movie despite being a cameo. Our (ugh) star is Steven R. McQueen, whose most notable role (to date) is Elena Gilbert’s lit­tle bitch of a brother Jeremy in the Vam­pire Diaries. He’s only slightly more manly in this movie and that’s prob­a­bly because he doesn’t have any dead girl­friend to cry over. He was like­able in this movie for being some­what self­less and for (one of) the most cold-blooded acts in the movie not per­formed by a fish. Elis­a­beth Shue played the per­fect car­ing mom/no-nonsense cop which kind of reminded me of Eliz­a­beth Mitchell’s char­ac­ter in the cur­rent “V” TV series. Christo­pher Lloyd plays Mr. Good­man (love how he has no first name), who for no rea­son what­so­ever has innate knowl­edge of the pre­his­toric piranha that infest the lake (I told you this story was clas­sic). And then we have good ol’ Ving Rhames, aka Deputy Fal­lon, who is the wise­crack­ing, tough as nails side­kick To Chief For­rester (Shue). He takes a page right out of Alien 3, pulling a Charles S. Dut­ton style death scene. The cast is rounded out (no pun intended) by Kelly Brook, Riley Steele and Jes­sica Szohr, who are there to basi­cally be pretty, be busty and in some cases be fish food. Ladies and gen­tle­men, this stuff writes itself, I kid you not.

(The fol­low­ing is a very spoiler heavy sec­tion and I cau­tion read­ers who have not yet seen that read­ing this may or may not ruin the expe­ri­ence for you depend­ing upon how you feel about hor­ror movies – also, if you are used to a level of pro­fes­sion­al­ism from me on the site I warn you that it goes out the win­dow for this sec­tion only and it will be appar­ent why if you choose to read on)

This is basi­cally what I want to call the “Why This Movie Is A Must-See” sec­tion. Piranha 3D is not worth the price of 3D admis­sion but hey, I paid $6 to see it with glasses on Mati­nee Tues­day so I don’t care. Do go to see this with a bunch of like-minded friends and pre­pare your­self to be treated to things like tit­ties under­wa­ter in 3D while opera music plays. Porn­stars Gianna Michaels and Riley Steele give some of their best per­for­mances to date – Michaels in her para­sails to her death and Steele is eaten out…but this time from the inside. The piranha some­how man­age to leave her implants intact as you get to see them float­ing when there is noth­ing left of her. The film also gave new mean­ing to the term “eat­ing ass” which you may have seen in the the­atri­cal trailer. You will revel in the Mor­tal Kom­bat style “BOATALITIES,” one where a guy gets his head taken off between two boats and the other where some panic stricken douche tries to escape by motor boat­ing through the crowded lake, actu­ally killing more peo­ple than the fish. his engine stalls as the rotor gets caught in a girl’s hair. He sees her strug­gling but chooses to restart the motor which pulls her hair and face off. And let’s not for­get the excel­lent fatal­ity where an amp cable snaps, flies across the lake and tears a girl’s chest in half, giv­ing that won­der­ful slide off effect. Piranha are cock-munching lit­tle bas­tards, and that is all I have to say about that. Ving Rhames real­izes that only an eff­ing moron uses a shot­gun to try to kill some­thing that is under­wa­ter so he rips off an out­board motor and starts mak­ing some Lake Vic­to­ria style Paella minus the rice. In the world of Piranha 3D you must stay on dry land if you have big tit­ties, espe­cially if they are fake – these seem to attract the fish even more than blood. No flat-chested women were hurt dur­ing the film­ing of this movie. I end this sec­tion with a les­son in stu­pid­ity. If you are in the water, sur­rounded by mur­der­ous fish, please remem­ber to make out with the girl you like instead of actu­ally mak­ing your way to safety.

I am happy to say that this was a fun movie. It reminded me of ear­lier films when hor­ror movies did not have to be about shock value or intense lev­els of gore. A time where some­one get­ting eaten alive could be con­strued as funny because their dum­b­ass did have prior warn­ing. Piranha 3D makes fun of itself and of every “seri­ous” hor­ror movie out there now just by say­ing “look how well I am doing.” It only made it to sixth place in the box office top ten dur­ing its open­ing week­end but for a B-movie, that is say­ing some­thing. The movie had a bud­get of $24 mil­lion which could only have been spent on the fish and mak­ing the movie 3D. It opened this past Fri­day and made $10.1M dur­ing the open­ing week­end (accord­ing to IMDB.com). A sequel has already been green­lit and shock­ingly, based upon the plot and the end­ing, a sequel actu­ally makes sense. Bot­tom line is that there are some really good movies out this sum­mer, but if you have seen them all then it is time to dumb it down a bit and go see this flick. What else are you gonna watch, “Vam­pires Suck?”

CHA-CHA-CHA!

Handel

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