21st
Aug
First off I have got to knock seeing films in 3D on the head. The damned things give me such a freaking headache. My brain just doesn’t do optical illusions. I guess that explains why I never got the hang of Magic Eye pictures. But I digress, as per usual. I haven’t even got a paragraph into my review and I am already rambling off on a tangent. Did you miss me while I was gone?
This film has no shame and that is where it strength lies. It gives us exactly what we expect and isn’t ashamed of it. What do we want from this kind of film? Lots of people dying horribly gruesome and bloody deaths for our amusement, interspersed with plenty of tits and fanny. I use fanny in the the British sense by the way. Its not the usual hidden-behind-a-merkin-to-save the-actresses-blushes fanny either, shaved don’t ya know. Porn stars just don’t give a damn, obviously. An extended all girl nude synchronised swimming scene that borders on the surreal being the culmination of this films utter disregard for the rule about pointless nudity. It really does harken back to the 70s in that regard. You get to see Kelly Brook in the nude (its the only way she can get parts in films after all). Which is nice because I consider Miss Brook to be the personification of female physical perfection. Even if Playboy feel her breasts need reducing. I have no idea what they were thinking but comparing the Playboy picks to the Arena ones and they have done a real virtual hatchet job on her boobs. The Piranha were far kinder. See how I got that tangent back on topic?
This is a seriously bloody film. I mean really gruesome but its comic book gruesome. People not only get graphically eaten by the titular (hur hur) beasties but in the big scene that makes up most of the trailer people die in many many horrible ways. Serves themselves right for being attractive and having fun. Some of deaths I am pretty sure aren’t very plausible. My favourite being the poor gal getting sliced in two by a snapping steel cable. Anyway the vast majority of the films budget has gone on make up and other physical effects shots. All the chewed bodies and limbs look disturbingly realistic and the most have spent a small fortune on red dye. Naturally the the CGI budget makes up the next big chunk of the money. The script was clearly way down the priority list but they have done a decent job of it. It is genuinely funny and has its tongue firmly in cheek.
Despite having a cast of big names fallen on hard times the acting isn’t anything to write home about. Most real actors in the film phone in the few scenes they get, no doubt they are just glad for the pay cheque. Accept, of course, Jerry O’Connell who really hams it up. His best performance since Scream 2 I don’t doubt, at least he doesn’t sing. The climax of his performance is him lying half eaten on the deck of a boat howling the fantastic line “They took my penis”. The plot is stolen from Jaws and watered down just like the 1978 original. The film has so much parody that it almost feels like a spoof at times. Any film that starts with Richard Dreyfuss sitting on a boat singing ‘Show me the way to go home’ has some moxy. It also has Christopher Lloyd doing his mad scientist bit. The film ends with the best bit of genre blindness from a character I have seen in years.
The film is a 3D conversation as it was filmed in 2D. The conversion is frankly shit which is probably what gave me the headaches. Landscapes frequently have distant objects not properly distanced and some times heads feel weird in close up shots. According to wikipedia the 3D conversion process has been well received. This may be the case all the other 3D films I have seen have been produced with 3D in mind and not converted. I still think they did a poor job. Still 3D boobies and it does get props for having the best use of 3D when a character vomits on to the camera.
I really enjoyed the film. Sad that I have sunk that low. Its not going to win awards or set the world on fire and like the original it re-imagines it is destined to late night TV slots in the future. It is entertaining, funny and has boobs in it. It made the sparsely populated theatre I was in react frequently. People where laughing, jumping and being grossed out at all the right times. Though the most frequent sound was women tutting and snorting every time a attractive young woman got her clothes off. This film is dying for a drinking game for the DVD release. Piranha is the kind of film that ‘Snakes on a Plane’ would of been if the the people making that film had any balls.
I have been reading other reviews of Piranha 3D and they make me chuckle. As ever “The Critics” (professional and wannabe amateurs) just don’t get films like this. To complain about the lack of character development in a film that has Ving Rhames using a boat motor to chop up a shoal of prehistoric piranha seems somewhat ridiculous. But then some of these same reviewers also think Inception is a complex and deep thriller rather than just a rather straightforward film with some cool action sequences and a purposely ambiguous ending. You know what? I have a separate rant on that subject brewing in the depths of my mind.
I’ll give it 4/5. It would have got 3/5 but Kelly Brook in the nude is worth a point. A guilty pleasure movie if ever there was one. Just enjoy rather than analyse it.
