Language is a funny thing.
Like how did "3D" come to mean "This will cost an extra $3.50 even though we spent less time converting this movie to 3D than you spend flossing, which you never do, Professor Halitosis"?
Somehow we all know most 3D is unnecessary, or worse, painted over a film in post-production to squeeze a few more bucks out of our wallets, which we already had to steal from our employed roommates, yet we go to these films anyway. It's one of those open conspiracies, like the penny and the fact we're all dreaming to provide power for robots.
-- Local show times, theaters, trailer.
All we can do is sit tight and wait for the fad to go away. That and brew a mutant race of sabertooth moles that will be too blind to be distracted by this "third dimension" as they tunnel into the homes of Hollywood action/horror producers. Ah well. Until then, we'll have to pretend bloated ticket prices are worth seeing a pair of 3D boobs in Piranha 3D.
An earthquake has opened a hole to a subterranean lake beneath Lake Victoria. Unbeknown to sheriff Elisabeth Shue and the 20,000 college students arriving for spring break, the quake also released swarms of voracious prehistoric piranhas.
As she investigates, her teen son, Steven R. McQueen, sneaks out with Girls Gone Wild-style pornographer Jerry O'Connell. But bloody violence is about to break out across the lake.
Bloody, bloody violence. The kind with fountains of blood. And skeletonized legs kicking this way and that. "Bloodbath" is too wimpy and not-bloody a term for the gore in Piranha. This is more like the kind of bath a battleship would take on a planet where it rains blood and therefore the water is blood. And the hail is chunks of people.
Director Alexandre Aja proved he could mix mass gore and tendon-straining suspense with High Tension.
However, Piranha is no High Tension. It's more like Frayed Bikini Strap That Will Soon Unravel Completely (Much Like Your Interest in This Plot, Characters).
Aja strings up some decent early suspense. Water is scary. Stuff lives down there and you can't see it. Maybe it's just sucker fish and seaweed, but maybe it's Insane Squid-Man with a Taste for Your Kidneys. Aja exploits this well, rushing his camera through dim waters, suggesting threats that may not be there.
Then, it's spring break time. Hundreds of kids partying on boats. WOO! And McQueen, who's supposed to be some picked-on dweeb but isn't funny or smart or in any way interesting. WOOOOO! Aja has some fun mocking the whole spring break thing through O'Connell's sleazy softcore merchant and an extended underwater nudity scene, but Piranha seems to be exploiting it, too. There's no clear editorial perspective, and the humor is never sharp enough to serve as satire.
Same deal with the violence. I enjoy gore as much as the next guy, provided the next guy is some jerk who laughs lustily at shotgun blasts, beheadings, and tumbling limbs, but this...well, I hate to say it, but it's excessive. Once Piranha hits a 10-minute scene of anonymous revelers being devoured, stripped to the skin and ground up by propellers, it feels more like audience punishment than all-in-good-fun splattertainment.
Exhibit B: the burped-up genitals.
Then there's the half-assed 3D and the quarter-assed CG. What would a fish look like if you pasted some fins over a motorcycle in MS Paint? The piranhas in Piranha. They're the cheap, slimy mascots of a cheap, slimy movie.
The wild violence and arresting excess is admirable in its way, but the rest of Piranha is far too dumb, unfunny and hamhanded to live up to its rabid visuals.
Grade: D+
