‘Piranha 3D’ is decent comedy, but lackluster horror film
I’m fairly certain that the creators of Piranha 3D were in on the joke when they remade this faux-horror film that charts the bloody rise of prehistoric fish let loose on the spring break crowd of a trendy lake community. The problem is that the actors are not seemingly on board with the joking.
Elisabeth Shue plays essentially the same character that Roy Scheider played in Steven Spielberg’s Jaws. She’s a small-town sheriff faced with the difficult decision of whether to keep the lake open for business or close it out of fear of the biting fish. Ving Rhames, in perhaps the strangest role of his career, plays a fellow officer who at one point actually takes the spinning motor from a boat and fights off the piranha as if the motor were a machine gun.
That’s right.
The central plot (clearing my throat) surrounds Shue’s character of Sheriff Julie Forester and her son, Jake (Steven R. McQueen). Jake is tasked with watching his two siblings while his mom keeps the horny and drunk spring breakers at bay. It doesn’t take too long for Jake to get himself in trouble. He pays off his brother and sister to sit at home and stay put. This gives him ample time to head to the party at the lake, somehow get hired as a location scout for a pornographic movie, and then sail away on a yacht with beautiful women and Jerry O’Connell playing Derrick Jones, a Girls Gone Wild type of director.
At the same time, the piranha, newly released from a crater below the lake, begin to wreak their havoc, and the sheriff finds a community of spring breakers ready to face certain doom. The whole scene is like a MTV show with music, beer, contests and partying. Plus, the sheriff’s own son and eventually her two younger children find themselves on the lake as well. How convenient.
Richard Dreyfuss opens the movie (another nod to Jaws) as a fisherman who becomes the first victim of the fish. Christopher Lloyd also turns up as Mr. Goodman, essentially mimicking Robert Shaw’s portrayal of Sam Quint in that 1970s shark movie.
The movie is never scary, and the CGI of the piranha is unconvincing. Tgere is a comedic element to the film that makes the proceedings stay light and airy. This is more like the work of Broken Lizard than Spielberg.
The problem though is that some of the actors in the film are truly playing their part like this were a serious movie. Shue and McQueen try to keep some semblance of “acting” in their roles, and their efforts come off as odd.
O’Connell has a lot of fun with his role, as does Lloyd and even Rhames. They understand that Piranha is a joke with some horror ingredients. Why the other actors weren’t given the same memo is confusing.
One final note: The SyFy Network has commandeered bad science fiction and horror movies for some time. Whether it’s a crocodile from the Jurassic period or the revenge of the Yetti, the premise of Piranha has been done before (and better). After all, take out the fish and add in some snakes, and you’ve got Snakes on a Plane.
It’s probably best to skip Piranha, unless you see it on television late at night. Then it might be perfect, mindless entertainment. Heck, you might even catch it on Syfy.
PS: Look for the Eli Roth cameo. It’s quick and bloody.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
- Piranha 3D
- 2010
- Directed by Alexandre Aja
- Written by Pete Goldfinger and Josh Stolberg
- Starring Jerry O’Connell, Elisabeth Shue, Richard Dreyfuss, Christopher Lloyd, Steven R. McQueen and Ving Rhames
- Running time: 88 minutes
- Rated R for sequences of strong bloody horror violence and gore, graphic nudity, sexual content, language and some drug use
- Rating:
Revised
