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Shark Weak

It’s all been leading to this? The Last Sharknado: It’s About Time (2018) #SharkWeak2 Review

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So it’s come to this: The Last Sharknado. Can I get that in writing?

Me and the Sharknado films have had quite the trajectory. At first I was like: ‘this is a joke’. Then I was like, ‘No, seriously, is this a joke?’ And then I was like ‘okay, that was actually pretty funny’ followed by ‘okay, guys, enough now’ and then, finally, ‘oh, for fucks sake’ so I approached this one with the weary sense of obligation you might experience were you to attend your worst enemy’s funeral: you’re really just there to make sure the bastard’s dead.

You know what? It’s not the worst Sharknado there’s ever been (*cough* Global Swarming *cough*). Since the fourth one, the franchise has been attempting a “Fast & Furious”-style genre pivot away from ludicrous environmental survival horror to ridiculous sci-fi action adventure but for that you’d need a Vin Diesel equivalent and the Sharknado budget barely stretches to vin du table. The sharknados themselves had become almost incidental, a lever for the writers to reach for to end any given scene where they’d run out of ideas, cameos or couldn’t remember what the plot was anymore. “The Last Sharknado” at least brings them back to, if not the centre of the plot, then at least centre-adjacent and although they’re now just arbitrarily forming events (remember back in the first couple of movies where there was an attempt at logically explaining how sharks would get caught up in tornadoes? *contented sigh* ah, the good old days) which need to be dealt with like end-of-level bosses in this episodic and random odyssey through time.

Oh yeah, when they say “It’s About Time”, they are not kidding. We open back in the late Jurassic (World: Fallen Kingdom ripping off) era, as Fin (Ian Ziering) arrives in the prehistoric past with just a Humvee (which he promptly loses) and a satchel containing robot April’s head…which he also loses. He gets the satchel back, though, and spends much of the rest of the movie being concerned about his wife’s head (she’s had no complaints). Luckily, the first homage of “The Last Sharknado” is to “Star Trek: Voyager” as time travel is used as a mahoosive reset button, returning a ragbag assortment of characters hastily bumped off at the end of the previous instalment back to life – including April herself, who now rides a tamed pteradon. If you have “Game Of Thrones” reference on your pop culture bingo card, cross it off now. After some ropey Flintstones-style dinosaur effects and cartoon logic taken to live action extremes, it’s off on our quest to destroy the world’s first sharknado.

This time, the credits are like the Hanna Barbera cartoon from hell, which in many ways sums up the franchise itself and this instalment in particular. The time travel plot takes us from the age of dinosaurs to a renaissance fair’s idea of medieval ‘somewhere’ then on to the Revolutionary War, the Wild West and a 50s Beach Party before crashing in Santa Monica 1997 and leaping forward to the year 20,013 (a time period which may have been chosen purely to make a ‘Planet Of The Aprils’ pun).

Throughout all of this is a homage to one particular time travelling touchstone, and the relentless references to the need to reach 88 miles per hour might just give you a clue. Where “The Fourth Awakens” was a crass and constant riff on “Star Wars” tropes, “The Last Sharknado: It’s About Time” is not so much a love letter to “Back To The Future” as a threatening note wrapped around a dirty old halfbrick and hurled through the windscreen of a DeLorean.

Nevertheless, the various time periods are amusingly (and frugally) rendered, ideas are thrown into the pot in a gleefully hit and miss quantity over quality fashion and the cameos are at least less intrusive this time around. Marina Sirtis, Alaska Thunderfuck (of “Ru Paul’s Drag Race”), Leslie Jordan and Tori Spelling are among the more notable appearances (there’s also Dee Snider and Dexter Holland for music lovers out there) but the main eyebrow-raising cameo is from Neil deGrasse Tyson as Merlin, surely once and for all surrendering any moral high ground he might have in giving any other movies shit for being unrealistic or unscientific.

Throughout the adventure, there’s some vague ongoing quest to reunite with Fin’s son Gill, or maybe not – it’s never quite clear and by the time Nova decides to take a selfish, potentially Blinovitch limited detour, the wheels really start to come off the plot wagon and its all just kind of stumbles to a weirdly circular conclusion, like a particularly ga-ga “La La Land”.

The performances of the main cast and much of the guest cast are actually reasonably good, each according to their gifts (I hope Tara Reid kept the receipt). It’s all as mad as box of frogs, of course, and if you’re still playing along at home with pop culture bingo, you can cross of “The Princess Bride”, “Star Trek: First Contact”, “The Sword In The Stone”, “The Terminator” and weirdly, “Trolls”.

For six movies, this series has boldly ignored geography, marine biology, meteorology, physics and plain common sense and while it may not have ended on the highest note, it has at least ended and that is worth celebrating.

4/10 

Shark Weak

Fuck you, Sharknado. Fuck. You. Sharknado 5: Global Swarming (2017) Review

As I hope #SharkWeak has proved, I’m a  huge fan of Shark movies, be they the prime cuts like “Jaws”, the gourmet burgers such as “Deep Blue Sea” or the dirty kebab van sustenance of SyFy original movies. I can tolerate wooden acting and look past the occasionally shoddy special effects (I grew up watching classic “Doctor Who” and “Blake’s 7” so I know a thing or two about using my own imagination to close the SFX gap) as long as there’s a hint of imagination and wit in the writing. “Sharknado” and “Sharknado 2: The Second One” were passable and “Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!” actually managed to be halfquarter-way knowingly funny. By “Sharknado 4: The Fourth Awakens”, however, the one-joke franchise had worn out its tolerance. It bored me. “Sharknado 5: Global Swarming” didn’t bore me.

It infuriated me.

As America reels from the effects of the devastating effects of the polynados of the last movie, Finn Shepherd (Ian Ziering) brings his family to London to attend a United Nations conference on Sharknados. Meanwhile, Nova (Cassandra Scerbo) is back, spelunking in the vast caverns under Stonehenge (presumably left there after all the “Transformers: The Last Knight” argy bargy) where she finds an ancient artefact and some cave paintings. It’s been a big week for ancient cave painters what with “Game Of Thrones” and now this. Wouldn’t you know it, the removal of the artefact creates a giant sharknado above Stonehenge, sucking up all the shark life from the seas around Salisbury <sarcasm />.

Of course, this Wiltshire-based weather phenomenon immediately threatens London and eventually the world after it snatches away Finn’s son and arbitrarily develops teleportation abilities. Can Finn and April (Tara Reid) rescue Gil (Billy Barratt) and prevent the devastation of a global but tightly budgeted sharknado-geddon? You know what, who cares?

This franchise has disappeared so far up its own cloaca that it’s basically peering out at the world through pointy CGI teeth. After the lazy “Star Wars” gags of the previous instalment, here we have a title card and opening which riffs weakly off “Indiana Jones”. It’s nothing compared to a crass attempt at a 007 reference once they reach London that comes off more as Lames Bond than anything else. Literally no British institution is left unsoiled by this grotesquely ignorant movie and its attempts to appeal to the basest instincts of its base.

There’s an egregious, almost savant level to the lack of awareness of London’s geography but then in a film which merrily switches bridges during a sequence it’s hard to know where lack of local knowledge ends and filmmaking ineptitude begins. Of course, ineptitude implies that the makers actually cared about what they were doing but their reach exceeded their grasp. The truth of “Sharknado 5” is they’re all too aware that they can put any old shit on screen and it won’t matter.

The script is a barely coherent parade of weak, throwaway moments so desperate it even borrows a joke from “Superman IV: The Quest For Peace”, designed to facilitate a parade of awkward, often z-list cameos that it reads like it was written by the casting director. Oh wait, it was. In a crowded field, it’s probably GMB’s Laura Tobin who delivers the worst performance, besting no-talent favourites like Katie Price and Louis Spence to the worst of the worst title thanks to her achingly self-conscious yet lifeless delivery of her lines.

The weirdest thing is the sharks of the sharknado have almost become incidental by this point. There are no amusing or imaginative kills and they seem more of a threat by falling and crushing people than in the chomping (which is, admittedly, an unexpected element of realism). The CGI is par for the course but the practical effects look cheaper and tackier than ever. During a Buckingham Palace-based action sequence where Finn retrieves the Queen’s crown and hands it to what looks like Gary Oldman’s character from “Hannibal” (although a quick IMDB check reveals it’s actually Charo, presumably cast as the Queen because Helen Mirren was unavailable), the teeth of the shark bend as he reaches into its mouth. It’s kind of astonishing that a film this cheap went to the expense of actually filming on location in London but it also results in numerous scenes of relaxed tourists ambling around during what is meant to be the ruination of the capital.

It’s a film informed by a Trumpian level of international awareness, and Finn Sherpherd’s unironic invocation of making America great again strikes a bum note in a film which already can’t seem to tell its arse from its elbow. Switzerland gets off comparatively lightly compared the UK but Australia and Japan aren’t quite so lucky and if cultural sensitivity takes a beating, it’s nothing compared to the treatment meted out to Newtonian physics and pretty much every other branch of science.

Sprinkled in amongst the cavalcade of cameos by bad cosmetic surgery recipients and excruciatingly awful performances (Chris Kattan’s ‘British’ Prime Minister is punch-the-TV irritating) there are a few names (Nichelle Nicholls, Olivia Newton-John) which just make you sad that they’ve been reduced to this. Of the main cast, Ian Ziering plays this straighter than he’s ever done before, with a sincerity that implies he thinks he’s part of something groundbreaking and important while Tara Reid gamely tries to look like she knows what’s going on, especially after a character makeover which leaves her looking like ‘Bubblegum Hooker Barbie’.

A never ending procession of Dumbass Ex Machina ‘twists’ brings us to a Zemeckis-inspired ending which signposts where this now post-apocalyptic clusterfuck of a franchise intends to go next. At this point, I’d rather feed myself to the sharks than watch any more of this garbage.

0/10 

Horror, Movies

Sharknado 4: The 4th Awakens (2016) – Syfy’s great white hope finally jumps the shark.

Okay. Enough already. This one-joke franchise has more than outstayed its welcome and this flabby, facile and unfocussed fourth outing should (but won’t) mark the end of it. From the tediously laboured “Star Wars”-themed opening, the whole thing feels tired and dated. The pre-credits sequence set in Vegas immediately underlines the cheapness of the whole affair when the paparazzi crowd greeting the arrival of the partially plot-relevant tech billionaire numbers in single digits.

Actually, Las Vegas works well as a metatextually grotesque and tacky backdrop to this cheapest and tackiest of franchises. From the very beginning, “Sharknado 4” feels as flat and lifeless as its CGI predators. The joke has long since worn out and the writer has abandoned any attempts at creativity. There’s a sequence where they literally do the exact same thing twice in a row, just with a slightly different type of shark.

Demonstrating a crappy grasp of physics (I won’t even credit it with an awareness of marine biology) realised by crappier special effects, even in the Trumpnado climate of 2016, “Sharknado” manages to plumb new depths of stupid. The dialogue is peppered with plenty of Star Wars dialogue references, none of them clever or witty but the references don’t stop there. With “The Wizard Of Oz”, Stephen King’s “Christine”, “Lavalantula”, “Terminator 2” and even a really left-field Action Comics No. 1 “Superman” reference all thrown into the mix, a film which gleefully brings us bouldernados, oilnados, firenados, lightningnados, hailnados, cownados and even nukenados actually blends everything into a fetid, swirling garbagenado.

Nobody deserves to watch this rubbish, and nobody involved in it deserves to work again.

2/10

Horror, Movies

Third time’s the chum… Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! (2015) Review

Like a scab you just can’t help picking at, the so-bad-you-just-can’t-look-away franchise drops its third instalment with an admirable, if ill-deserved swagger; a selachian mic-drop of ludicrous proportions.

When Fin Shepard (Ian Ziering) goes to Washington DC to collect the highest civilian honour from the President of the United States, the last thing he expects is a sharknado to drop right on top of the White House. But that’s only the start of Fin’s problems. With sharknados popping up down the length of the eastern seaboard, he faces a race against time to get down to Orlando – where a heavily pregnant April (Tara Reid) is waiting to give birth – before the sharknados combine into an unprecedented sharkicane.

So I guess at this point, physics, meteorology, marine biology and, what the hell, plot logic and common sense are completely out the picture, right? Certainly, veteran asylum writer Thunder Levin (“Sharknado”, “Sharknado 2: The Second One” and, erm, “Atlantic Rim”) throws them in the bin and busts out his big book of stupid clichés with which to shove the plot along. The dialogue is awkward, stilted and often cringingly bad, which is unfortunate because the storyline is so convoluted it requires a lot more talking than previous efforts, with the pacing suffering badly as a result. The special effects are often anything but special, and the editing is shockingly bad, with some scenes clearly sequenced out of order, even for a franchise as uninterested in continuity and lucidity as this one.

Most offensively, though, this third “Sharknado” is so self-aware it makes Skynet look like a ‘Speak & Spell’. It’s no longer just ‘in on the joke’, it’s become the movie equivalent of Eric Idle’s character in the classic Monty Python ‘Nudge nudge, wink wink’ sketch. Nearly every scene is forced product placement for another product or division of the NBCUniversal empire. From theme parks to TV presenters and even their recent tie-up with NASCAR, nothing is off-limits as far as crow-barring references and cameos into this self-referential and self-promoting cavalcade of carcharadon caricatures.

The cameos have, of course, become a proud staple of this series and as you’d expect, the third one is chock full of ‘em, from the actually-related-to-the-plot appearances to the jumping-on-the-bandwagon want to be involved style. As with the principle cast, the quality of the cameos varies enormously. Mark Cuban is the least convincing POTUS in cinematic history and there’s an ill-judged cameo from Michelle Bachmann, a Tea Party supporting former member of Congress so scientifically ignorant she probably accepts the ‘science’ of Sharknado as fact. Luckily their involvement is brief and there are better guest stars on offer. “Star Trek: Voyager” veteran Tim Russ is good value but its Frankie Muniz who impresses the most, managing to life the material above the mediocre during his time on screen, his eventual demise managing to be epically funny, possibly the highlight of the entire film.Possibly the most surprising cameo, though, is from the terrible fake baby from “American Sniper”, who plays a small but pivotal role in the finale. The least surprising? Of course Fin’s estranged father is played by David ‘The Hoff’ Hasselhoff.

However, there must be a special place in Hell reserved for any film which goes to the trouble of casting Jedward as a ‘celebrity’ cameo and yet doesn’t kill them as gruesomely as possible; though given how brief and pointless their appearance is, most of it may have ended up on the cutting room floor.

The returning cast do their jobs with a commendable earnestness, especially Ian Ziering whose devotion to duty and delivering dialogue with a straight face is worthy of an award better than the one he is presented with during the film. Cassie Scerbo’s return after being benched for “Sharknado 2” is a welcome one and makes up for much of the absence of Tara Reid who seems to have upset the producers at some point given her marginalisation during the story and the cliffhanger ending they give her.

And yet, despite all its many, many flaws, it actually manages to be a bit more fun than the first two instalments. Rising to the challenge, the plot this time round is probably the most outlandish, nonsensical and stupid narrative of the series and possibly all time. The opening sequences is a witty take on James Bond films with the White House-set action forming the pre-credits sequence. The Orlando theme park is actually a great location for the sharky shenanigans, lending itself to some good jokes referencing “Jaws”, “Twister” and the fishiest of Red Wedding gags. But this is a threequel and simply destroying the entire eastern seaboard of America wasn’t going to be sufficient so of course, they go into space! Good thing space launches aren’t extremely weather sensitive otherwise a cluster of toothy tornados would be a problem. Oh, and you can now add astrophysics to the list of disregarded disciplines too.

From tooth to tail, “Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!” is an aggressively dumb B-movie, starring C-list actors and produced by Z-list talent. Yes, it’s unhinged from anything remotely approaching reality and goes out of its way to flout accuracy in favour of delivering on its central, stupid idea but there’s an endearing side to its desperation to deliver more outlandish set-pieces than its predecessors. It’s still utter crap, of course and the joke is wearing desperately thin (a fourth instalment has already been confirmed though) but there’s fun to be had in amongst the execrable dialogue and clunky exposition. It’s my favourite of the three so far, but that’s not saying much.

 

4/10

Horror, Movies

My God – it’s full of crap! Sharknado 2: The Second One (2014) Review

Sequels, eh? Always got to go bigger and outdo the one before. Of course, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But what if it’s totally, embarrassingly inept, shouldn’t you try and fix it just a tiny little bit? Not if you’re the makers of “Sharknado 2: The Second One”. No, siree. Instead, they demonstrate a breathtaking ability to double-down on the dumb without improving a single aspect of the original.

Yes, that’s right – “Sharknado 2” brings back all your favourites: that girl from the “American Pie” movies and…and, yeah, that guy…from the thing? You know, the thing…? Yeah, he’s back too. And this time they’re off to New York as part of a book tour about the events of the first movie. This time, though, a storm front bafflingly crammed full of sharks already, is bearing down on New York almost before they arrive.

I was frustrated into reviewing the first “Sharknado”, not by the ludicrous premise but by the cheap and inept way the film was put together. Because it ended up being a bit of a smash hit, I kind of hoped they would throw a few more dollars at the sequel to maybe raise the quality just a little bit. If any more money was spent on this thing, the only way it shows up on screen is in the constant parade of gratuitous cameos which litter the script in a desperate attempt to cover up the production’s shortcomings. At least this franchise which unceremoniously jammed the words ‘shark’ and ‘tornado’ together to give us ‘sharknado’ treats us to another gloriously conjoined word: celebricapitation. The B- and C-list stars literally lost their heads to be in this film: hardly anyone manages to make an appearance without a shark chomping their noggin off. There are genuinely too many cameos to mention but when Andy Dick fails to stand out from the crowd, you know you’re dealing with a spectacularly bonkers film. Judd Hirsch (“Taxi”, “Independence Day”) should know better than to stain his legacy with this nonsense though.

The same cheap production problems that plagued the first one are all repeated here. Spectacular set pieces are mentioned (‘the sharknado has devastated the UN building’) but conveniently happen off-screen while ill-fitting plot points are inserted to make up for location filming (an ‘unseasonal cold front’ accounts for some snow on the ground because they were filming in winter). Ropey GCI weather effects fail to disguise the generally bright and dry weather during filming but my favourite thing – and there may be a drinking game in this – is to watch the general public in the background and the wide shots. I know New York is meant to be a tough town, but the calm way the people and traffic go about their business while a wind and tooth apocalypse explodes around them is truly remarkable. I also think while there are more sharks technically visible on screen, you get to see fewer up close for any length of time.

Still completely oblivious to the laws of physics, marine biology and meteorology “Sharknado 2: The Second One” makes the egregious error of referencing films far better than itself and manages to achieve the near-impossible task of making “Jaws: The Revenge” seem taut, gripping and well made. To succeed, this sequel needed to replace novelty with a little more competence. Unfortunately, it lacked both.

2/10

Horror, Movies

I take a big ol’ bite out of Sharknado (2013)

Having finally got round to watching it the day after the UK TV Première (I missed it because I was out watching “Only God Forgives” and we know how that turned out), I wasn’t going to review it. After all, what more was there to be said that wasn’t tweeted when it debuted on American TV? Well, it turns out there were a few things that bugged me about it and so here we are.

First of all, I love disaster movies. Love ’em. I put disaster movies in the same category as pizza and blow jobs – even when they’re bad, they’re still pretty good. I’m also a fan of cheesy movies (I devoured every episode of “Mystery Science Theatre 3000” I could lay my UK-based hands-on). Finally, I have always been a fan of sharks in movies, from the great (“Jaws”), through the adequate (“Deep Blue Sea”) to the plain bonkers (“Shark Attack 3“). Given all those ingredients, I had put my serious film-head aside and was all set for some cyclonic selachian shenanigans.

I’m a firm believer that you have to go into some types of films with a certain frame of mind. If you’re down for watching “Sharknado”, you’ve given up the right to complain about the idea of a tornado occurring over the ocean, scooping up only sharks (and no other aquatic life) and then those sharks being able to function out of their natural habitat. So far so good, and the film even began with a sly and apposite commentary on the shark fin industry and who the real monsters are (clue: it’s us). The fishing boat is, of course, in the path of the oncoming storm and a bizarre gun battle is interrupted by some storm-tossed sharks who, as per movie cliché convention, are always hungry.

So far, so dumb and so good. To give the film credit, it’s got the courage of its convictions and it doesn’t hold back, even in the face of a level of basic scientific ignorance that would make even the Kansas Board of Education pause for reflection. As I said, I’m giving the film a pass on meteorology and partial credit on marine biology. But the line must be drawn here. This far, no further.

I wanted this film to be nonsensical, whacky entertainment. And it tries really, really hard to be just that, despite setting a surprisingly high percentage of the film inside various cars film through the windshield while some junior prop sprays it with a hose. What lets it down is that it’s made with such basic technical ineptness that it becomes impossible to suspend your disbelief for prolonged periods of time.

Apparently in the grip of a “global warming”-induced superstorm, the weather is astonishingly changeable and frequently changes from torrential rain to bright sunshine to partial cloud, often within the same scene. Locations and interiors are mixed with abandon without really making any visual sense, exacerbated by the physics-defying flooding (which allows the sharks to infiltrate Los Angeles) which can’t seem to decide whether it’s caused by rain or by the sea. This results in a bizarre action sequence where a house near the top of a hill is flooded to the extent a large shark can swim through the rooms, yet the exterior of the house and indeed the rest of the hillside is unflooded. I could go on and on nitpicking like this but I won’t (sharks chewing, sharks having articulated “necks”…).

The Z-list cast do what they’re there to do – mostly feed the sharks. The script is as good as this kind of nonsense deserves. It’s the technical production that really lets it down. The ironic thing is that because it’s been a huge “hit”, there’s a sequel in the works. And because they know there’s a built-in audience for it, they might – just might – put a bit more money into it, and attract a bit more talent both in front of and behind the camera, so there’s a real chance that the sequel might actually turn out to be something a little bit special. And props for officially calling it “Sharknado 2: The Second One“.

2/10