Rated
R (Sequences of Strong Bloody Horror Violence and Gore, Graphic Nudity, Sexual
Content, Language and some Drug Use)
Running
Time: 1 Hour & 23 Minutes
Cast-
Danielle
Panabaker-Maddy
Matt
Bush-Barry
Chris
Zylka-Kyle
Katrina
Bowden-Shelby
Jean-Luc
Bilodeau-Josh
David
Koechner-Chet
Meagan
Tandy-Ashley
Paul
James Jordan-Travis
Adrian
Martinez-Big Dave
Christopher
Lloyd-Carl Goodman
Paul
Scheer-Andrew
Ving
Rhames -Deputy Fallon
Clu
Gulager-Mo
Gary
Busey-Clayton
David
Hasselhoff-As Himself
Directed
by John Gulager
 |
| WHY IS THIS FILM SO BAD?! |
Note: This film was viewed in 2D through video-on-demand.
'Welcome
to Rock Bottom,' sighs David Hasselhoff as he kicks off opening day at 'The Big
Wet' Water Park in "Piranha 3DD," the sequel to Alexandre Aja’s
"Piranha 3D" from 2010 that is now being dumped with little
afterthought by The Weinstein Company's Dimension Films in the middle of summer
at a paltry eighty-six theaters. Yep, this is rock bottom indeed. Aja’s "Piranha
3D" was actually a remake of the 1978 original of the same name, produced
by 'King of the B-Movies' Roger Corman and directed by Joe Dante as a low
budget parody/rip-off of Steven Spielberg's 1975 original blockbuster
"Jaws." Although I was initially expecting the worse, "Piranha
3D" ended up being a very enjoyable film that reveled in its inherent
cheesiness and absurdity while bombarding the screen with copious amounts of gratuitous gore and even full-frontal female nudity. Aja offered exactly what the audience wanted while gleefully mocking them for wanting it and critics praised
the film as it currently scores a solid 73% on Rotten Tomatoes. Despite opening
with a mere $10 million, this was apparently enough for Dimension Films to
announce a sequel just three days
after Aja’s film was released. Delays notwithstanding, "Piranha 3DD"
has finally arrived in both theaters and video-on-demand streaming services but
the sequel is proof that lightning cannot
strike twice. Lacking any of the clever, imaginative wit of the original,
"Piranha 3DD" fails on every conceivable level as a film and not only
does it scrape the bottom of the barrel, it somehow ends up being worse than the direct-to-DVD flicks that
line the back-shelves at your local video rental store.
A year after Lake
Victoria was attacked by a legion of prehistoric piranhas, an eradication
campaign began that left the lake uninhabitable by life and the town was
subsequently abandoned due to the loss of their main source of revenue—tourism.
At a nearby lake in Merkin County, Arizona, two farmers, Clayton (Gary Busey)
and Mo (Clu Gulager), attempt to recover the body of a dead cow in the swamp
but are killed by a swarm of piranha when the eggs inside the cow hatch.
Meanwhile, an aspiring marine biologist named Maddy (Danielle Panabaker) returns
home for the summer to find that her step-father Chet (David Koechner) has
added an adult-themed section to the water park she co-owns with him and
renamed it as 'The Big Wet,' complete with 'water-certified strippers.' During
a night party at the water park, Maddy reunites with two of her close friends,
Ashley (Meagan Tandy) and Shelby (Katrina Bowden). She also runs into her
ex-boyfriend Kyle (Chris Zylka), now a deputy sheriff, and Barry (Matt Bush), a
janitor at the water park who is secretly in love with her. A day before 'The
Big Wet' officially opens, a swarm of piranha attacks Maddy and Shelby,
prompting Maddy to seek the expertise of Carl Goodman (Christopher Lloyd), who
explains that the piranha might be moving through sewage pipes and underground
rivers that run between lakes. Chet refuses to shut down the water park due to
his greed, leaving it up to Maddy and her friends to stop the incoming onslaught
of piranha.
Failing to drum up any amount of suspense or wit, "Piranha 3DD"
is a bore of a film that lurches forward through a series of half-hearted and
disjointed scenes until the end credits begin to roll at barely seventy minutes, for which you should be
very thankful. A film like this does
not require a complicated plot but what writers Marcus Dunstan, Patrick Melton,
and Joel Soisson have come up with barely qualifies as one because it feels
like a rough outline that was scribbled in a hurry on a piece of toilet paper. I'm
surprised it took three people to
write this piece of junk! There is absolutely no attempt to develop the characters, who are simply introduced and
it’s quite apparent that director John Gulager (whose credits include the
"Feast" trilogy) is not even
trying. "Piranha 3DD" manages to recapture some semblance of the
absurdist tone of Aja’s film once David Hasselhoff makes an appearance playing
an exaggerated parody of himself as a D-list celebrity but it’s too little too
late. Even the gore pales in comparison to the original. At one point a small
piranha makes its way inside a woman’s vagina and bites a man’s penis during
sex, forcing him to chop it off with a kitchen knife but not only is this scene
poorly edited, it reeks of desperation on the filmmakers part, leaving you to
wonder, 'This is all they can come up
with?' The bloodbath at the end also feels small in scope and while it offers
the obligatory blood and guts, nothing stands out as the film is content with
regurgitating what came before. As for the nudity, there’s plenty of double-D's
(annoyingly so) on display but Gulager just throws it up on the screen with no
imagination, vainly hoping that it will placate the male audience but they
would've been better off staying at home and using Google search to see
surgically-enhanced breasts. Honestly, The Weinstein Company/Dimension Films
knew this was a dud so why even bother releasing "Piranha 3DD" into
theaters and taking up screen space from actually
good films? While the 2010 original was post-converted to 3D, the sequel was
shot in native 3D but I actually viewed the film in 2D through an HD
video-on-demand streaming service. However, you can see it in 3D through Facebook of all places. Even in 2D, I can
tell the 3D was utilized as more of a gimmick given the amount of objects
flying toward the camera but for those who want to be informed about its
quality, Ben Rawson-Jones at DigitalSpy
criticized it as 'a waste of space with no effort made to create any shots that
create the requisite immersive effect.'
As for the acting, please don't expect
much given the overall quality of the film. That being said, Danielle Panabaker
actually commits to the horrid script
and delivers a competent performance while David Koechner is convincing as a
greedy sleaze-ball. The rest of the cast tries their best to make the material
work but are hamstrung by god-awful dialogue and a total lack of character
development. Given his recent line of work ("Anaconda 3: Offspring,"
anyone?), David Hasselhoff is fully aware of what kind of film he’s in and acts
accordingly. He's not given much to do except sit around but his scenes are the
only time when the film manages to garner a few chuckles. Paul Scheer and Ving
Rhames also show up to reprise their roles from the first film. In a scene reminiscent
of Rose McGowan in 2007's "Planet Terror," Rhames straps on a pair of
shotguns on his prosthetic legs to blast away legions of piranha.
After several
delays, "Piranha 3DD" was finally given a limited theatrical release
on June 1, 2012, in addition to a day-and-date release on various
video-on-demand streaming services. The film received overwhelmingly negative
reviews with 12% on Rotten Tomatoes
as critics wrote it off as 'a dispiriting echo of 2010's horror-comedy.' Honestly,
I'm genuinely surprised that it didn't rank lower. Making only $705,625
worldwide, the film isn't even playing in any New York theaters; all I have to
say is good riddance. I didn't bother to see "Piranha 3DD" in the
theater as paying $11 to $18 seemed like a waste and ended up renting the film
through video-on-demand for $7.99 in HD. The amount of crap that Hollywood
churns out shouldn't surprise me anymore but it still does when you come across
a film like "Piranha 3DD." This is not so bad it’s good; this is just
plain bad!
Final
Rating: 0.5 out of 5
"Josh
cut off his penis because something came out of my vagina!"
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