Do you like T&A? What a silly question. Who doesn’t, amirite? Do you like disgusting, bloody gore and watching people die in terrible ways? Do you like giant prehistoric piranhas? If you answer yes to any of those questions, you need to go see this movie. It’s great. Elisabeth Shue is great (though she pronounced “water” weird, like she’s biting out that T). Adam Scott is awesome. Jerry O’Connell was the sleaziest, grossest person ever yet weirdly likable. There are a few bit parts and cameos that really made the movie shine. The script itself is difficult to explain. Imagine your typical SyFy movie fill-in-the-numbers script except with good dialogue delivered by competent actors (if you watch these movies, probably I just broke your brain at the thought).
I love movies with oversized animals attacking hapless people. You know, where they spout some bullshit about a secret underground lake or experiments gone awry or an evil corporation polluting the water. I love the “We need to get them out of the water” “We can’t afford it!” exchanges. I love the revelations that the super scary animals things are really the babies and the real danger has been hanging back, presumably keeping a doting eye on the kids until some fool blows them up and then it’s time to open a can of whoopass. The problem with the SyFy movies is that they’re always edited to hell, so if there’s any gore or nudity, we won’t be seeing it. Megashark vs Giant Octopus didn’t even have any gore or nudity to edit out!
The only problem I had was with the 3D. Of course there were obvious “this is a giant axe flying at your head!” moments. But that’s pretty much what I expected from the film, so no problem. But the technology itself is apparently too much for me. I don’t remember suffering through Coraline 3D but that was awhile ago and that’s the only other film I’ve seen in 3D. But I had a terrible headache when I got out of the theater.
There weren’t many people there when we went to see it, which is disappointing. It’s actually a completely watchable, good summer horror movie. I love it so much because it knows what it wants to do and it accomplishes it. But look, it really is very, very gory, bloody, and disturbing. If you don’t like very explicit and disgusting gore, you probably won’t enjoy this movie. I mean, it’s about piranhas in a lake during spring break–you can probably imagine what a school of piranhas will do to a body that they only (for example) half eat.
It’s probably my favorite movie this summer. We saw Scott Pilgrim vs The World this week and it’s also pretty great. The difference is that I actually liked the characters in Piranha 3D.
It might be the way the 3D is used that bothers you. Coraline had 3D, but it was very subdued. Things didn’t go flying out at you, it was just used to add depth to the screen, which I loved.
I haven’t seen Piranha, I’m waiting for netflix, but I’m glad to hear that it didn’t try to be more than what it was.
I don’t know, I didn’t have a stop watch. 3 or 4 minutes maybe? Also, it doesn’t make sense to say that something in the movie is “gratuitous”. Pretty much every scene from start to finish is gratuitous. It is nothing but gore and T&A. Boobies, piranhas, and blood.
Honest question: is it really horrific? For example I really didn’t like Wolf Creek because the sadism unsettled me., even although it’s not a hugely gory film. If it’s just pretty people getting munched by monsters, well, that’s OK in the sort of weird calculus of disgust I have in my head.
It is very horrific. Gory movies rarely have any affect on me and I actually gasped with horror more than once and said “Ewwww” at least three times. It’s a blood bath and it is explicit (though so over the top it often made me laugh too).
There’s a weird science guy, but I don’t remember him having a white coat. There is the requisite “we need to shut down the lake” and the “get out of the water” scenes. Everybody gets eaten…
If me and some work buddies were to play a drinking game here, would “blatant T/A and fish attacks” be going too far? What would some good rules that don’t put us into the hospital be?
Oh shit, you wouldn’t want to drink when you see tits or fish attacks. Seriously, that’d be a dangerous business. If you’re familiar with the prehistoric monster genre of films, or the made for SyFy movies in general, you could have a drinking game based on that. It plays with those tropes/cliches beautifully, including having actors-who-should-be-in-better-roles (Elisabeth Shoe) and actors-who-were-probably-always-going-to-end-up-in-shit b-movies (Jerry O’Connell). There are underwater fish POV shots, children in danger, lines that show up in every crap movie, vague science to explain away a crap premise. The shots are even composed the same way (you know you can always tell when you’re watching a SyFy movie). Except instead of being unwatchable crap, it’s really well done.
Well, the theater here checks bags relatively well, so smuggling in beer would be tough.
But PoV shot is a good one. Maybe everytime you gasp or jump too. I love me some SyFy movies, but sometimes I just can’t get past the quality (Ice Spiders is my favorite at the moment)
Just saw it yesterday- it’s awesome. I can’t remember the last mainstream movie I saw that had so much tits and ass and full-frontal nudity. It’s bloody and gory and disturbing at times, but in a hilarious way. A few great Jaws callbacks/references. The underwater lesbo ballet was ridiculous and funny and oddly beautiful. Elizabeth Shue has graduated to ‘mom’ roles but she still looks fantastic. There were a few ‘kids in peril’ moments that really disturbed me- that’s a function of having my own youngsters these days- but I knew they’d turn out OK.
A few of the effects looked a little low budget, but then there were some effects that were really well done. If you’re in the right mood, it’s a great movie. My wife and I rarely see movies in the theater- maybe one a year. We found ourselves with a few hours with no kids (they were at a birthday party) and on the spur of the moment we thought about seeing a movie that would worthwhile to see in a theater, saw what was playing at the local multiplex, and decided on Piranha based on the showtime. It’s so unlike us but we really loved it.
By the way- I think it’s obvious that Dreyfus is reprising his Jaws role, but in the credits he’s “Matt Boyd” or something; IMDB has him as “Matt Hooper”. Not sure what’s going on there.
An aside: this was the first time I’d seen one of the “new” 3D movies. My wife is blind in one eye, and I’ve got amblyopia, so we avoid 3D movies whenever we can. When I went to see Piranha, I didn’t have a choice.
Verdict? It’s done fairly well. I did get a real sense of space from the process.
However, I found it to be more annoying than anything. It just distracted from the movie. In a traditional movie, the filmmaker is able to direct your attention to whatever point he wants in the scene, something which is a lot harder when the viewer can be focusing on any point in the scene in a 3D movie.
It was also a good bit darker- which made some of the underwater scenes look even more murky. There were a lot of scenes where I found myself wondering just what the hell I was supposed to be looking at.