Piranha 3D

I can appreciate a horror movie that has its tongue planted firmly in cheek as much as the next guy. Heck, when your movie is called Piranha 3D, it's almost expected. But this movie gave me mixed messages. It's goofy, it's campy, it's trashy, and it's over the top. So much so, the cast seem to constantly be winking at us, like they're in on the joke. It also has a very nasty and mean streak to it, which kind of clashes with the sense we're not supposed to be taking this seriously. Maybe I wouldn't have minded so much if the movie succeeded even once in thrilling or scaring me. Is a tiny thrill or a jump in my seat too much to ask for?

The piranha of the title are not your usual variety. They're prehistoric fish that are much more vicious, agile, and aggressive than you would think. They've been trapped in an underwater cave for the past two million years, and yes, the movie does explain how they survived down there all this time. An earthquake occurs, the cave is ruptured, and the piranha are now free to roam about and devour whatever they wish. We don't get a very good look at them for a while. There's a lot of "first person" underwater camera shots that are supposed to make us believe we're getting the point of view of the carnivorous fish, but usually turn out to be a false alarm. The first person to become a victim to the piranha is Richard Dreyfus, giving a clever and playful spin on his iconic Jaws character. This is the first of many instances of self-referencing humor. It's also the best of them. Once this scene is done, the piranha kind of leave the picture for an hour or so, and we get our plot set up.

The heroes are a mother and teenage son. The mom (Elizabeth Shue) is the sheriff in a beach resort town. Her focus is currently on trying to keep rowdy college students from causing trouble and killing themselves during Spring Break. Her son (Steven R. McQueen) is a bored kid with a sort-of girlfriend (Jessica Szohr). He gets invited to help a sleazy porno filmmaker (Jerry O'Connell) shoot his latest film, and goes along with it without his mom's permission. He climbs aboard the filmmaker's boat, they go out to the middle of the sea to shoot the movie, and naturally find themselves trapped in the middle of the prehistoric piranha invasion. Shue's character, meanwhile, gets wise when dead bodies start popping up in the water. She captures one of the deadly fish, and takes it to a scientist friend played by Christopher Lloyd.

If you should see this movie, watch Lloyd's big scene. He knows how to handle this material in a way that a lot of the cast do not. There is no winking at the camera, or sense that he is playing up the inherent crudeness of the movie itself for laughs. He handles his scene so seriously and in such a dramatic way, the laughs come naturally. He's one of the few actors who could take a line like, "This piranha existed two million years ago. So, what's it doing here?", and sell it. The rest of the cast act like they constantly know they're in a bad movie. This always bothers me. Bad movies are accidental, never intentional. Either the talent's not there, the budget's not there, or there was a struggle for control behind the scenes. Piranha 3D is a movie that knows it is trash, revels in it, and that's exactly what bothered me.

The movie is filled with gratuitous nudity and large-breasted women shaking what they have at the camera. This comes with the territory, obviously. You can't have a killer fish movie without beach babes. But director Alexandre Aja (Mirrors) fills his movie with them as a 3D gimmick. Yes, this is the first recent 3D jiggle-fest movie, which I'm sure will delight 13-year-old boys the nation over. He also fills his movie with buckets of blood, gore, limbs, mangled bodies, and any other kind of gruesome imagery he can think of. When the piranhas finally do go on their rampage, you can't say that the movie doesn't give the audience what they want. Not only do we get to see dozens of beautiful extras get eaten alive in blood-soaked water, but also decapitated, sliced in two, ripped open, mangled, and shredded. Most of this is contained in one long sequence, but it still makes you wonder just where is the line that separates the R-rating from a NC-17.

I'm kind of torn on my thoughts of Piranha 3D. On one hand, it pretty much does what a movie of its type is supposed to do, and is sure to please those looking for a goofy gorefest. On the other hand, I was never that entertained. There were moments where the movie's joke (and yes, the movie is basically one big, sick joke) worked with me, but not enough for me to recommend. I guess I wanted some genuine thrills to go with the globs of 3D cleavage and blood. Call me old fashioned, but when I see a movie like this, I want to think twice about getting wet ever again. I'm saddened to report that as soon as I came home from this film, I hopped in the shower with no problem whatsoever.

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