The Meg

When it comes to summer movies about people being devoured by giant prehistoric CG monsters, I'll take The Meg over Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom any day of the week.  This is a supremely silly B-movie that's been dressed up with a $100 million+ budget and a very game cast.  At times, it feels suspiciously like a made for TV SyFy Channel movie blown up on the big screen.  However, director John Turteltaub (Last Vegas) strikes the right balance between suspense and fun, and reminds us we're not supposed to be taking this too seriously without laying the cheese on to the point that the audience gives up on the film.  After all, this is a movie where Jason Statham battles a massive shark long thought extinct.  If that's what you want, it delivers on what it promises.

The presence of Turteltaub in the director's chair should also probably tip you off on what this movie wants to be, as he's not exactly known for helming thrillers.  His specialty lies in silly spectacles, like the National Treasure movies.  That doesn't mean there is no shark-based carnage to be found here.  Though a lot of it has clearly been edited to gain a PG-13 rating, we still get to see some innocent beach goers get snacked on by a hungry megalodon shark.  The creature is nearly 70 feet long, fears nothing, and is appropriately menacing.  How is this shark still around if it's believed to have gone extinct centuries ago, and where does it come from?  The movie does give us a "Scientific Explanation" to these questions, but it's best not to think about it.  In fact, it's best not to think of anything while the movie plays out.  Trust me on this one.

The film's prologue introduces us to its hero, Jonas Taylor (Statham), a deep-sea rescue diver who became disgraced after a failed rescue mission where an unseen massive creature attacked the ship where he was trying to lead the people to safety.  There were many casualties, and no one believed his story of a creature attack, so Jonas was forced to go into exile.  Five years later finds Jonas in Thailand, drinking his problems away, when he is approached by an old friend (Cliff Curtis) and the friend's boss (Winston Chao).  They are part of an underwater research facility project that is being funded by a fast-talking billionaire (Rainn Wilson), and a small team of undersea explorers including Jonas' ex-wife (Jessica McNamee) have been attacked by a similar creature that Jonas claimed to have encountered on that day long ago.  His ex and the team she was working with are still alive and trapped at the bottom of the sea floor with whatever attacked them, and they need Jonas' help in order to save them.

Jonas arrives at the research facility, and meets the rest of the team, which includes the usual character types who are played by actors better than the material usually gets.  We have the comic relief characters, both Caucasian (Olafur Darri Olafsson) and African American (Page Kennedy), the tough talking and tattooed young woman who handles the tech on the facility (Ruby Rose), the romantic love interest who keeps on getting into danger and needs frequent rescuing by Statham (Bingbing Li), and the love interest's cute little daughter (Shuya Sophia Cai), whom the movie uses wisely so she doesn't seem shoehorned in or intrusive.  As the crew attempts to track down the megalodon shark and destroy it before it can reach populated areas, the movie definitely feels familiar.  What sets it apart is the script, which knows not only how to handle these characters, but gives each of them some genuinely funny or clever dialogue to say to one another.  And when they are fighting the shark, there is enough tension generated that we really do want to see them survive.

Where The Meg is less certain is in its storytelling outside of the shark hunt.  In particular, the whole backstory surrounding Jonas' troubled history seems oddly underwritten, almost as if there was supposed to be more to it, but it was left on the cutting room floor.  There is a doctor on board the research facility (Robert Taylor), who happens to be the same doctor who tried to treat Jonas five years ago, and was convinced that the guy was crazy for all of his talk of a giant sea monster attacking the ship he was on.  There is one or two scenes where some old wounds show up between the characters, but after that, it's pretty much forgotten and never really explored.  Same goes for the ex-wife character, who supposedly left Jonas because she did not believe his story either, and became distant as her husband fell into near-madness trying to convince others.  They again get one or two scenes to talk about their relationship and the past, but it's unsatisfying, and never really feels as dramatic as it should.  I know why the screenwriters threw these elements in, but they're not developed in an satisfying way.

Regardless, the movie excels where it should.  It's big and silly, has a sense of humor to itself, and the shark itself is menacing.  Through it all is Statham's performance, who manages to create a heroic presence while also having a bit of fun.  He's in on the joke, as is the rest of the cast, but he never plays broad to the camera.  He plays it straight, which is the way it should be.  The Meg is certainly not great entertainment, but I did enjoy it a lot.

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