I went to film school. I watch foreign films. I have an extensive Criterion collection and I frequently fight the urge to bludgeon people who hate subtitles.
That said, I grew up on cinematic trash; TBS and USA Up All Night were among the many channels flooding the 1980s basic cable airwaves with bizarre and disturbing exploitation curios from the dredges of the 1970s...
...and ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh was it ever a glorious time. Even with the boobies cut out.
So it with ABSO-FRICKIN-LUTELY NO APOLOGIES that I wholeheartedly endorse the ridiculously awesome spectacle that is Piranha 3D, a glorious, glittering, glamorous monument to everything so wonderfully wrong (i.e. "wonderfully RIGHT") with the grindhouse exploitation films of the 1970s.
Everything about this movie is pure, over-the-top, gratuitous, excessive and inexcusable...and I loved every fuckin' minute of it. I sat in a darkened theater with my drunk friends watching CGI fish rip people to shreds howling with laughter and geekgasms as the absurd campy cheesetastic awesomeness unfolded with existential carnage and nihilistic shadenfreude.
Along with UNSPEAKABLE AMOUNTS OF FULL-FRONTAL NUDITY AND GORE. I honestly can't tell whether there were more boobs than blood in this movie and I don't care, because there was enough of both to leave Hedonism Bot in an Elysian coma.
Approves.
Not only is it a magnificent recreation of everything B-movie about B-movies, from the cameo appearances to the crammed exposition by other cameoing veteran performers to the uber-in-joke references of its influences (the first 5 minutes with Richard Dreyfus drinking Amity Beer and singing "Show Me the Way to Go Home" made my little inner-Jaws kids' testicles descend, mature, and explode), to its unabashed rip-offs of scenes from other similar movies, but it's also incredibly fun to watch the cast act the hell out of movie that doesn't need their commitment but gets it anyway.
Oh Richard Dreyfuss in another man-eating fish movie...you complete me.
The only problem with the movie aside from occasionally shitty 3D (it was a converted 2D film sadly) is that it isn't that scary. I like heinous, random, excessive carnage as much as the next John Woo fan, but I would like some genuine scares to emerge rather than having the fish wink at the camera so obviously each time they get into frame. About the only thing they didn't do was make cute "owch" noises like the spiders in Eight Legged Freaks (which was ALSO nostalgic awesomeness, shuttup!).
And a word about Jerry O'Connell. I gotta tell you that he has an Oscar-worthy sleazeball performance in this film (no bullshit, I think he should qualify). He does for manipulative scumball douchebag characters modeled after Joe Francis what Heath Ledger did for The Joker. Unfortunately for him, his character is so obviously pathetic and troubled that I honestly felt a little sorry for him...you get the sense that behind this coke-snorting asshole is a terrified reprobate with an eviction notice and a drug debt back home who really NEEDS his Girls Gone Wild project to pay off. He lacks the craven, cowardly weaselness and villainy of genre villains like Anthony Heald:
Craven, cowardly weasel and villain. And douchebag.
But you know what makes up for that? Boobs. Splosions. Naked porn stars. More boobs. 70s violence. Even more boobs. Oh. And Ving Rhames going Bushido with a fuckin outboard motor.
Your kung-fu is no good, bitches.
And did I mention ridicumous girl-girl underwater lezzy action with full-frontal Kelly Brook?
Now you know. And knowing is half the battle.
So if you got plans this weekend? CANCEL THEM.
Concert tickets? SELL 'EM!
Sex party vacation at the cabin upstate? ...well, go to dinner and a show too.
And what show is that? Fuckin Piranha 3-D BITCHES!
This picture x 100 = Piranha 3D
Seriously...what the fuck ELSE could you POSSIBLY NEED MORE?!
That said, I grew up on cinematic trash; TBS and USA Up All Night were among the many channels flooding the 1980s basic cable airwaves with bizarre and disturbing exploitation curios from the dredges of the 1970s...
...and ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh was it ever a glorious time. Even with the boobies cut out.
So it with ABSO-FRICKIN-LUTELY NO APOLOGIES that I wholeheartedly endorse the ridiculously awesome spectacle that is Piranha 3D, a glorious, glittering, glamorous monument to everything so wonderfully wrong (i.e. "wonderfully RIGHT") with the grindhouse exploitation films of the 1970s.
Everything about this movie is pure, over-the-top, gratuitous, excessive and inexcusable...and I loved every fuckin' minute of it. I sat in a darkened theater with my drunk friends watching CGI fish rip people to shreds howling with laughter and geekgasms as the absurd campy cheesetastic awesomeness unfolded with existential carnage and nihilistic shadenfreude.
Along with UNSPEAKABLE AMOUNTS OF FULL-FRONTAL NUDITY AND GORE. I honestly can't tell whether there were more boobs than blood in this movie and I don't care, because there was enough of both to leave Hedonism Bot in an Elysian coma.
Approves.
Not only is it a magnificent recreation of everything B-movie about B-movies, from the cameo appearances to the crammed exposition by other cameoing veteran performers to the uber-in-joke references of its influences (the first 5 minutes with Richard Dreyfus drinking Amity Beer and singing "Show Me the Way to Go Home" made my little inner-Jaws kids' testicles descend, mature, and explode), to its unabashed rip-offs of scenes from other similar movies, but it's also incredibly fun to watch the cast act the hell out of movie that doesn't need their commitment but gets it anyway.
Oh Richard Dreyfuss in another man-eating fish movie...you complete me.
The only problem with the movie aside from occasionally shitty 3D (it was a converted 2D film sadly) is that it isn't that scary. I like heinous, random, excessive carnage as much as the next John Woo fan, but I would like some genuine scares to emerge rather than having the fish wink at the camera so obviously each time they get into frame. About the only thing they didn't do was make cute "owch" noises like the spiders in Eight Legged Freaks (which was ALSO nostalgic awesomeness, shuttup!).
And a word about Jerry O'Connell. I gotta tell you that he has an Oscar-worthy sleazeball performance in this film (no bullshit, I think he should qualify). He does for manipulative scumball douchebag characters modeled after Joe Francis what Heath Ledger did for The Joker. Unfortunately for him, his character is so obviously pathetic and troubled that I honestly felt a little sorry for him...you get the sense that behind this coke-snorting asshole is a terrified reprobate with an eviction notice and a drug debt back home who really NEEDS his Girls Gone Wild project to pay off. He lacks the craven, cowardly weaselness and villainy of genre villains like Anthony Heald:
Craven, cowardly weasel and villain. And douchebag.
But you know what makes up for that? Boobs. Splosions. Naked porn stars. More boobs. 70s violence. Even more boobs. Oh. And Ving Rhames going Bushido with a fuckin outboard motor.
Your kung-fu is no good, bitches.
And did I mention ridicumous girl-girl underwater lezzy action with full-frontal Kelly Brook?
Now you know. And knowing is half the battle.
So if you got plans this weekend? CANCEL THEM.
Concert tickets? SELL 'EM!
Sex party vacation at the cabin upstate? ...well, go to dinner and a show too.
And what show is that? Fuckin Piranha 3-D BITCHES!
This picture x 100 = Piranha 3D
Seriously...what the fuck ELSE could you POSSIBLY NEED MORE?!
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